C/D Peter Gabriel - So

Classic album tho and v. quintessentially 80s -- Gabriel, U2, and Sting were gonna save us from Reagan.

WHAT the FUCK!?!!

Upon reflection, however, even with a few admittedly classic singles, a lot of the songs on So leaned heavily on the state-o'-the-art production. And even that didn't hold a glow stick to any one of Trevor Horn's.

My disc ends with "We Do What We're Told," but then my disc is twelve inches wide. (How's that for big time?)

I say classic - mainly for "Mercy Street," but I still enjoy the whole album. And it's a spring album for me, so I should give it its yearly spin quite soon.

As for the album, I like every single song on it—even played-out standards like "Sledgehammer" and "In Your Eyes." Hard to believe it turns 18 years old this year.

This was my favourite album when I was 13 and 14. I used to hope a book would come out called 'So: The Answers', in which Peter Gabriel would reveal what all the songs were about. That is the most embarrassing thing I have ever revealed on ILX.

"This Is the Picture" was better as a Laurie Anderson song. (Although I haven't heard either version since 1986, so I may be wrong.)

The rest of the record is mediocre compared to other PG works.

It's great when you read something on ILM and think, "Man, I just totally agree w that" only to realize you said it.

I dunno. There's something about Gabriel that's extremely...juvenile. I'm not sure how else to put it. Like almost everyone else, this really appealed to me when I was 16. But upon reflection, his lyrics are sophomoric, not profound, his productions flashy, not sophisticated, his hooks obvious, not irresistable.

Maybe it's just music for sixteen year-olds.

Yes and no. "Mercy Street" appealed to the 15-y-old me because the music -- spare but pulsing -- and lyrics suggested something mysterious, just out of reach. This, "That Voice Again" (that odd guitar hook!), and "Excellent Birds" are the heart of the album.

This thread proves once again that on ILM there's a very thin line between cool and simply insane. Classic beyond belief, if not his best. In retrospect, this album's crossover success strikes me as very weird.

I came across a version of Red Rain live that featured Peter Gabriel, REM and Natalie Merchant. Granted, it was a slowed down acoustic version, but I laughed out loud. I mean who the hell decided that was a good idea? The THREE of them singing together??

"sledgehammer" and its video are wicked, also that "big time" tune is slammin'. i love the way they are totally overblown.

I'm stuck somewhere between rogermexico and Naive Teen Idol: it's probably his best, occasionally reductive, often overstated, works best when you're 16, still love "Mercy Street" and the singles.

ESPN Classic used "Don't Give Up" for their documentary on Muhammad Ali (in the segment dealing with his brain damage/Parkinson's), and it was absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful. So, yeah, that song is awesome, and I don't get the hate for it.

I just got Us a couple of weeks ago, never bought it despite owning everything from So & before, and it has about 4 really good songs.

But you revived a So thread to tell us? That's sad. "So" is like...eternal, whereas I don't remember a damn thing about Us.

Not trying to hate on you personally Mark, I've enjoyed your posts many a time in the past.

I wasn't sure this warranted its own thread, didn't see one, and it's certainly in the vein of So, so...

hahaha wonderful. Which songs are the 4 that you like?

"Blood of Eden"
"Digging in the Dirt"
"Come Talk to Me"

are all very good, anyway. I'd forgotten how much he could do with his voice then.

had you not heard (some of) these on the various Gabriel hits comps?

"Us" is excellent. Damn excellent. I may rank "So" slightly ahead of it (and the melt face one slightly about that one again), but "Us" is also absolutely gorgeous. Even though it wears a bit thin towards the end. "Blood Of Eden" and "Love To Be Loved" are both among his best ever moments.

I've become really fond of Gabriel's work in recent years. "That Voice Again" is an awesome song. I find his later stuff so sad, somehow.

How much later? A good bit of all of his stuff is *supposed* to be sad.

Also, gotta side with Geir on everything. Melty face is the best, But Us has more than four good songs. It's a darn fine record.

Well the stuff like So, Us and Up, I guess. It's just his voice and the melodies he chooses I think.

