Peter Gabriel

I saw that tour and it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Of course, another "best concert I've ever seen" was his previous tour for Us. That tour was in 1993, he ended the show with Here Comes The Flood. Ten years later he walks out on stage and says, "This is where we left off..." before opening with Here Comes The Flood. By the time he segued into Red Rain I had completely lost my shit.

Man, fuck Phil Collins.

Peter Gabriel is great.
Unfortunately, the last time I saw him on TV and saw how much he has aged, now that he is without hair on his head, it was kind of off putting.

I saw that 1993 Us tour, and you're right, it's probably the best concert I've ever seen. Everything about it was tremendous, and I still picture him fighting with the phonebooth every time I hear "Come Talk to Me". "Biko" blew my mind.

Paula Cole was doing backing vocals for him on that tour, if I remember correctly?

His third one (the one with the melty face cover) is the high point among several high points, as far as I'm concerned. It's just an absolutely solid, unsettling album, and the one where his lyrical concerns went from bizarre and impressionistic to more direct and descriptive. The fact that there's essentially a musical through-line (check out those cymbal-less drum parts!) allows him to cover everything from crippling paranoia and mental illness to South African apartheid without it sounding disjointed at all.

Passion, of course, is incredible, but it's hard to even evaluate it as one would another one of his albums. It's just massive-sounding.

So is excellent, too, but I've always found "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" (which I like on their own) at odds with the more subtle, complex songs on the album - some of which, like "Mercy Street" are some of my favorite Gabriel songs. He integrated the styles a little better on Us, but the songs just aren't quite as strong as they are on So. I'm usually all about variety, but Gabriel's one of those artists who'd be better off segregating his "Blood of Eden"s from his "Steam"s. It would have been cool to hear a Gabriel-style all-soul album in the 80s or 90s ("Sledgehammer," "Steam," "Big Time," "Kiss That Frog," arguably "Shock the Monkey" and "Digging in the Dirt"), with his other albums minus those tracks.

Up was a major disappointment for me, so I'm not sure I'd want to hear him do something like this now.

Sinead O'Conner was singing backup when I saw him on that tour (technically, as part of the Womad festival).

Up is a tough album to love, but I managed to do it. Seeing the material performed live helped. The opening salvo of the first song is pure energy in concert.
You touch on what I love about him and his concerts. His ability to infuse his songs with such drama.

I saw him with the Blind Boys of Alabama on the last tour. After an enormously entertaing and moving version of Sky Blue, the BBoA needed to get off the stage. He personally, did all he could to help them among others. It stopped the show dead for almost 5 minutes, but it was amazing. There was something special about the moment where I felt that this man was truly there to help, and the show could wait.

DaveB... Passion creeps me out, I can't drive and listen to it. It puts me in a trance.

I'd put Digging in the Dirt on anything. I wouldn't categorize it the same as I would Steam, Sledge and some of the others.

Security is my favorite album by him, though.

Yeah, on second thought, you're right. The groove is the only thing that's a little soul-oriented on there. It's nowhere near as upbeat-sounding as the others I mentioned.

I've tried to get into that one many times, and I like it a lot, but it never sticks with me like the albums directly before and after it. "The Rhythm of the Heat" has one of the coolest evolutions of a rhythm I've ever heard, though.

Now I'm going to listen to him when I get home from work... a good day to introduce the spawn to him, too.

I think he'll like Shock the Monkey.

I saw Peter Gabriel twice when he was touring with So, and those performances still rank near the top of my "favorite concert" list. Hearing Family Snapshot, one of my favorite songs from PG, was so moving. Other songs like San Jacinto, No Self Control, Solsbury Hill, The Family and the Fishing Net, Here Comes the Flood - selections from these theatrical concerts I'll never forget. And I don't know how long we sang Biko after Peter Gabriel left the stage, but it seemed like a long time. The crowd just didn't want it to end.

As far as the album So, I still like it as a whole. But it's one of those albums that I can no longer listen to the "hit songs" on the radio. I don't mind them in the context of sitting down to listen to the entire album, however.

Really love the Genesis albums Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme, as well as the obvious Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Long Walk Home (from RABBIT PROOF FENCE) is another stunning album. I wish he would write more for film.

I think I'm the only person on Earth who enjoys Up. It's definitely a flawed effort, but it's so in keeping with the progression he's made from So. It's the spiritual successor to Us, in more than just the name. There are some genuinely beautiful moments in that record, and it does take effort to get into properly, but I find it to be a very rewarding listening experience every time I pop it in. Us is still my favorite, though.

