Peter Gabriel

Seeing him tomorrow night in London, the set list is heavy on the new stuff and not enough pre-So material for my preferences but I'm guessing it'll still be a good time.

Update: Concert was great! Yes, not the setlist of my dreams but still a joy to see him. What a warm and generous stage presence he has, introducing the band at the beginning, the end, several times in between, and soliciting a round of applause for the tech and stage crews too. Seems like a very sweet dude. Hell of a band, great production, video, etc.

Saw him last night, have been wanting to for many years.... but 9 new songs was just too many, sad to say.

I didn't realize Wolfgang's Vault had the Amnesty International show that was broadcast from Giants Stadium back in June 15, 1986. I thought Peter Gabriel's set was the best, with "Biko" one of the highlights - a stronger performance than, say, the one in the 1987 concert film done in Athens (where it felt a little rushed to me):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LwbSeZx990

Lots of VHS recordings are on YouTube, but this is not surprisingly the best looking/sounding upload, probably coming from the broadcast master.

FWIW, back in 2009, Lincoln Center projected this as part of a larger Amnesty International/Secret Policeman's celebration. IIRC the turnout was actually pretty low for this screening, which was more like a casual all-day thing they held in the Walter Reade Theater - I didn't even have to get a ticket, the usher just let me in. I arrived just in time for Lou Reed's set and stayed to the end except for a quick meal break during Bryan Adam's set. I think by the end it was just me and a group of women a few rows up who were a delight - they didn't talk over the music, but between songs, they reminisced about attending the show in their 20's, at one point making a crack about not realizing it would be 20+ years before they saw the Police again. Anyway, it was great to see in the best possible quality on a great sound system.

God, I remember those screenings at the American Cinematheque and the Beverly Hills Paley/Museum of Television and Radio (which, sadly, no longer exists; all of their holdings are duplicated in the NYC location), and I’m disappointed that I didn’t go to them. I believe the Secret Policeman ones were in 35mm, and I hope those prints are still in good shape

Yeah bird, that Amnesty performance is excellent

Actually found the whole set here, possibly ripped from the Shout Factory DVD set (which I wasn't aware of until now).

I didn't realize Paley had a location in Beverly Hills - I looked it up and it sounds like there were several factors that may have led to its closing. This was announced weeks before the pandemic and lockdown hit, so if there's any positive spin to it, it's that they closed up before they had to deal with that headache.

Also that Vimeo account user (David M Kabot) seems to host quite a bit of Genesis and Peter Gabriel-related content, FYI

And here's the newest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urEbRC3PSY4

Super unusual to tour behind a record that's not even out yet. I wonder if his hand was forced?

I mean that's not unusual in general, though. The Cure just finished a massive US tour doing just that!

Eh, but how many new songs did the Cure really play? Two or so? Gabriel's set is apparently 50% new stuff.

Hardly that, more like six or seven regularly per set. Very heavily featured!

impressive! still pretty unusual I think.

It also helped that the tour was fully branded with the new album's name, so it's on all the shirts, a lot of the posters, etc., and Robert generally introduced every new song as such.

"Road To Joy" is a great uptempo song that lives up to it's title.

Still no official album release date?

God knows, maybe he started the song in 1986.

writing it or singing it

yes

Fripp is full of great stories, this one about Peter Gabriel (and Steve Lilywhite) —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e57g_tPUgYw

That's great.

Never listened to fripp interview, he’s charismatically persuasive. Are all of his interviews like that?

P much

Here's the newest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7JrmwYj4g4

okay that bouncy chorus is 100% lifted from a 70s TV theme song

meh. been fairly disappointed with the last few songs; album is shaping up to be less experimental than I was hoping.

Jerry Marotta interview in which he talks quite a bit about working with PG:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/jerry-marotta-drummer-peter-gabriel-paul-mccartney-1234788532/

Great piece, thanks for sharing that. I had forgotten Marotta was the guy staring at the cover in this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Orleans_-_Waking_and_Dreaming.png

His falling out with Gabriel is … odd.

Staring at the **camera**

His falling out with Gabriel is … odd.

they don't seem to have had a falling out so much as Gabriel just chose to work with katche instead; Marotta's contention that Gabriel chose to diversify his band to head of criticisms of appropriation strikes me as a valid perspective. His other criticisms of Gabriel seem very OTM, particularly re: technology working against him. that anecdote about Gabriel adding more tracks to a song after Tchad Blake was done with a mix is pretty funny.

meh. been fairly disappointed with the last few songs; album is shaping up to be less experimental than I was hoping.

so much is, the second to last one released, is so so good

I do have to disagree with this statement: "Everybody thought Orleans was going to be what would now be the Dave Matthews Band — like, a band that’s very hip, not every song is a pop song, but just a badass group." Maybe Jerry should read ILM's DMB thread

so much is, the second to last one released, is so so good

it's fine but it also sounds like Playing for Time which sounds like Washing of the Water and I don't know how many songs we need that sound like that.

And here's the latest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us5JFGeKRQo

That's pretty.

this and 4 Kinds of Horses are the standouts on the album. Not sure they hit the highs of any previous album standouts, but they are very good.

