Shock THAT Monkey – Don’t Wait . . . Just Follow the Instructions Below

Look – The deal is this: I call ’em like I see ’em. And the truth is that Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey,” both visually and musically, still stands up to anything out there today . . . The song itself is more or less cautiously tempered but then, in sudden bursts of creative energy, borders on the frenetic . . . Why? Gabriel took the risk of using pop as his medium to explore the fundamental rift between civilization and savagery. Not by accident. Not because it was easy. But because what better metaphor could there be? After all, pop – by definition – represents mainstream sensibility – and yet Gabriel subverts the genre both by pointing to the ways in which the so-called mainstream can often itself be the lowest form of human expression and yet nevertheless retain an astounding resiliency worthy of our hopes for the future. In my book, that’s not the sort of philosophical message that comes with an expiration date. So if you haven’t checked it out in a while, now is this time. SHOCK THE MONKEY!

 

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