peter gabriel plays live, sightings in the test area during autumn, china tour 84, playtime 88, this way up, secret world, growing up, still growing up, warm up, new blood, live blood, back to front, conspiracy of hope, human rights now, peter gabriel concerts, peter gabriel performances, peter gabriel videos, peter gabriel reviews, peter gabriel musings
Haven't had time for any new posts or videos recently, but I just want to express how freaked out I am that the In Your Eyes clip as gone over the 100-bleeding-000 views wall on YouTube.
I'm not on Facebook and I haven't done anything to push it or promote it, so I honestly would have never expected it to get that far.
The release of New Blood has obviously sparked a lot of interest, and besides pg.com and Facebook, the link to my clip has appeared all over the place.
So thanks to all the viewers and to the nearly 500 who 'liked' it.
Like the man himself said (after the amazing impromptu performance of Daara J on Lay Your Hand On me at Womad 2007): "Now follow that!!"
Don't know if I'll make it, but I'll try to put down a few of my thoughts on the Scratch My Back/New Blood albums and tours soon(ish)...
Don't have much time to write a proper review/memory of the gig, but here's a clip of Sledgehammer from the first of 2 "interesting & unusual" - but always excellent! - shows in Milan, at the small(ish) Alcatraz club.
The shows came out of the blue, were announced - and sold out in a matter of hours - even before the new album Up was out. (Incidentally, it's funny to think that it is STILL his latest 'normal' studio album :-).
The "newness" of it all was actually very evident from every point of view: the material performed, the presentation and the band's "tightness".
It was probably only the 4th or 5th show with a group of musicians which included the usual suspects (Tony Levin and David Rhodes) and a bunch of newcomers (Richard Evans, Ged Lynch, Rachel Z, Melanie) who did in fact become 'the' PG band for the next 10 years (with the single exception of Rachel, whose place was later taken by Angie Pollock).
Over the 2 shows Peter played almost every track on Up, and the accent was definitely more on the musical than the visual side.
Peter was wearing some weird looking monitoring headphones (instead of the in ear system favoured today), and looked like he had forgotten what to do on a stage... After all his last proper bit of touring went back to 8 years before, for the Secret World shows. Amazingly, the clip shown here is one of the only 3 moments during the concert that he left his position behind the piano and moved to the front of the stage to interact with the audience (the other two being the finale of Growing Up and the encore of In Your Eyes).
A final note to mention that the sound comes once again from an excellent recording by the Digital Brothers.
Here's the second multicam song.
Again, sound comes from the Digital Brothers tape from the night of the 24th (freely available on the genesis movement torrent site), while images are from both the 23rd and 24th.
Besides my own footage, I also used some by YouTube users silentbobpc and radiosjohn. The title sequence once again features funkymanT's cells animation sequence.
At last, here's the first in my intended series of edits form the New Blood shows I attended. To experiment, I chose the last song from the second night at Hammersmith, earlier this year, which features (as always) arranger extraordinaire John Metcalfe conducting the New Blood Orchestra, and an inspired performance from Sevara.
Sound comes from the soon to be legendary Digital Brothers tape from the night of the 24th (freely available on the genesis movement torrentsite).
Footage comes from 4 different video sources: YouTube users' goldmosh (from the 24th) and alistairburns (from the 23rd), and my own shots from both the 23rd and 24th.
Thanks to the click giving all musicians on stage their cues, syncing audio and video from different nights wasn't really hard at all... Continuity, on the other hand, sometimes is obviously far from perfect.
Finally, the title sequence has been done using YouTube user funkymanT's animation sequence.
Hope you'll enjoy it, but please do let me know what you think anyway...