Peter Gabriel / Security might finally be really grabbing hold of me after years and years of thinking of it as "I Have the Touch," "Shock the Monkey," "Kiss of Life" and some other stuff in between. The mix of the icy, grating qualities of 3 with this thicker fog of enveloping sounds is really fantastic. I'll admit, though, I'm noticing that a lot of the lyrics are suffused with "rich English guy encounters indigenous religious practices." Curious if there's any good writing out there that parses through that in this case.

anyone see him on this tour? heard a lot of good things

I saw him live a couple weeks ago. I think it was the oldest crowd I've ever seen at a concert!

The performance was really solid. He faltered on a few high notes during the first song and I got a little worried, but after that his voice was in top form for the entire rest of the show. Very impressive for a guy his age, he's still got the range! His band was great too, a whole lot of talent there. They played "Don't Give Up" and their singer actually did Kate Bush's part justice.

I'm a pretty casual fan, so I was taking Gabriel's measure as a person for the first time. He seems like a genuinely great guy who is way too ready to jump on every passing silicon valley hype train. His opening monologue had HUGE TED Talk energy. Later on, he introduced Panopticom and did this whole tech evangelist monologue about how humanity is about to give birth to a new child called AI, and it’s going to be dangerous but it’s also going to revolutionize medicine and it’s going to give every child their own affordable, personalized, perfect education, and everybody’s gonna be surveilled all the time but it’ll actually be good cuz it’ll prevent bad behavior. I was squirming in my seat!

But like I said, he also seems like a really good person. He really went out of his way to feature his band members and talked them up constantly, making sure everybody knew their names. The show’s visuals were extensive and featured the band members on the same level as Gabriel pretty consistently. If you didn’t know better you might assume it was more of a collective than a solo artist show. I respect that! They certainly deserved it, they were fantastic.

He played waaaay too much of his new stuff, but that's to be expected I suppose.

thanks for the review - going on tuesday, pretty excited!

going in a few weeks. Looking forward to it because I'm a fan of 40 years, though I feel like this album is kind of limp and most of the set is devoted to it (plus sledgehammer and big time, two songs I really wish he'd stop doing). I've watched a lot of youtube videos so already know what to expect staging wise.

tour seems to have sold very erratically across the US; apparently lots of seats in some venues didn't sell, and prices got cut day of show. didn't happen in the bay area though.

tour was great. video and effects set-up was genuinely impressive, new songs were presented with a lot of great (if a bit addled, as onesecondbefore points out) context, and tony levin, manu katche, and david rhodes can still rip, and the longtime camaraderie between gabriel and these guys was charmingly evident. his voice still sounds pretty spectacular, and he was moving pretty well during the livelier numbers.

the cellist/backing vocalist was featured just enough that when "don't give up" started you'd be confident she'd kill it, and kill it she did

I think it was the oldest crowd I've ever seen at a concert!

yeah i was the youngest one there by some years. everyone sat patiently through the (pretty good) new material, and when one of the songs everyone knew came on, they came to life.

Yes, some of the special effects he had going were genuinely pretty cool. I particularly liked the glass pane effect in the second act... You'll know what I mean when you see it. I also thought some of the video behind certain songs was pretty cool. Sledgehammer's video seemed corny at first but really grew on me as this explosive celebration of fecundity.

Probably buying cheap tickets for tomorrow night, I assume nosebleeds on the side will still provide an OK view?

I think that really depends on the venue, but I was in a nosebleed on the side toward the back and I had an OK view.

I went to the Madison Square garden show last week (I so never want to go there again, but I ended up there for PG this year, Roxy last) and to my ears he is singing his old shit in the original keys and sounds great…

I can't always remember the deep cuts from Us or Up, and I think he did some of that stuff, but I think it is pretty ballsy to play that much shit that the casual fan isn't going to be familiar with… after the closing "Biko," a lady who was sitting behind me asked me and my friend why everyone wasn't en masse singing along "ay aye ohhhhh"; "I saw him in Denmark" (or some other place in Europe) "and everyone in the place was singing aong…why doesn't a NYC crowd do that?" Maybe NYC crowds are really standoffish, as many have suggested. It is true that the crowd was very very old, well off and uptight, and it makes me appreciate the much younger, drunker and stoned-er crowd I encountered for QOTSA and probly will for Lightning Bolt in a few weeks…

I mentioned in the (er) Replacements thread that I've read some fans disappointed at hearing the hits shuffled in, saying it kind of breaks the mood and feels like a pointless attempt to liven things up when PG heads (no doubt already seated and comfy) don't need it. Personally, I'd rather have something like "Mercy Street" over "Sledgehammer" or "Big Time," say, given the set seems to be largely "New Songs, plus Selections from So."

I've read some fans disappointed at hearing the hits shuffled in, saying it kind of breaks the mood and feels like a pointless attempt to liven things up

i'd bet this is like 15 people out of 15,000 in a crowd

I agree. if you want to see some real bellyaching and moaning about setlists, go look at hoffman forums reviews of this tour. But I'll take what I can get. Ive been lucky enough to see him 5 times (at Amnesty in the late 80's, twice on the Us tour, once right after that for a WOMAD thing, and a few years back on the So revisited tour).

I've seen him ... three times before? Four? Twice on Us, once on Up, once with Sting. To be fair, I've not read any negative reviews of this tour, which surprises me, because none of the new songs have really clicked with me, at least in their pseudo-released forms. I'm intrigued by how many people love the staging, not that I'd necessarily expect anything else, but because the Us and Up tours were pretty cool, yet the last couple of outings seemed more conservative and paired down, like he'd had a talk with his accountant.