Peter Gabriel Concert (a little tiny bit of OtR)

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

So, I went to see Peter Gabriel last night for the first time in 15 years.
Wow.  As someone once said, what a show! :-) I'm going to go through and jot
down what I remember, and what my reactions were.  I know this isn't OtR, so
feel free to delete right now, but I do mention OtR late in this missive.  If
there are any other Peter Gabriel freaks out there, you might find this of
interest.  :-) I just put together a 2-cd "pseudobootleg" -- recordings of the
same songs in the same order, just from different concerts (or directly from Up
in the case of the new album, which I don't have live versions of).  I've never
tried that before.  It's a fun way to remember the concert.  But anyway, how
was the show?

In general, it was much, much longer than I expected (ended right at midnight),
and had a nice mix of old and new.  2 songs from #1, 1 from #3, 1 from #4, 4
from So, 2 from Us, 1 from Ovo, 6 from Up, and one new song.  I was delighted
he played something from Ovo.  In general, I thought the stage design was
fascinating, but I was a little disappointed that it lacked coherence and often
seemed gimmicky.  The stage was in the round, which I thought was a really
great choice: it made for a very open and appealing interaction with the
audience, and although we were about as far as you could get from the stage,
one didn't *feel* that they were "bad" seats, they were just...  well, *far*.
The outer ring of the stage could rotate, and there was a square platform at
the center that could raise up maybe a foot, and lower down several feet.  Two
stairways led down into the stage.  There was crawlspace under the plaform for
the stagehands who fulfilled several functions such as moving set pieces
around, operating video cameras for the closeups that were projected up onto
big screens, and making sure wires didn't get tangled up.  The stagehands all
wore orange jumpsuits, and the musicians wore black.

Above the stage was a large scaffolding with all sorts of moving lights.  There
was a ring of lights right above the stage, and four arms that extended out at
right angles to each other.  These arms held some strobe lights and more moving
lights, as well as a manually operated follow spot at the very end of the beam.
People climbed up rope ladders to get up there!  Two further scaffolding bars
extended out away from the stage on opposite sides, slightly above the four
previously mentioned.  I think these were for holding power cables, as I
couldn't see what else they did.  Near the outside end of each of these was a
large screen onto which was projected video imagry.  Sometimes it was thematic
patterns, and sometimes it was closeups from the cameras on stage.

The central ring of scaffold also contained some pieces that could move.  There
was a ring-shaped plaform that could lower down to stage level, and within that
ring was a white cloth egg, maybe 20 feet high, that was lowered down and used
as a 3-d projection screen.  Then the egg was stripped away to reveal a ball
inside it, and then the white cloth surface of the ball was removed to show an
inflatable clear plastic ball.  In the oddest moment of the show (details
below), this ball was lowered to the stage, cut loose from the cable it was
hanging on, and then Gabriel climbed inside it (there was a spherical hollow
core) and ran around stage in it like a hamster ball.  See "Growing Up", below.
More on that as I go through the set list.

Turnout was really poor.  There were lots and lots of empty seats.  Whole
sections had been curtained off at the ends of the arena (including our seats!),
and we had to be reseated.  I think our actual seats were higher than the seats
we bought, but actually closer to the stage, because they were on the side of
the oval, rather than the end.  I think if I had been PG, I would have said at
some point in the show: "look, everybody come down as far as you like", just to
bring the crowd in closer for a more emotionally intense experience.  As long
as they're there, might as well not dilute the crowd.  Better for the
performers, too.  Oh, well.  I'm really glad they did it in the round; it made
for a very open and appealing interaction with the audience, and although we
were about as far as you could get from the stage, one didn't *feel* that they
were "bad" seats, they were just...  well, *far*.

Anyway, here we go...

Here Comes the Flood - show opened with PG solo at the keyboard, doing the
spare, haunting version of this one.  I was very excited to see him start
the show with such an old one.  I thought it boded well for the rest of
the night.  The lights on this one were nice and sparse, setting us up for
the onslaught of effects to come later.

Darkness - Arguably one of my least favorite tracks on the new album; it's *so*
abrasive.  Especially after those misleading first few notes cause you to crank
up the volume on your player.  Boo.  But the stage version was full of energy
and people to look at.  We were sitting up in the nosebleed section, but the
view was fine.  We were about at the same level as the uppermost scaffolding
around the stage and those overhead screens.  Although the screens were pretty
useless from where we were sitting.  One was at too oblique an angle to be
comfortable to look at, and the other was half-blocked by a scaffold.  Frankly,
I found them distracting.  I didn't go to a live show to watch a screen.

The full band set up was as follows:

At first, the drummer was under a little tent made from scrim on the central
platform, but during Red Rain they took down the tent and slid him over to the
side.  I'll call that "East" for no particular reason.  To the south east was
the primary position for Tony Levin on various bass instruments.  He was really
fun to watch.  This was the part of the stage we were closest to, so it was
particularly nice to have the best view of my favorite performer.  To the South
and South West was a keyboard player named... Cheryl Z, I think.  She was
pretty good, and a nice addition to the team.  To the West was a guy whose name
I didn't catch, who played acoustic guitar and flute.  Backup singer Melanie
(PG's daughter!) tended to move around in this area, between south and
northwest.  PG's keyboards were mostly at the North position, although he
himself wandered around a lot.  To the Northeast was David Rhodes on electric
guitar.

Red Rain - nice, functional version of it.  Felt a little perfunctory, but
servicable.  I still wasn't being drawn into the tech show yet.  Having red
lights splash the audience for this one was *so* predictable.  Still, it's a
wonderful song, and competantly played.  I was also delighted they let the
drummer out of the little hut in the middle of the stage.  I love watching
drummers, especially at PG shows that are so percussive, so when he was covered
up in "Darkness", I started to panic.  But whew, they let him out.

Secret World - Here's where they started to suck me in.  This is one of my
favorite live songs of his, because it *builds* so well.  When the whole band
kicks in, it just sweeps me away with its energy.  The egg shape dropped down
in the middle of the song was pretty neat, and when they projected shadow hands
on it, I was riveted.  I loved watching Tony Levin work.  David Rhodes and
Levin were both playing with Gabriel when I saw them last, back in 1987, and
the three of them were like a well-oiled machine.  Really inspiring.  They did
a simple, but cute bit of choreography that when the instrumental part really
kicked in, everybody on stage spun around like dervishes.  Some spread their
arms out if they weren't using them.

Sky Blue - I was afraid this might be boring on stage, but the fascinating blue
cloud light effects projected on the egg, as well as the power of the blind
boys of alabama, made it mesmerizing.  Much more powerful than I expected.  The
blind boys were sitting on folding chairs on the central platform (the drummer
having been moved to the side), which raised and lowered them, depending on 
whether they were singing or not.

Downside Up - This is one my favorite Ovo tracks, and it worked very well live.
However, in the middle of the song, the central scaffolding pillar above the
stage descendend so that its bottom was maybe ten feet off the stage.  PG and
MG climbed on little step ladders and attached themselves to hooks on the
bottom of the ring, so that they could turn upside down and run around a track
on the underside of the ring while singing.  I have to say that I didn't like
the whole descending pillar thing.  It was a long way to go for the single
sight gag of him and his daughter singing upside down, which I guess is
impressive, but I found it distracting from the power of the music, which I was
really looking forward to being swept away by.  The gimmick kept me rooted in
self-consciousness right at the point of the song that I find most transcendent
when I listen to it on the albums.

Barry Williams - probably the most disappointing song of the show.  It didn't
seem to have the energy that the studio version has.  The pillar came all the
way down to the floor, yielding a ring-shaped platform above it that had a
camera on wheels on it.  PG pushed this camera around the ring, filming
himself, the other band members, and often the audience.  The camera images
were projected up onto the central pillar as well as the two overhead screens.
There was something really eerie about the way people would jump and wave to
get the camera's attention -- all during a song that's *about* the extremes
that people will go to when put on TV.  I felt embarrassed for the audience
members, and I wasn't sure if Gabriel was aware of how insulting the technique
was.  And again, the descending pillar seemed like a lot of work for little
effect.  I was surprised to see PG use his little sideways-shuffle/arm-chop
move that he used to do for ... No Self Control, I think it was.  I forget.

More Than This - out of the slump.  This was a kick-butt number.  Really
powerful, high energy, nice lighting, well-choreographed.  Amazing drums.
I liked the burning, billowing flames on the ball at the center.

Shock the Monkey - A fun bit of fluff.  The eyes projected on the ball were
nice, and it was kind of disorienting to see basically the same stage
choreography as 15 years ago (jumping on the strong beats).

Mercy Street - drop dead amazing.  The lights used a mottled mix of greens and
aquas that made a beautiful water effect, and for the first time I felt like
the revolving stage was actually motivated by something in the song ("looking
for mercy").  There was a little rowboat that started out due west, in which
Melanie sat, and three other musicians sat right at the edge of the stage at
the other compass points, while PG wandered around the ring as it turned.  The
a capella opening stanza was gorgeous, and the final moment of the song as he
faced the boat was very powerful (not to mention since it was his daughter in
the boat, and he was singing "anne, with her father, is out in the boat").  I
kind of missed the powerful, aching, heart-rending, soul-shattering wail he
used to do, but I guess the a capella stuff made up for it.  They projected a
moon effect on the ball in the middle that was just gorgeous.

Digging in the Dirt - fun song;  I don't really have anything to say about the
stage show for this one.  The bass and drums were fun to watch, as usual.  They
uncovered the plastic ball and bounced lasers around in it, which made for an
interesting effect.  As usual with this show, there were a lot of weird and
quirky visual ideas, but I wish they could have been woven into a more coherent
whole.

Growing Up - from a visual image point of view, probably the high point of the
show.  This song will always evoke hiking in australia for me, because I bought
the album down there, and I listened to it a lot when I was walking around, and
the beat on this one is one of the best walking beats I've ever heard.
However, those images of Australia are going to have to fight with Peter
Gabriel in a big, inflatable, hamster ball.  What an idea!  As I mentioned
above, he crawled into this big ball, and then ran around the ring of the stage
in it.  I wonder how much he had to practice so as not to fall off the stage or
knock over the equipment.  And then when he started bouncing up and down, I
squealed with delight.  What fun!  This number alone was worth the $50 I paid
to get in.

Animal Nation - new song.  He said something about having played music with
Bonobo apes, out of which this song grew.  The song itself didn't really grab
me much.  But maybe it would grow on me if I got to hear it a few more times.
No fancy lighting, but there was one moment where everyone crowded around
the drum kit and fell to hushed whispers that was interesting.

Solsbury Hill - sheer silliness.  And PG flubbed a line.  He forgot to say
"Hey, I said, you can keep my things" on the last verse.  :-)  The color mix
was nice on this one, but don't ask me to explain the bicycle.  Weird.  :-)
Fun energy, though, and the look of him going against the rotation while all
the musicians were walking with it was very nice.

Sledgehammer - PG wore a powered coat (an orange-suited techie made sure his
trailing power cord didn't get tangled) with lights on it.  An interesting
gimmick, but it seemed to come out of nowhere (well, I know it came from the
video, but in terms of *this* stage show it seemed really random).  Another
flubbed line.  Maybe he was getting tired, this late in the evening.  They also
did the rather tired thing of shining really bright lights out into the
audience when we were supposed to sing "sledgehammer".  Hasn't someone figured
a better way to do that yet?

Signal to Noise - now this was cool.  They put the drummer back in the middle,
and instead of reconstructing the hut, they put him inside a cloth pillar,
which they then lit with various combinations of lights from within and
without.  I thought it was very effective, especially the random spots, which
would spill over the sides of the pillar and trace out lines on the floor out
into the audience.  PG introduced this song with a great turn of phrase: he
said it's a song to listen to when everyone around you is talking about going
to war like going to a football game.  Woo hoo!  They used recordings of Nusrat
Fateh Ali Kahn as part of the number.  To my surprise at the end of the song,
they pulled an "Over the Rhine" and had everybody quit playing and leave the
stage one by one, until just the drummer was left (although they had some kind
of synth music still playing over the drummer, so it was a bit of a cheat).
And that pillar/platform descended again, for no apparent reason.  Maybe they
were implying it was squishing the drummer.

First encore - In Your Eyes - He's still doing the long version of this one,
which is good.  I really like the extra verse he does at the beginning and
ending of it.  The two african singers don't quite measure up to Youssou
N'Dour, but it was clear everybody was having fun with it, and that's
infectious.  Tony Levin once again shows that he's the "king of the bottom
end".  Amazing bass work.

Second Encore - Family Snapshot - with the first notes, I recognized this one,
and sat up in my seat and said "wow!".  :-) I think the guys on the light board
were improvising on the lights on this one, and I actually liked it better than
the more polished work we saw during the main show.  It had an elegant
simplicity that I liked.  Someday I'd like to see a PG show that's just him,
the band, and the music.  No gimmics, no extravagant stage show, just the
music.  The song itself was very powerfully done, and they handled the pace
changes flawlessly.  Odd choice for a closer, though: a cheerful little number 
about presidential assassination to send us all home at midnight.  :-)

So, all in all does not quite measure up to my memories of the 1987 show (which
admittedly, might have been enhanced in the caverns of my mind beyond what the
show really was ;-)), but still an amazing showcase of one of the best musical
talents I have ever seen.  

And now I really should get to work...
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"This is a hoax. To tell the American people they are going to be safer when we
pass this is to hoax.  We ought to tell people the truth." - Sen. Robert Byrd

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