Recently I acted on a whim and bought myself Peter Gabriel's first three solo albums on CD. In his enigmatic style each of them is simply titled Peter Gabriel so they have, by default, taken on various names: either simply "1, 2 and 3" or, for those in the know, names drawn from the pictures on their covers - "Car" for the first, "Scratch" for the second and "Melt" for the third. I first heard Gabriel via Brisbane student radio 4ZZZ when I was at high school in the late 1970s. One evening they played the entire The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the last album Genesis made with Gabriel as singer. I was hooked at first listen. I loved the passionate, energetic music, the constant experimentation with sounds and voices and the bizarre fractured fairy tale that ran through the album. It's still one of my favourites 35 years later. My love of this album put me in a distinct minority that didn't necessarily include all the members
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson