Music Arcades: Peter Gabriel: Us

Following on from yesterday, here's music packaged for impulse purchase. Fopp had a few of these cassettes stacked by the cash registers, so you could sweep one onto the counter in under three seconds — like a Mars bar in a supermarket — before you had time to reflect whether you really wanted or needed it.

So annoyed was I by So that I passed over Us on its release, even though it had Blood of Eden on it, and I loved that when I heard it on the soundtrack of Until the End of the World.

But £2.99 and three seconds in March 1999: I couldn't resist the impulse. I played the cassette in my car, on the shuttle journeys I made across Sheffield that month, failing to resist another impulse. I used to wait for Blood of Eden to come round — the upside of cassettes is that they pick up where you left off, so you don't just get to know the first three songs off the album; the downside is you can't skip to your favourite so easily. I still can't decide whether it's my favourite Peter Gabriel song ever, or an every-so-slightly-annoying cliché. But if I'd listened properly to the cod-Jungian lyrics, I might have got a warning about the consequences, the knots untying for the sake of a moment of bliss. It was quite a moment.

I'd never seen this video before today.

Much is made here of the teamwork and input of highly-regarded artists and directors, but the result is pretty risible. Horribly literal imagery.