Peter Gabriel

Was Sting ever on a Disney soundtrack? Anyway the Gabriel tune from Wall-E was very nice I thought. Co-written by Randy Newman's cousin Thomas!

Thomas Newman!

It wasn't the paucity of fast ones on albums that bothers me as their increasing desperation, as if he bowed to pressure to Write Some Hits. Remember "The Barry Williams Show"?

Thomas Newman is great, he's fashioned a nice little sound world for himself in film.

It wasn't the paucity of fast ones on albums that bothers me as their increasing desperation, as if he bowed to pressure to Write Some Hits. Remember "The Barry Williams Show"?

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, June 17, 2016

ah gotcha. totally agreed then. and lol that's another one that is conspicuously absent from my library.

I don't hate Us. I bought it on CD when it came out, tho I must've sold it at some point. Production-wise it feels very heavy and adult – there is a slightly hermetically sealed vibe. At the same time, virtually all of the songs are drab therapy mumbo jumbo – as if he crossed the "Is he speaking to God or a person" rubicon of "In Your Eyes" and that was that. I mean, at least "Kiss That Frog" tries something else.

The only thing I unabashedly love on Us is "Blood of Eden" – which suffers from all of the above problems but just has a lovely melody and atmosphere. Incidentally Sinead toured w him at WOMAD when I saw him and got booed roundly. He went all "spiritual protector" with her – standing by her and glaring at the crowd disapprovingly.

i saw that tour as well, just a year or so after the US tour. it was great, and was the last time I saw him live until the So tour.

I like the orchestral covers record because the song choices are all pretty interesting, but the orchestral versions of his own songs are terrible, I just can't listen to it, it adds absolutely nothing. I assume there's a reason the new original album is like 15 years overdue at this point.

US is a recording of a man who's never had a conversation in his life, hence the marvel of therapy.

Did you come talk to him?

us is grebt, and not least because it was the soundtrack to my first oral sexing

not terribly into the 'fast' songs, but come talk to me, love to be loved, blood of eden and digging in the dirt are among his best

dude is 66 years old and has been musically active for 49 of them; y'all are pretty demanding about him breaking new ground in 2016 jeez

Love Us, and loved the tour, my first proper BIG concert

((Was Sting ever on a Disney soundtrack?))

He wrote and recorded a bunch of songs for The Emperor's New Groove, all of which except two were cut, and one that was kept didn't have Sting on it. From Wikipedia:

After Sting's songs for Kingdom of the Sun were dropped from the new storyline, Sting remained on the project, though he was told by the studio that "All we want is a beginning and an end song." The song, "Perfect World", was approached "to open the movie with a big, fun number that established the power of Kuzco and showed how he controlled the world", according to Feature Animation president Thomas Schumacher. The filmmakers had asked Sting to perform the song for the film, though Sting declined telling them that he was too old to sing it and that they should find someone younger and hipper. They instead went with Tom Jones, who was eleven years older than Sting.

there's a very interesting unreleased documentary made by sting's wife about the whole thing

dude is 66 years old and has been musically active for 49 of them; y'all are pretty demanding about him breaking new ground in 2016 jeez

Yes tho the point I'm making is that he slowed up considerably when it came to breaking new ground around 42. It seems like a combination of age, commercial pressure and the whole Real World endeavor probably sucked a lot of inspiration out of him.

For me, those first four records are really a different beast than everything that came after – the sound of Genesis's frontman finding his way in the pop marketplace. So is an interesting record for sure – but it's got that same experimental vibe as the self-titled records (impressionistic songs, narratives about psychological experiments, etc.). Us to me is where he begins to leave all that behind.

Think it's fair enough to wonder what's going on with some of these guys (see also Bryan Ferry to an extent) when their studio output dries up in early middle age...a curiosity, rather than entitlement (hopefully)

wonder why he's not on Spotify.

Bryan Ferry has actually been pretty prolific lately. I think he works like Gabriel does, starting sessions in fits and starts with various combinations of musicians, then spending a ton of time in the studio combing through the different takes and shaping the songs from them, which takes a lot of time. That's why they have such superstar credits. It's not like those cats are in the studio all at once, just dropping by for a day here and and a day there. I doubt they even know if they're on the record until the end, and even then, I wonder if they can always hear themselves.

Check out the credits of Ferry's latest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avonmore_(album)#Personnel

Then check out the credits on Gabriel's Up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(Peter_Gabriel_album)#Personnel

He's always worked like this, but this is clearly an epic conflation of several different sessions cobbled together into an admittedly cohesive but maybe sort of inert album.

There's some great, great stuff on Up so I wouldn't say he's lost it. To me it really does go back to the rhythm. His more recent stuff is often more loop-y and plodding, less naturally dynamic.

The orchestral stuff I think it some of the dullest music ever made. His arrangements of his own music are dull, his covers are daft - why rearrange familiar songs into such radically new forms by jettisoning the melodies and arrangements, but keeping the lyrics? If he had just written new words no one would have known they were covers. Makes it seem gimmicky.

Gabriel covering Elbow is like Will Smith covering Richard Blackwood's 'Who's Da Man'

"Think it's fair enough to wonder what's going on with some of these guys (see also Bryan Ferry to an extent) when their studio output dries up in early middle age...a curiosity, rather than entitlement (hopefully)"

I don't think it's that unusual, I think it's entirely natural that people's creativity slows down in middle age. People like McCartney are a real exception.

i guess I never paid attention to the credits on Up, I had no idea Tdchad blake or peter green were on it

His accent is weird, speaking voice that is. It's obviously a 'posh guy trying to lose his posh voice' accent but it's ended up coming out really odd. I'm trying to think what it's like but all I can come up with is a South African trying to impersonate Brian Eno.

