#182 - 21/05/2023 Milano, Forum [multicam video]

Peter Gabriel
21/05/2023 - Milano, Forum

"Four Kinds Of Horses"

VIDEOS (thanks to:)

Claudia Patrone

iPhonealex66

Joy2050
Roger
Stefano
Tony Faby 91

AUDIO

db-rdwm

EDITING
the intruder

PS: words coming soon ;-)

Happy Birthday Mr. Gabriel!

A Different PoV

And, happy melodist, unwearied, 

         For ever piping songs for ever new; 

More happy love! more happy, happy love! 

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 

                For ever panting, and for ever young; 

 (John Keats, Ode on a Grecian urn)

It all happened over 30 years ago, at the end of the This Way Up Tour. The 12 months between November 1986 and October 1987, when Peter and the band travelled all over Europe and the USA, have already been quite well described on the special book issued on the occasion of the official So album re-release, together with the companion audio and video sets previously known as P.O.V. (you can read about it here).

There is nothing of great significance I could add to what better wordsmiths than I have already said and told. And I don’t feel any need to bore anybody to death with loads and loads of very personal memories: suffice it to say I have witnessed in person 50 of the European tour dates – all that took place bar 6, which I sadly missed being busy with my journalist exams in Milan –, sharing travels, accomodations, stories and experiences with a bunch of fabulous friends all across France, Italy, Germany, UK, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and, finally, Greece.

But to stay with the title of the old VHS release, I wished to briefly add my very own – a fan’s – Point Of View about those last 5 nights, which are some of my most cherished memories, still incredibly alive and vivid in my mind. And in my heart.

First of all, as the website states, The Making Of P.O.V. did happen “over three nights”: to be precise, on Monday the 5^th of October, Tuesday the 6^th and Thursday the 8^th. I saw the first from the front row, but then I decided to tape the remaining two shows and sat a few rows in front of the mixing desk to get perfect sound and views. Those recordings, including a few “Extras” J, make up the first 8 discs (all audio-only) of the whole package that the most avidly oriented fans and collectors can now find on the Genesis Movement Torrent Site .

But from my very own “fan P.O.V.”, the real essence of that week were the 2 special filming nights which happened on Wednesday the 7^th and Friday the 9^th. Nights like no others, that’s for sure (which on the Movement site are also available as dvds).

Doors opened – for free… – at 7.00 pm, and the proceedings started soon after, as soon as the sun was down. The Lycavitos Theatre is situated in the middle of a park on the top of a hill with amazing views of the whole Greek capital and nobody to disturb in the neighborood. This means there was no curfew, and the only “limit” was due to the sun rising again in the morning at about 5.30/6.00 am. All in all, then, the audience was treated to just about 10 hours of “performances”.

During those long hours, since I knew a friend was filming, I had no need to tape or record. I was thus free to stand in the front once more. The stage was quite high and I had to hang onto it most of the time to keep my head above it, and at the end of the night I ended up with an actual piece of the stage in my hands!!

As the following videos clearly testify, it was slow going: some songs had to be repeated to catch different angles with different cameras set-ups, while the usual technical hold ups caused real long waits before everything was ready for every shoot. That’s especially true for the second night, when almost nothing seemed to go according to plan: at the very beginning Peter announced a mini-set of 6 songs to be played back to back, which never materialized because of one single spotlight was not behaving correctly! And it took at least a couple of hours to get it fixed… while the planned setlist was changed, and scrapped, again and again.

But that doesn’t mean the audience had a chance of getting bored!! The pauses between filming were filled up by Peter and the band playing a whole bunch of songs as crowd pleasers, accepting requests, trying out numbers that were not in the usual tour setlist, or improvising a few ‘grooves’ for numbers that would then be performed “for real”.

On to some brief technical notes…

The video wa shot on a Sony Video 8 camera by a close friend. He made frequent pauses in filming, as he only had 3 batteries which should have lasted about one hour each, and all in all I believe he did a fantastic job capturing the best of those 2 nights. Then there was humidity, as those Greek nights were a wet nightmare, rather than a dream! This meant a sudden death for the third battery on the first night, which means he could obviously film but a fraction of what was played: I’d say he managed to cover about 4 hours per night, with the other 5 or 6 sadly unrecorded and unaccounted for.

