Posts by Ikhnaton

Quote from mpoloukhine

Ikhnaton, any mention by PG at the PS show about the annular solar eclipse of that morning only hours away? Half thought he’d mention it at LA as an up-coming ‘moon club’ mid-cycle event.

(btw drove 8hrs over night straight from the LA show with my daughter to see totality in Utah … truly a celestial event!)

He didn't mention it, no -- it does seem like it would have been on brand, but it didn't come up. Maybe if he didn't have people to shout-out who had worked on the technical side of the album.

Glad you got a good view of the eclipse -- that's an awesome couple of days for you and your daughter. Peter would surely approve!

Found video of the two songs already up on YouTube:

(The guy who posted it erroneously says in the captions these are both the "world premieres"...but they are the North American premieres, at least.)

Multiple posts on Reddit saying the same. Looks like they were played in lieu of And Still. (Someone also said So Much was a "stop and re-start it because something went wrong" performance.)

Looks like BillysNumber got more than just the one bonus song he had been hoping for. Congrats! I'm jealous!

Quote from The Hogweed

I like TBWS a lot, no idea why Gabriel fans don’t like this (in general)

My guess is that you weren't a fan when the album release was happening and TBWS was the first single. Or you were and have a strong streak of not caring what other people think. Because...Peter was coming back with a new album after ten years away (I know there was OVO and other soundtrack work, but for most people they were tuning back in after Us), looking like he aged 30 years, and leading with a single that in 2002 felt like it was at least five years out of date. It felt like a letdown, and was something that mild or non fans commented on incessantly.

Looking back, the song is better than I gave it credit for -- from 2023, the difference between a 2002 song and the late 90s peak of daytime talk shows feels negligible. Still, it feels out of place on the album, a clear attempt to have a single in the Gabe-funk mold of Sledgehammer, Steam, and Kiss That Frog. If the album had Burn You Up, Burn You Down instead, and either that or More Than This had been the lead single, I think Up would have gotten a warmer reception in the moment.

All that said: my selections were Signal To Noise, Darkness, and More Than This...since it shoulda been that first single and a concert mainstay.

That's great that they shot the Palm Springs show too -- I guess that better answers the question of how they'll cover for the Don't Give Up flub in L.A. Maybe The Tower That Ate People will be included in the film as well.

Went to both SoCal shows. Had 300-level seats at the Forum, which had good band sight lines but blocked off some of the visuals. The sound was also a little shrill in the high end when songs got loud and brassy. And the people around us were a total nightmare -- behind us people talked the entire time (at first I thought it was just because they didn't know the songs, but they talked through the hits too) and a dude in front of us never put his phone down. He either scrolled through Facebook and texted during songs he didn't know or filmed songs he did know while dancing.

BUT...even with all that, the show was incredible. Having been fortunate enough to catch a show while visiting family in Amsterdam this summer, it wasn't my first experience. But I think Peter has really found his footing with the new tracks. Maybe it was just the one show, but his vocals weren't as powerful in Amsterdam on the new stuff...but rang out brilliantly on the older songs. Now, he is confident and strong on all the tracks, old and new. It's really remarkable how great he still is at 73. And the band is, of course, killer.

Palm Springs was in a much smaller venue -- 11k total capacity, though I think they sectioned off the top thousand or so seats due to slower ticket sales...but that worked, because the rest felt 90-95% full. We had better seats, at the front row of the 100-level section directly facing the stage (but with clearance of the cameras above the mixing desk). The visual artistry really bowled me over this night, and the sound mix was much better. (Again, maybe that was my seat and not everyone's experience.)

When the band came out for the encore and the beat to In Your Eyes hadn't started, I had a suspicion something was up. Part of me had been hoping they would have dug out and rehearsed San Jacinto, since the venue is practically at the foot of the titular mountain. But, without any spoken intro, they broke into the riff of The Tower That Ate People...and it freaking ripped, man. This band KILLS it on the song -- the strings and trumpet add so much, and Manu is such a great drummer for it. I really hope the tour continues for another leg or two later next year and that this song ends up staying in the set.

Quote from mpoloukhine

At the show, steady cam guy(s) everywhere. Was only one by my memory , but may have been two.

Question: PG flubbed his lines for one part of Don’t Give Up, (on his way back down the stairs) and sat it through until they went back to duet.

Is that part of the act (she implores him the entire time not to give up, after all) or a real flub at LA?

The sitting down and looking despondent is part of the show -- he did it the other two times I saw it, and is on all the videos from other performances. When Ayanna is sicking, he either sits and looks sad or leans on the balcony at the top of the stairs and looks sad.

The lyric flub was, to quote the man himself from past occasions, "a patented Gabriel fuck-up." I think that him going right into a "sit and mope" part of the song got the Forum crowd thinking he was really mad at himself, as they cheered him on after every successive line from Ayanna's next segment. (As I said to my friends afterwards, if you're gonna totally biff a lyric, best to do it right before your duet partner is going to sing ten straight lines about not worrying about the past and that you're great and should believe in yourself.)

Quote from Christian

he messed it up and they didn't restart the song.

This means: If there will be a concert film, it'll be intersting to see how they fix this. Either the track won't be on the film or they repair this fuck up

My guess is he will overdub the verse (as he will with a bunch of other parts of the show, not because they need it but because he's Peter and a perfectionist) and the camera will director will cut to some of the other people on stage while he "sings" that part.

Quote from Christian

Review with a ton of photos and videos

https://www.brooklynvegan.com/…arden-pics-setlist-video/

thanks to Chris Gini

A great review with excellent photos...but someone needs to tell the staff of the site that there is a difference between Brooklyn (the borough of NYC) and Brookline (the town just outside Boston where Tony Levin is actually from).

