The CD version of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway that I have is split wrong. What is presented here as one song "Fly On A Windshield" is pressed up right against "Broadway Melody of 1974". It's obvious that someone just got confused, and decided that "Broadway Melody of 1974" was the brief interlude leading into "Cuckoo Cocoon" instead of a song, with lyrics all of it's own. The version on Amazon MP3 seems to be cut properly, with these two songs as a separate pieces, and it claims to be a "new stereo mix". I may buy it just to see, because...

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is the best album ever, at least when considering "the old days". Yes, I will put myself on the line here and say The Lamb is better than Sgt. Pepper's, better than Pet Sounds, better than Dark Side of the Moon. The Lamb is nothing short of brilliant, in all it's excessive glory.

I wrote a paper in a Humanities class all about the storyline of this album, the parallels that can be drawn between it's concepts and Peter Gabriel's state of mind at the time of it's writing, about how it's just a coming of age story pushed into a lunatic realm where lust and desire turn you into a slobbering ugly beast where the only recourse is to chop off your penis and wear around your neck----at least until a raven swoops down and steals it from you.

There's so much goodness in the album (even the winding down of the second half) that it was hard for me to pick one moment I wanted to share with you. It could have been "The Chamber of 32 Doors" and I could have told you about how that song used to fill me with so much hope and sorrow. Maybe even "Lilywhite Lilith", an emotional rocker that might be about Gabriel being taught the ways of passionate lovemaking after years of confusion, or just about a blind old lady leading the character Rael through a cave system to safety. Even opener and title track "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" has a perfectly delicate balance of bombast and quiet contemplation. Yes, quiet contemplation. Quiet contemplativeness. It's true.

But, so much of my life is summed up by the lyric, the music, and the vocal, when Gabriel sings, "and I'm hovering like a fly, waiting for the windshield on the freeway." For much of my life I have felt this way, waiting for the inevitable collision to bring whatever it may my way. These days it's almost nonexistent, but I still feel a powerful connection to the "Fly On A Windshield" part of this song.

"The Broadway Melody of 1974" is here simply because it's part of the song, really, in my mind. A lot of good lines in it and Gabriel's variable accent sing-speaking the line, "the cheerleader waves her cyanide wand, there's a smell of peach blossom and bitter almonde," always sticks in my head.

In short, The Lamb is one of the most important records ever. To think that Peter Gabriel and his friends were only twenty-three when they wrote all this still blows my fucking mind. I'm twenty-four and I've done absolutely dick!