Oh, yeah, I see. I thought you meant sad like "Sad old man, stop making records, please." His last couple give me that kind of sad. :(

I never had a hits comp, but I did hear "Blood" and "Digging" around, just forgot how good they were. As good as anything on So. In my mind, I thought he was done after So but I was wrong.

"Up" was also an excellent album. No obvious hit singles, but lots of really strong songs.

You know that one part in the Big Time video where Peter's head is attached to a little tiny body and he's talking about how he lives in a small town who think small and use small words... and then he all of a sudden turns into a gigantic Eye of Providence pyramid and sings "But not ME!! I'M SMARTER THAN THAT!!"?

That part rocks.

where is his new album? i'm looking forward to it.

new one is a collaboration with karl wallinger and others called 'big blue ball' and doesn't sound promising. I was a huge fan of gabriels until Ovo which I just find unlistenable; I like most of Up though.

(oh and it comes out next month)

Gabriel's solo albums are always at their best when they are ordinary solo albums, credited to himself on his own, and not "projects" that involve lots of other people and differ considerably from his usual style.

Just fuck me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIp7t3v0jgE

I want all the fans of Gabriel era Genesis to see that. All the fans of his earlier deal.

Oh god honey, he's my one and only. He's the one and only thing that makes me happy.

liked the little intro

"Here Comes The Flood" is undeniably a marvellous song. May work better in the version on Robert Fripp's "Exposure", but both versions are great anyway.

No, I prefer this sparser version.

That intro is so weird. Gnomish dude is Kate's brother, apparently.

Just watched the videos for "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer" to see if they were as awesome as I remember, and they were. Maybe more.

I had no idea who Peter Gabriel was when these songs came out (I was 12), and I thought he was basically Pee Wee Herman without the weird voice, but I also loved his rabbit teeth. This was like food for little weirdos.

HI THERE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0FBi5Rv1ho

CHICKENS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tTN-b5KHg&feature=related

Classic, esp the dancing chickens.

might be my fav Gabriel album. love "Don't Give Up", "Mercy Street", the obv singles, hell I love it all.

Mine too.

Forgotten fact: "Sledgehammer" vid is courtesy Nick Park, later of "Wallace & Gromit" fame.

"So" is among my favorite kind of record, an album that's equally radical and popular, so much so that its radical impulses all but disappeared as its advances and ideas were assimilated into the mainstream. Some good stories about the making of this album in Lanois's recent memoir. Like, essentially it was pretty much made as a trio of Gabriel, Rhodes and maybe Lanois himself, with Levin and Katche (and Copeland) overdubbed after the fact. Another story of Lanois' locking Gabriel in a barn to finish writing lyrics (and specifically to keep him off the phone). And that the incredible loping bass line of "Don't Give Up" was mostly Levin mimicking the cadences of the drum machine program Gabriel had used on the demo but which didn't make it onto the final version.

It's not often mentioned what a remarkable keyboardist/programmer Gabriel is.

How's the memoir?

love this album

Forgotten fact: "Sledgehammer" vid is courtesy Nick Park, later of "Wallace & Gromit" fame.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, May 9, 2011 9:50 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, he worked on it (specifically, dancing chickens scene) but afaik he doesn't deserve as much credit for it as Stephen R. Johnson or the Brothers Quay

xpost It's not very good, to be honest. The artists (and albums) he's working on throughout are generally of such a high caliber that he's very careful how many secrets he spills. I suppose the best bits are learning about his hardscrabble upbringing, the happenstance stuff that led him to Eno (or actually vice versa; also, some of his and Eno's tandem experiments sound really neat, like as a lark walking through a Moroccan market separately for 20 minutes with tape recorders, then syncing the playback up in surround sound to totally recreate that vibrant multi-dimemsional sonic environment in a studio setting) and his total fan-boy love of his heroes. That said, I think I read it in an afternoon, and deserved about as much time.

It is, I guess, interesting how much Lanois' own guitar playing has helped direct a lot of the albums he's recorded, especially U2's "Achtung Baby" and beyond and the two Dylan records. Every once in a while he tips his hand as to who's playing what, and his contributions are sometimes major.

One of my favorite ILM threads, with many good anecdotes about what it was like to hear So for the first time in the summer of '86.

