"Exposure" and "Sacred Songs"

[allegra!princeton!astrovax!fisher!tim]

[This article was found in mod.music.  You may want to edit it out,
gds, so that it doesn't appear twice.  --Doug]

> 
> ...Daryl Hall...
> on _Exposure_ (You Burn Me Up I'm a Cigarette, North Star, Chicago <--(does
> he sing this one?)) are first rate.  His solo album _Sacred Songs_, produced
> by and featuring Fripp, also has great stuff on it, like "The Farther Away
> I Am", "Why Was It So Easy", "Babs and Babs" and "NYCNY" (the transition from 
> 
> Dan
> 
The vocalist on Chicago is Peter Hammill, who sings a couple of
tracks on "Exposure."  One may also mention that Peter Gabriel does
"Here Comes the Flood," accompanied only by piano, complete with
a bum note, on Exposure.  He was thankful at the time that 
Fripp, who would later produce "Peter Gabriel" (II), gave him the
opportunity to (re-)do this as it was "intended."  Apparently Gabriel
and Fripp felt that producer Bob Ezrin ("Peter Gabriel" (I), also of
Alice Cooper fame) had syruped the thing beyond comprehension.

On Daryl Hall, let me second your support for "Sacred Songs."
This album had been "canned" by Hall's record company following 
its finish as too radical (though it is definitely not) for 
he of Hall and Oates fame.  Following a long media campaign by 
Hall and Fripp and others, it was finally released (interestingly,
this was also after Hall and Oates had suffered a substantial 
decline).  Fripp later bemoaned the delay, claiming that it had
cost Hall the chance of joining the Bowie's, Fripp's, and others
as leaders in avant-pop.

Two notes concerning the album:
Babs and Babs is about the two sides of the brain ("she say nothing" 
refers to the right, etc.), and is correspondingly provocative.
"Something in 4/4 Time," the only thing on the album which sounds
like "hit" material, lambasts the record companies ("You gotta have
something in 4/4 time, You gotta have something that always rhymes"
[and they wondered why it didn't get released!]) in an ironic fashion.
What is most intriguing, however, is that the song is in MONO until
the Frippertronics come zooming in mid-way through, in blatant stereo.
Don the headphones; it's worth checking out!

Hopefully this will give netters who haven't heard this remarkable
album some notion of its surprising quality as top flight art.

				    "New York, love me,
				     NYC I see,
				     New York, love me,
				     Am I NY?"
					Tim Snyder