EIN DEUTSCHES ALBUM

Personally, I find Peter Gabriel singing in German a far more pleasing proposition than in his native tongue. It's particularly funny hearing some of his pronunciations which never fail to raise a smile, particularly on the word 'jungle' in 'Games Without Frontiers'.

The album is pretty much identical to 'Melt' bar the vocals which are overdubbed onto the original tracks. This is about as dark and heavy as Gabriel got. There's something about the German language that really suits this type of music.

I love the fact that Phil Collins had his cymbals confiscated for this recording. I can just imagine his baldy little features looking bemused as he thrashed about wildly looking for where those cymbals should have been. The lack of this percussive element certainly adds an air of inevitability to the recording. Apart from the cheesy saxophone intro on 'Frag mich nicht immer' (I Can't Remember) this is a mostly excellent album with some good contributions from Robert Fripp on twisted Bowie-esque Berlin trilogy guitar.

It sounds very 1980 - with all it's unspoken UK political uneasiness, Cold War paranoia and general malaise of that period. It was a funny old year...

I definitely don't regret not having bought the English version. I do however, still have a bit of a bee in my bonnet over the soppy 'Biko'.