Sorry, as someone born a few miles from Brookline, I remain proud of Tony as one of our great musicians.

Quote from Zaar

I don't quite understand why they sang Happy Birthday to Jimmy Carter. His Birthday is on 1st October ...? Was he in the audience? Can somebody explain?

I don't know for sure why...but Carter has been in hospice at home for a while now, with the presumption being that he may die at any moment. Perhaps Peter had heard something about his condition that made him want to send that message from the stage now (now being the NYC show) while Jimmy could still see a recording of it? Or maybe someone from Carter's family or office was there at the show and he knew they would be able to get a recording of the moment back to him?

Again, all speculation...but those are my guesses.

If I'm not trying to do a "reimagined" album, I tend to put the b-sides after the record's proper tracklisting. So while I appreciate wanting Fading Lights to be the last thing, I would likely still put Hearts on Fire and On The Shoreline at the end of a playlist.

If you really don't want to do that, but also want to respect the original track listing, I'd suggest putting them in as a break in between the first and second halves of the album -- so in between Dreaming While You Sleep and Tell Me Why. Think of them like a little sorbet between the courses of the album.

I was fortunate enough to see the Amsterdam show at the Ziggo Dome while on vacation this year. (I mean, the vacation was ultimately scheduled around the show, but it was a trip that was happening this summer anyway.)

I'll also be seeing him at his two southern California shows in October: at the Forum in L.A. and the Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert. Very excited to experience the show again!

I have contended for a while that if they re-released this album with no changes to the music or artwork but said it was a 2014 album from an unknown artist from Brooklyn, it would make some waves in the indie rock community.

The stuff that made this record seem cringey when I got to it in the mid to late 90s (I started getting into Genesis family stuff a little after WCD came out) have circled around to being positives: the 80s synth sounds, the production, and Tony's wispy-yet-sincere vocals are all kinda cool now. It is of its time, but that time has been mined repeatedly for the last 15+ years.

I think I like A Curious Feeling more for the lush 70s prog of it all, but I will always have a soft spot for The Fugitive.

Quote from Ben

I didn’t notice that Peter has a « famous lack of mic sense »… in Lille he was just brillant.

Maybe it's only famous amongst my circle of fan friends...but in our view, he tends to get carried away and not always be fully aware of how far away he is from the mic. This was more of an issue back in his Genesis days, when the costumes added another dimension to it -- but I always assumed this was why he spend the 00s and early 10s wearing a headset mic while also singing into a traditional one.

Quote from Zaar

The sound was good (was close to the stage that night) and as always it depends where you sit or stand.
Thanks for your little report. Enjoyable to read!

Very true. We were in the first few rows of the 100-level seats right behind the mixing desk, so we had assumed we had solid sound. And the video for Road to Joy reflects the experience I had. Maybe it's less a technical issue and just performance choices compared to the studio version (which I had binged listened to in the day and a half before the show).

Regardless, I didn't mean to focus on being overly critical. The show was amazing and Peter was in great form. He hasn't lost anything off his fastball, and can't wait to see him again later on the tour.

Quote from Christian

No, the doctors are from Tübingen, Germany and this was clearly not about his wife, which is another story. He talked about himself. That’s something we obviously were not aware of

Wow -- that's scary. Glad he is on the other side of it. (And of course the "like" is for the clarification of information and correcting my assumptions, not about the news of his illness.)

Finally back home in America after a European vacation that happily (he said as if it were a coincidence) lined up with this show in Amsterdam. I absolutely loved it -- just an amazing spectacle from the band and the stage designers. Hearing all those new songs really showed how vibrant and vital Peter's work still is. While of course I have a list a mile long of pre-2023 songs I would have liked to have heard, I think the choice to go with almost all i/o project songs as almost all of the tracks outside the big hits was the right call.

It's funny, as someone who stayed away from setlist spoilers until seeing the show, the opening duo of Washing Of The Water and Growing Up made me think we were going to get a lot of deep-cut live favorites. I would never have imagined at that point that they were to be the only two non-hit older songs. But, again, I loved the choice -- the i/o songs are so strong, he is right to highlight them.

The video in the post before mine I think demonstrates the only real downside to the show: the sound mix felt off most of the night. Peter's vocals were frequently buried in the mix, especially on the newer songs. I can't tell if that's a technical issue, him still learning how to sing the new songs live, or his famous lack of mic sense...but there were times when his voice almost got lost. But then he would get to an old hit with established stage movement/choreography, and his voice would come through and shine. It wasn't a big problem since it all felt a part of the journey of experiencing so many new songs...but it was noteworthy.

Ah, there was one other downside: this was the first show of Marina's absence. I didn't know she was missing, since I hadn't even watched the full video introducing the band -- but it was weird that some of the video screen moments featured another woman who wasn't on stage. Looking after the show, I saw that she had posted to instagram with seeming excitement about arriving in town for the tour...but has disappeared since then. Glad to see in another thread than Don-E confirmed she has had the flu and should be back soon -- not glad she had the flu bad enough to knock her out for ten-plus days, but that it's not anything more serious. Hope she feels better soon!

It was such an honor and privilege to see the show in Europe -- this trip was a long time coming to see family, but was glad to squeeze in the show. Roll on October and the southern California shows!

I thought that it was his wife who was sick, and he took a few years off to help take care of her. Here's a news story from 2018 about her recovery due to technological advances and his advocacy for more people to have access to them.

The doctors mentioned in the article are from Cambridge, MA in the U.S., so perhaps strange they would be at a show in Germany -- still, is there any chance this is what he was referring to at the show?