Humdrum - Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel's first four albums were meant to be considered four issues of the same magazine; the first (Car) as Vol. 1, No. 1, etc. By analyzing the musical diversity amidst the arrangements and instrumentation, one can readily see the idea come to fruition. I'd immersed myself so much in Kate Bush these past couple weeks that I found myself listening to all of Kate's collaborations, in particular, "You" with Gilmour and Roy Harper and the three with Gabriel, "Another Day," "Games Without Frontiers" and "Don't Give Up." Though I find it unfortunate that "Don't Give Up" was so intently overplayed, I can still find the emotional poignancy that hit me the first time I heard it. At Amnesty, the Kate Bush portion was sung by Tracy Chapman, but I'm particularly partial to the wonderful live version with Paula Cole. (Music’s funny. Hearing "DGU" again with Paula Cole led me to the tantalizing AM10 track "Hush, Hush, Hush," then So, leading me back to PG 1-4. Now I'm listening to Trick of the Tail and Phil Collins – God, dismiss all the hokey idiocy in his canon and give me the melancholy But Seriously and just wow.) 
From the first issue of the magazine, though, I have been enamored for 40 years with "Humdrum." It is among my very favorite tracks (as nostalgic as "Ventura Highway," as enigmatic as "Benny and the Jets" and as angst-ridden as "I'm Not in Love"). A tango rhythm, synths-meets-Gallic-accordion, Gabriel’s trademark smoky voice, and a series of musical threads that start in one place and end in another seamlessly, this is a mish-mash that's been a constant (a capital C) in my life since 1975. Indeed it is thematic as the song that I play first in a new home. My youth gone, I'm not as mobile as I once was, moving from studio apartment to loft to some girl's couch. Whatever the schematics, this song was first. Open boxes, things away, sit on the sofa, first time in the new place, "In coal she burn, she burn."  
One thing "Humdrum" does is to position itself in a cultural context of Europe, full of Valentinas, and “little liebe schoens”, confronting American elements at JFK, and television that cuts a deep incision. After years of ferrying himself this way and that across the Atlantic as in Genesis, I imagine crossing these cultural lines were as familiar to him as lambs lying down on Broadway. But here as well is that references to women and birth, one of the reasons he’d given up being a rock star. His wife Jill had a difficult pregnancy, and his first daughter Anna-Marie had been ill as a newborn. While still in Genesis, he blew off a series of recording sessions and put off a tour in order to be with them: "From the white star,/ Came the bright scar;/ Our amoeba,/My little liebe schoen." This is a song I found so long ago, long before I could possibly understand its width or breadth, when it was mystical at best. I still do not understand, but in these words today I find real life, a real wife, a child and a garden, and I relish in the humdrum.