Stirred by yesterday's reflections, here's some recycled stuff from way back, when I had just started the now defunct Intruder website... Here goes a review (written much, much later than the original show date, about 20 years) of my 2nd ever PG show, on its 30th anniversary.
This was only my second PG show ever, and I'd arrived in Florence the night before (spending the night with my sleeping bag behind a hidden wall of the Santa Maria Novella station). The wait began at about 10/11 o'clock in the morning under quite a hot sun. The gig was to take place in a field called Prato delle Cornacchie within the Parco delle Cascine - which I later learned was the most famous area for prostitution in town...!
Unfortunately, with a backpack and a couple bags of with water, sandwiches (not to mention a very large Marantz portable tape recorder with two separate microphones), somebody pushed me or I stumbled on a rock or something, and by the time I had stepped up again and made my run the first dozen rows were all taken... I kept telling me that the place I got was ok for taping and I knew I had two more days to come, but still something was biting my leg all the time.
Support act were the very young Simple Minds, which at the time - they had their third album out "Empires and dance" - were in really excellent shape. Unfortunately almost nobody knew who they were, and even less people had been informed of a support act at all: the result were boohoos and whistles and bottles thrown towards the stage that still make me blush with shame remembering it. I was one of the uninitiated, but Jim Kerr's magnetism and the hypnotic rhythm and cadence of "Capital City" cast a spell and I was "in love" for at least a decade afterwards...
Though it was only my second Gabriel show, I had by then started reading UK music magazines such as Melody Maker or NME every week, and corresponding with people all over the world: thus I already knew (or thought I knew) what was going to come. Of course, though, the feeling must have been quite different from the journey of discovery during the Uk February tour that same year!
Peter tried to begin walking from the audience as in the British theaters, but since the crowd was packed too tight and swaying madly, after about ten minutes (possibly one of the longest Intruder loops ever - together with Torino - but see below for a different story) he and the musicians gave up and simply walked on stage from the sides... I won't go into a song by song detailed review here (got an other 120 or so articles to write!) but after almost twenty years I still remember clearly three exceptionally impressive moments of that show.
First of all the crowd wouldn't hold still for the first 30-40 minutes or so, and since those at the front would not sit down those at the back kept throwing bottles, cans, bags and even sandwiches or whatever in front of them: on my tape, during Milgram's 37, one can actually hear a very clear "sdeng!" of a coke can hitting my head... I didn't utter a word fearing I'd spoil the tape, but it was useless 'cos of all the commotion from those around me searching for water and bandages to medicate me (there was no need to, luckily).
More to the point, musically, an absolutely amazing moment was the extended and improvised finale to Lead A Normal Life: the crowd just started clapping rhythmically (God knows why you should clap during a very quiet and fading piano riff, but there you have it: Italian audiences!!!). Peter and the rest of the band took up this rhythm and began jamming for a minute or two, while Jerry Marotta kept Moribund's beat and they all went into that song.
Finally, a really brilliant version of I go Swimming: maybe because at the time it was an almost completely unheard of song, but that early arrangement and the shouted out loud "gabrielese" was so full of energy that it remains to this day one of my favorite executions ever (1982/3 versions were much too lame and subdued in comparison), together with the one from two days later (which you'll find on these pages in due time...).
Setlist
Intruder
The Start
I Don't Remember
Solsbury Hill
Family Snapshot
Milgram's 37
Modern Love
Not One Of Us
Lead A Normal Life
Moribund The Burgermeister
Mother Of Violence
Humdrum
Games Without Frontiers
And Through The Wire
I Go Swimming
Biko
Here Comes The Flood
(This review was originally posted about 10 years ago on my old, old website. The original format is still available here)
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