PETER GABRIEL : SUMMER 2003 - 07.01.03 COLUMBUS, OH

 

Disc One (64:42)

  1. Red Rain
  2. More Than This
  3. Secret World
  4. Games Without Frontiers
  5. Mercy Street
  6. Darkness
  7. Digging In The Dirt
  8. Don't Give Up (with Melanie Gabriel)
  9. The Tower That Ate People

Disc Two (73:58)

  1. Growing Up
  2. Animal Nation
  3. Solsbury Hill
  4. Sledgehammer
  5. Signal To Noise
  6. In Your Eyes
  7. Shock The Monkey
  8. Father, Son

Label : Real World Records

Venue : Germain Amphitheatre, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Recording Date : July 1, 2003

Quality : Soundboard recording (A+)

Review : Professionaly recorded show during Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live Tour. The first part of the tour was a bit chaotic, with many shows moved or cancelled. After all, it was the first time in ten years that Gabriel went on tour again, his band was largely new and the show itself was quite sophisticated. Warm-up performances were changed at short notice and the tour start itself was postponed. Later on things would settle down, except for the final show of the tour, which took place in Kaiserslautern, Germany, instead of in the south of France because Gabriel decided to make up for the original date he had to cancel due to illness. Later on there were periods where he played without the round stage and with a smaller stage show. The final leg of the tours consisted of festival gigs, mainly open air and with a small stage show.

Concert Review (Guitar Noise) : Over the years I had more or less lost track of Peter Gabriel’s career. In the 70s I had been a diehard Genesis fan who lost interest in their music as it became more commercially successful and left its innovative head music origins. In fact, I can still recall my sense of disappointment when I saw Genesis immediately after Trick of the Tail had been released and Gabriel had left the band (although I have to say I was delighted at hearing how well Phil Collins’ voice suited their music and getting to see Bill Bruford sit in with Collins on drums). To my mind though, over the course of the years, Peter Gabriel’s songs have remained much truer to the original spirit of Genesis – charting new territory in terms of rhythms and integrating musical influences from other parts of the globe. So I approached the concert on July 1, 2003 at Germain Amphitheatre in Columbus, Ohio with a good deal of curiosity. I looked forward to hearing, I hoped, some classic Gabriel from the earlier albums and to becoming acquainted with some newer material – especially from the recent album Up – and his current band. The opening act, Sevara Nazarkhan, immediately demonstrated that Gabriel’s commitment to world music and its influences is unflagging. She and her band opened the concert with a fascinating set of Uzbeki music that truly rocked the house. Their music consisted of tradition Middle Eastern vocal stylings from Sevara (Uzbek music is apparently closely related to Turkish music) set very often to a hard-rocking background from a band consisting of keyboards, drum kit, bass, and doutar. The doutar is also in the lute family of instruments, as is the guitar, but is a two stringed instrument which can be alternately plucked, tapped, or played with a bow (suggesting perhaps yet another influence on Jimmy Page’s Dazed and Confused?). Their music demonstrated an incredible synthesis of rock and traditional Uzbek music that succeeds wonderfully and largely, I suspect, because of the folk traditions common to both. The blues is the blues, whether sung in the hauntingly ethereal tones of traditional central Asian vocals or in the plaintive growl of the Mississippi Delta. Gabriel and his band followed Sevara with an incredible set. The set list, including the encore, spanned Gabriel’s career from the first solo album to his most recent and included selections from music he has composed and performed for films. Accompanied by Ged Lynch on drums, David Rhodes on guitar, Rachel Z on keyboards, Richard Evans on a variety of instruments from acoustic guitar to mandolin, Melanie Gabriel singing background vocals and Tony Levin on bass and stick, Gabriel’s performance of these songs was flawless. One of the concert’s highlights was the duet between father and daughter on Don’t Give Up. Gabriel was clearly delighted to share the limelight with Melanie. Hearing Gabriel and the band perform standards like Games Without Frontiers, In Your Eyes, and Sledgehammer was exciting. When they performed Solsbury Hill, Levin, Rhodes, Melanie Gabriel and Evans followed Gabriel as he skipped through the audience (“they’ve come to take me home”). This song that suggests that we are all truly nobler than the mundane routines of our lives allow, is infectious; and having the chance to see the band skip by three feet away makes it even more so. But the new material was equally captivating and explored soundscapes very reminiscent of the early King Crimson (especially Darkness) and incorporating rhythmic structures far more complex than is typically heard in today’s popular music. This, of course, suggests the synergy of the collaboration between Peter Gabriel and Tony Levin. There are few bass players who play with the sheer energy and heart pounding pulse of Tony Levin. (You can read the Guitar Noise interview with him here.) His work with Gabriel’s band is phenomenal. And the audience both knew and appreciated it and honored his bass playing with thunderous applause. Levin lays down complex bass lines that carry Gabriel’s music into exciting places. To my mind, the rest of the band moves in and out of the sounds woven by Gabriel and Levin. And Gabriel continues to write songs that aim to open new horizons both musically and lyrically – it is music with a conscience. During his performance of The Tower that Ate People, a giant ball descended and enclosed him, sealing him hermetically away from the band and the audience. (Frankly, if you’ve ever seen a gerbil in a gerbil ball, you’ve got the picture). The song suggests that the more human beings seek to protect themselves and grow concerned with security, the more they become the prisoners of their attempts to protect themselves and their possessions. Animal Nation (from the film The Wild Thornberrys) is, in the tradition of Shock the Monkey, a call to value the lives of the other animals with whom we share this world. Toward the end of the concert, Gabriel performed Signal to Noise from the new album. He prefaced it with an exhortation for people to be involved in understanding that we share a global village and to let their voices be heard if they disagreed with the government’s current foreign policy. A number of people left the amphitheatre. I must admit their exit baffled me. Not very long ago they had been standing, dancing, and singing to Gabriel’s Games Without Frontiers – a song whose lyrics condemn political aggression and plead for peaceful cooperation around the globe. I thought it a pity they left. They missed a rousing encore that included a rocking rendition of Shock the Monkey and a tender lyrical ballad Gabriel wrote to his adult son after they had shared some peaceful, quiet moments during a stay in the wilds. Gabriel is clearly still a major creative force with a band that you’ve simply got to hear. And you can: recordings of the concert are available from the Encore Series offered at www.themusic.com. Check it out.