Nice to see Peter Gabriel getting love. But beyond his amazing vocal, nifty lyrics and damn fine songs is his stellar backing band. When your rhythm section includes

Tony Levin
and
Manu Katche you know you have a tight band.

I think the problems from UP really stem from how long the thing took to get completed. It was supposed to come out well before the REM album of the same name, but kept getting held back.

When it did show up, there were several old songs on it- one being Signal to Noise (which was great, and a fitting tribute to Nusrat Fati Ali Khan) but including a shorter (and in my opinion) weaker version of I Grieve on there YEARS after being used in City of Angels seemed a bad decision. Topping that, was the Barry Williams Show, while catchy seemed completely out of place in the Gabriel discography due to its (really out of date) stance against Jerry Springer type shows.

I still like the album, and there is serious greatness, but if only Burn Me Up, Burn Me Down had been included and some of the other rumored 100+ tracks he had written for the album... that could have been a defining statement on his career.

"Family Snapshot" is one of my favorite songs of all time -- it starts of brooding, then turns into the peppiest song about assassination ever, and then comes the coda with the little boy. It's a great character piece and a great story. And I tossed "San Jacinto" on the mixed CD I sent Diva in the Chewer swap, another set of great lyrics - "Past Geronimo's disco, Sitting Bull Steak House, white men dream", just great stuff.

And why no serial killer film has used "Intruder" in the soundtrack yet is beyond me.

Ryan, don't discount David Rhodes. That track he did for the Plus from Us compilation was fantastic.

I hope none of them ever do, actually. Gabriel's songs from that period are so vivid that they're sort of like mini-movies on their own - they work best on their own, not as accompaniment. If you need "Intruder" to let us know that your movie is about a violent criminal, you're doing a shitty job of directing.

"The Barry Williams Show" may be the worst thing in his catalog. It may be the only truly terrible song on Up, but the whole album just hit me as being full of a lot of Gabriel-by-numbers songs, as if they were Up b-sides or something. Also, he seemed to lose the deft touch for lyric writing that he'd developed up until around Us, where he started getting very confessional and heart-on-his-sleeve. That straightforward, overwrought style worked for one album, but I was expecting some sort of progression after waiting that decade or so, and it was more of the same, and, worse, not supported by the same quality of music. Maybe it's not as big a deal if you first got into Gabriel sometime in the mid-90s or something.

I always thought "The Barry Williams Show" should have been a "Weird Al trying to be serious" song or something. Not very good at all.

I created a thread over two years ago about him and how I felt that he needs to do more soundtracks:

http://chud.com/forums/showthread.ph...=Peter+Gabriel

I prefer the second version of Here Comes The Flood more than the first version that was on Robert Fripp's solo album, Exposure.

3, 4, and So are awesome. The first 2 are very interesting, with a few great tracks, but aren't good as whole albums.

His DVD of music videos is incredible. The one for "I Don't Remember" is still mindblowing.

And yes, as any King Crimson fan knows, Levin is one of the best bass players out there.

Love seeing him play the stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapman_Stick

The first released version was on the first Gabriel solo album (77). Gabriel wasn't fond of the over-production on it, so the version he did with Fripp (79) was a later attempt to simplify it. Then there's yet another version on Shaking the Tree (90) that's just him and a piano. I think Gabriel was right - it got better as it got simpler.

I prefer the solo album version over the Shaking the Tree version myself. I think the vocal is stronger.

And how can you not love the man who gave us a song titled "Moribund the Burgermeister"?

I stand corrected. Thanks for the info. I meant the Shaking The Tree version is my favorite.

Count me as an Up lover (it's part of my Gabriel trifecta, with Us and Passion). I think the main reason I like it is because Us created such an often-duplicated sound as far as the mix was concerned that I was afraid Up would sound unoriginal by the time it came out. But of course, after the opening of "Darkness", I realized Gabriel had gone an almost completely opposite direction, which I appreciated.

I don't like Barry Williams, but then again I've come to realize that the first single off of any Gabriel album is almost bound to be my least favorite off of that album. Excepting "Digging in the Dirt" ("Steam", the 2nd single from Us, would fit the bill, though).

There's some great songs on his 4th solo album that I think get lost in the shuffle, like "The Family and the Fishing Net", which is not a song I'd recommend listening to on the eve of your wedding.