Because of humidity, the Video 8 cassettes also suffered a lot: most of the problems like stuttering, dropouts, tracking issues, etc., were on the original masters (now sadly lost) which were transferred (at the time) to my VHS copies. I digitized those about 8 years ago, and since I started working on this project in 2010 I have been constantly trying to tweak and improve both audio and video. The many works and re-works, tests and experiments have inflated the *PG ATHENS* folder on my Mac to over 800 GigaBytes! But it was time to put it to rest and accept that, as you will see, the overall final quality is still very far from perfect.. Still, for a 30 years old collection of private tapes I reckon it still makes for a more than pleasurable viewing and listening experience.

I hope you’ll enjoy it…

the.intruder

february 13^th, 2018

#182 (again) - Bologna, Unipol Arena, 21.11.2014

By "popular" demand, here's No Self Control from my favourite show on the tour...

#182 - Bologna, Unipol Arena, 21.11.2014

Though not at the top of his voice – Torino the day before was pretty bad, and it evidently got even worse with the cancellation of the Lyon date –, but what a wonderful and amazing show Bologna was!

Proof, in case anybody is still searching for one, that a great concert can only stem from a great artist AND a great audience.

And coincidentally or not, there was "another Gabriel" in the audience that night, whom besides making his father proud I'm pretty sure helped the general mood too ;-)

- - - - -

BOLOGNA
UNIPOL ARENA
21.11.2014

Setlist
What Lies Ahead
Come Talk to Me
Shock the Monkey
Family Snapshot
Digging in the Dirt
Secret World
The Family and the Fishing Net
No Self Control
Solsbury Hill
Why Don't You Show Yourself
Red Rain
Sledgehammer
Don't Give Up
That Voice Again
Mercy Street
Big Time
We Do What We're Told
This Is the Picture**
In Your Eyes

Encores
The Tower That Ate People
Biko

#180 - Munchen, Olympiahalle, 30.04.2014

Digging In The Dirt



The Family And The Fishing Net



Though the videos have been on my YouTube channel since May, I never had the time to finish a proper write up of the show, so this was post-poned at least a dozen times...
Now, after 2 further show in Torino and Bologna, it's finally time to let go and forget about it, with a view to a few more complete musings on the whole tour after the last show in Dublin will be over (by the way, if anybody does have standing tickets for that date please, please get in touch!)

- - - - -

MÜNCHEN
OLYMPIAHALLE
APRIL 30th, 2014


Setlist
OBUT [Daddy Long Legs]
Come Talk To Me
Shock The Monkey
Family Snapshot
Digging In The Dirt
Secret World
The Family And The Fishing Net
No Self Control
Solsbury Hill
Why Don't You Show Yourself
Red Rain
Sledgehammer
Don't Give Up
That Voice Again
Mercy Street
Big Time
We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)
This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)
In Your Eyes

Encores
The Tower That Ate People
Biko

#176 Munchen, Olympiahalle, 2.5.2012

# 71/72/73+174/175 – Another P.O.V.

SO... Here's just a little taster, call it teaser if you want, of quite an ambitious project. Not time to give any details yet: watch this space and all will soon(ish) be revealed :-)

International Day Of Peace 1986

The United Nations' International Day of Peace is a global observance and not a public holiday. It is a day when nations around the world are invited to honor a cessation of hostilities during the day.
A UN resolution established the International Day of Peace in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the UN General Assembly. The first Peace Day was celebrated in 1982 and was held on the third Tuesday of September each year until 2002, when September 21 became the permanent date for the International Day of Peace. The assembly decided in 2001 that the International Day of Peace should be annually observed on September 21 starting from 2002. By setting a fixed date for the International Day of Peace, the assembly declared that the day should be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence.
By creating the International Day of Peace, the UN devoted itself to worldwide peace and encouraged people to work in cooperation for this goal. Since its inception, Peace Day has marked personal and planetary progress toward peace. It has grown to include millions of people worldwide and many events are organized each year to commemorate and celebrate this day.
(For further information: http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/)