I'll rep for his cover of "Listening Wind" on the orchestral album, the lone bright spot to me. It sounds like a Security-era experiment, and even the original could have come from PG 3.

The documentary SlimandSlam referenced is called The Sweatbox. Really terrific stuff! Buried for years, but a bootleg with a time odd was uploaded earlier this year.

Gabriel strikes me as being like Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout and Matt Johnson of The The in that I'm sure he has an enormous cache of unreleased material that had never been bootlegged

Really? I have honestly never thought I'd Gabriel that way at all. Does he usually release a lot of b-sides or anything that would suggest that?

he probably has an enormous cache of unfinished stuff.

"Think it's fair enough to wonder what's going on with some of these guys (see also Bryan Ferry to an extent) when their studio output dries up in early middle age...a curiosity, rather than entitlement (hopefully)"

I don't think it's that unusual, I think it's entirely natural that people's creativity slows down in middle age. People like McCartney are a real exception.

ahahahaha... wait... can't tell if serious.

I never would have predicted it, but the Peter Gabriel/Sting show tonight was pretty awesome.

i watched some youtube clips of this and then was sad that I'm going to miss it, because it looks pretty good. also sting sings Dancing with the Moonit Knight!

Yeah, part of it, at least, before Message in a Bottle. I was really impressed by the format, with combinations of Sting singing Sting, Gabriel singing Gabriel, Gabriel singing Sting, Sting singing Gabriel, and both often backing the other. Sting in particular seemed like he was having more fun than I've seen him have for years, often super happy just swinging his arms back with the backing singers, or playing bass (as he did on Big Time, with Tony Levin handling the synth bass). A lot of the times the guys not playing were still hanging on stage, singing and dancing and having a good time.

Back in the first couple of Lollapalooza iterations they made a big deal of acts guesting with each other, and certainly this kind of thing happened back when Gabriel and Sting were on the Human Rights Now tour, but it's been a while since I saw a collaborative tour, with this sort of musical chairs going on.

wow both the new songs that have come out recently (The Veil, today, and I'm Amazing, a few months ago) are not very good. They aren't terrible but they're hardly memorable or breaking any new territory. I'd like to think he's holding back on great things for the album but these give me zero hope, and I'm a huge fan.

His catalog is finally on Spotify. Listening to the car album now.

I
WILL
FIND
OUT

Why are all the songs on Us marked “explicit”? Did he go back and add a bunch of obscenities to bring it up to date?

he says the word sex in digging in the dirt.

He went with the remixed versions, all of which feature DMX.

“Kiss That Frog”!

man, Passion is close to topping my list of his best.

It's the last album he made where I don't skip at least one track.

I like Passion Sources even more.

His whole catalog is on Bandcamp now - and when I say his whole catalog, I mean it; you can even get the German-language versions of the third and fourth solo albums.

I saw someone mentioning Peter Gabriel just now, and I was reminded how much I enjoyed his tour with Sting. On paper it's a cash grab, but in practice it was something I wish more bands would do. There were Peter Gabriel sections and Sting sections, but what I remember most were the long stretches that fused both bands on stage and often featured Sting in a supporting role: playing bass, or lined up with the backing singers, or helping out Gabriel in the front. It was just a nice thing, and it was the most fun I think I've ever seen Sting have on stage. Here's a clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjhLD8LZ-Hc

Well, Sting has made clear Peter Gabriel's one of the few artists of his generation he genuinely likes or disturbs his chronic self-regard.

(An aside and not for this thread, but Sting's tour with Paul Simon sounded the same way: combining bands, covering each other's songs.)

I remember this because of Brexit - I think right after the ill-fated vote, Sting trashed it while introducing an appropriate Gabriel-era Genesis song. (Forgot which, but I'm sure fans can probably guess.)

I *think* he sang a snippet of "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight."

(Answer: yes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1voIdykzHk

Late 80s Peter Gabriel is kind of hilarious.

I just two-listened to Passion as a result of this thread and … with 2022 ears it sounds like every Hans Zimmer/Gladiator-style score I’ve ever heard. Lots of mysterious, Shankar violin drones, Nusrat banshee cries trailing into Real World’s cutting edge Lexicon reverbs, and so, so much tribal percussion.

Then you have “A Different Drum,” which sounds like he couldn’t help but add some of his own vocal stylings to the brew, which appears to employ some kind of Lyric Generator about rivers flowing and whatnot. IIRC, this is also the scene where Jesus is walking alone and one-by-one his disciples and followers appear next to him, as if he’s Steve Perry and Journey filming a music video on a shipping dock.

Also, I completely forgot that Shaking the Tree has a title track – which combined with the jaunty piano groove sounds a bit like Peter Gabriel and His Heavy African Friends.

I love Manu's playing on the title track.

I have to admit, Passion's become my favorite Gabriel, thanks to that combination of genuine respect for local sources + keyboard and percussive schlock + New Age quieter passages.

“Led Zeppelin? meh, just sounds like a cornier Greta Van Fleet amirite?”

also note PG invented tribal percussion in 1980 when he decreed that Phil Collins was not allowed to touch his cymbals

u rite abt “shaking the tree” tho. i play it once a year for my partner on International Women’s Day and she throws stuff at me.