VIDEO BACKGROUND
This came to me through a great friend, Marco L., whom I haven't seen for a long long time (except for a very brief meet up at the last PG show in Verona, in 2010). We probably first met in the late 80's, when we were both active fanzine makers (he with Wonderous Stories, I with Paperlate), but we did get on even more friendly terms in the summer of 1995, when Secret World, the band he was playing keyboards in (which as the name implies was a Gabriel cover band), played in Bologna for a PG Tribute event I was asked to organize and which turned out to be a great success for all involved with about 800 people showing up in the middle of a July week…

We met a few times afterwards: on one occasion, when I was in Rome for something else, we did go for a pizza one night and he handed me 2 VHS tapes telling me - but here my memory could be mistaken - he had come across the guy who filmed the stuff by absolute chance...
For a few years I did not know what exactly to do with them: they were NTSC and the cost of professionally transferring them would have been too steep; also, the only thing I knew was that they were filmed during the 1986 UN show, of which I already had a PAL transfer. I must say I thought it was strange that these were 2 tapes, when one would have sufficed for the barely 30 minutes set, but I simply guessed the rest would be fillers from US Tv or things like that.

I only managed to finally see and transfer the tapes to a S•VHS PAL copy around the year 2000, and boy was I surprised!! Not only the footage from the day of show was far better than the amateur shoot, it was also done from on stage rather than from the audience point of view, and it included all sorts of interesting and amusing bits and pieces from the day (check out the nutter chapter or the dove incident…).
Then, obviously, there are the rehearsals, of which the above is an extract…
While there is in fact nothing really "new" or "unexpected" in this footage, nonetheless I believe that having a chance to "sneak in" on a such an occasion, even if just for one hour, is something quite unique. As unique is the band gathered for the occasion (as you cn see from the musicians listed below). It appears from some of the musicians' different clothes that the rehearsals happened over a couple of days, so the date is actually just a guesstimate on my side.
Finally, this seems to fit in quite well with the theme of the (belated) 25th SO anniversary celebrations…

So: here's to you, Marco! With many thanks to your friendship and kindness in letting me have this all those years ago. I hope to get in touch again and share a few memories & beers whenever the chance arises!



the intruder (2012)


- - - - - - -


Peter Gabriel - International Day Of Peace 1986 (rehearsals & show)
14th/15th September, New York, Unknown studio
16th September, UN Building

STARRING
Peter Gabriel - voice, keyboards
Little Steven - guitar, voice

SPECIAL GUEST
Youssou N'Dour - voice

FEATURING
Darryl Jones - bass
Omar Hakim - drums
David Sancious - keyboards
L.Shankar - voice, violin
David Beal - percussion

ALSO APPEARING
Barry Roberts (University For Peace, Costa Rica)
Dave Stallbaumer (PG technician & stage manager)
Assorted politicians, authorities, personalities and international musicians

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DISC 1 - STUDIO REHEARSALS
Chapter 1 - Talking before the start (PG, BR, LS & DS)
Chapter 2 - In Your Eyes (Take I - PG on keyb)
Chapter 3 - In Your Eyes (Take II - PG on keyb)
Chapter 4 - In Your Eyes (Chorus rehearsal)
Chapter 5 - waiting and listening to a tape
Chapter 6 - In Your Eyes (Take III - PG standing)
Chapter 7 - In Your Eyes (Take IV - final part only)
Chapter 8 - In Your Eyes (Take V - PG standing)
Chapter 9 - Biko (cut)
Chapter 10 - Barry Roberts speech rehearsal & debate
Chapter 11 - Sun City

DISC 2 - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE CONCERT
Chapter 1 - Crowd, stage and Barry Roberts declaration
Chapter 2 - A lady's speech and the "Dove Mishap"
Chapter 3 - Musicians interviews
Chapter 4 - International musicians performances (I)
Chapter 5 - International musicians performances (II)
Chapter 6 - "Nutter alert" (a Genesis fan) and backstage shots
Chapter 7 - PG gets on stage and speaks of the day
Chapter 8 - Red Rain
Chapter 9 - In Your Eyes
Chapter 10 - Biko
Chapter 11 - Sun City

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

FULL LINEAGE
Unknown format master (I suspect U-matic) --> VHS (NTSC) --> S•VHS (PAL) --> Panasonic NV-HS1000 --> Canopus ADVC-100 --> iMac (iMovie/Compressor/Toast) --> dvd files (torrent)

If the YouTube sample above as whetted your appetite, head on to the Genesis Movement Torrent website to download the full 2 hours video in dvd format...

#94 - Marino (Roma), Palaghiaccio, 18.5.1993

I chose this specific track to upload as the Secret World Live official dvd is getting a second release in July. Apparently, this will correct and improve the awful digitization job that characterized the first issue, and will also restore the track Red Rain to its original place in the setlist: although it appeared on the cd, it was nowhere to be found in the original VHS release and it the subsequent dvd.
Unfortunately, none of the official releases featured - or will feature - the show finale, which could be very different from date to date.

Here, from the same tour but from the earlier leg, is a brilliant and emotional version of Here Comes The Flood filmed in Rome, or to be more precise in Marino, at the Palaghiaccio, on May 18th, 1993.

I think the smile on Peter's face all through the song says it all about what a great show that had been!
Also, a fun thing to notice is how Peter used to only sing the first half of Flood and let it hang out there... But check the video at 2'50": although the song was virtually finished another smile and another chord bring it to its 'natural' completion :-)

#177 - Stuttgart, SchleyerHalle, 11.05.2012

#176 Munchen, Olympiahalle, 2.5.2012

Another year, another show. This is in itself amazing!
We're talking PG here, the man that used to tour once or twice per decade at the most!
Not complaining, though... :-)

The show in Munich was the first in a new series of New Blood dates across Germany, and as all 'firsts' it had is highs and lows (though mostly highs), which is especially true when you are dealing with a full orchestra where only a handful are 'stable' musicians and the rest keep varying. I'm sure that in the ten days between now and Stuttgart (which I hope will be my next show...) the amalgam of the players will have vastly improved, making it all tighter and without the few 'loose ends' that one could notice in Munich.
Again, that is not to say that the show was anything less than great!

Peter's voice sounded relaxed and in good shape. Tom Crowley keeps doing an amazing job on piano (but so do all the others on their respective instruments!).
Melanie was back and she was accompanied by a new (to me) second vocalist, Rosie Doonan, with a great stage presence and very good voice.

Setlist-wise, we were treated to a couple of 'newish' songs: Secret World and Father Son. I know the former has been played only occasionally before (mostly in the US), and can't remember wether the latter ever was on the last tour. Both showed signs of absolute brilliancy, but they did not sound fully matured, and I expect them to improve daily till they reach perfection. Once in Stuttgart, of course... ;-)

Setlist

Heroes
Wallflower
Apres Moi
Intruder
San Jacinto
Secret World
Father Son
Signal To Noise
Downside Up
Digging in the Dirt
Mercy Street
The Rhythm Of The Heat 
Red Rain
Solsbury Hill
Biko

In Your Eyes
Don’t Give Up
The Nest That Sailed The Sky

#113 Paris, Bercy, 24.11.1993

I know, I know, it's been long time since the last post but as mentioned below the "success" of the In Your Eyes clip, now past the 170.000 mark, has really surprised me and left me undecided on how to put up something equally interesting.
I am currently working on a "slightly different" project, but it will take a while to finish it, so I thought I'd post something anyway and chose this clip from the penultimate show of 1993.

Besides Italy (and Glasgow, especially in the 80s...), the Parisian audiences have always been fantastic. That night in Bercy was no exception: my only regret is that the footage does not come from the following night performance, at the Zenith, where all sorts of (fun) things happened above and below the stage!

WowTube!

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)...

#130 Milano, Alcatraz, 16.9.2002

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.

San Jacinto@Hammersmith (multicam edit)

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.

In Your Eyes@Hammersmith (multicam edit)

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...

Downside Up@Hammersmith (24)

The Power Of The Heart@Hammersmith (23)

Washing Of The Water@Hammersmith (24)

Here's a song from the second night...

Darkness@Hammersmith Odeon (23)

More to come on the 2 London shows during the weekend...
Stay tuned!