The BIG TIME Peter Gabriel "So" Poll

It's not often mentioned what a remarkable keyboardist/programmer Gabriel is.

he's often one of the first names that come up when people talk about the Fairlight, so. he def gets his props from synth heads at least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON8lVgJxMQA

Still don't like this album with 'In Your Eyes" as the closer. Ending with "This is the Picture" gave it a whole different shading that I prefer, with "In Your Eyes" nestled in the middle.

BTW, anyone else remember when Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno were going to design and build an interactive theme park in Spain? I seem to recall it got pretty far before interests faded.

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/realworld-txt.html

That clip above reminds me of all the bits in the Depeche Mode reissue docs of the band mucking about with an Emulator. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnnFTh6odoM

(Ha, per Wiki, " Fairlight became such a prominent part of 1980s pop music that Phil Collins included the text "there is no Fairlight on this record" on the sleeve of No Jacket Required." Ironically, No Jacket Requires does include Peter Gabriel.)

It also contained a lot of DX7, which, which its "harsh" sounds, effectively sounded a lot like a Fairlight.

I suppose, when he said it didn't include any Fairlight, that also meant it didn't include any Emulators. Otherwise it would have been a bit of a fluke.

i stopped by my dad's house today and this album was on the stereo <3 <3 <3

Collins loved those DX-7 and Prophet sounds.

HI THERE

SO MUCH STUFF I WILL OWN

Collins loved those DX-7 and Prophet sounds.

The Prophet 5 was a classic analogue synth, which sounded like synths had always used to sound. The DX-7 was decidedly very different, with very harsh, metallic sounds, plus the fact that it was very hard to program meant a lot of the same factory sounds would be re-used a zillion times.

laurie anderson "excellent birds" vs. peter gabriel "this is the picture"

also what other sick b-sides from this album do you recommend

"Don't Break This Rhythm"!

yeah all the b-sides for this are great, very odd

curtains is excellent, one of my favorite gabriel songs. don't break this rhythm was a b-side from this but I think it predated the album by a few years, across the river....this was on the big time cd single (one of them), also earlier than the album, I"m pretty certain (it was on some amnesty comp earlier)

don't break this rhythm was a b-side from this but I think it predated the album by a few years,

really? Sure you don't mean "Walk Through The Fire"?

DX-7 was long Eno's synth of choice, too. He was renown for being one of the few patient enough to master its time-consuming interface.

I would say the synth I think of when I hear Eno's name is the VCS3, but that was in the 70s of course.

So was my first exposure to Peter Gabriel (though I may have heard Shock the Monkey or something prior w/o realizing who'd done it). I didn't know any history on him at the time. Just thought he was this cool old guy who was making kinda square but also kinda epic music that had accompanying weirdo videos.

The reason I italicized old guy is because when So was released, Gabriel was a year younger than I am now.

yeah i remember being a kid and probably on some level realizing PG was my dad's age (almost exactly) and didn't dress very cool but had awesome music and awesome videos. the end of the "Sledgehammer" video almost seemed to be playing off his squareness, with his stiff dancing in a suit among the black backup singers at the end and all that.

^^^ what these last two fellas said

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dprvb/hd/Classic_Albums_Peter_Gabriels_So/

WATCH
THIS

xpost It's not very good, to be honest. The artists (and albums) he's working on throughout are generally of such a high caliber that he's very careful how many secrets he spills. I suppose the best bits are learning about his hardscrabble upbringing, the happenstance stuff that led him to Eno (or actually vice versa; also, some of his and Eno's tandem experiments sound really neat, like as a lark walking through a Moroccan market separately for 20 minutes with tape recorders, then syncing the playback up in surround sound to totally recreate that vibrant multi-dimemsional sonic environment in a studio setting) and his total fan-boy love of his heroes. That said, I think I read it in an afternoon, and deserved about as much time.

It is, I guess, interesting how much Lanois' own guitar playing has helped direct a lot of the albums he's recorded, especially U2's "Achtung Baby" and beyond and the two Dylan records. Every once in a while he tips his hand as to who's playing what, and his contributions are sometimes major.

I can't play the TV portion....ugh

but it IS on YouTube.

I bought the three disc reissue and still haven't moved past the original album because it;'s so amazing

oh wait no B-sides???

http://www.amazon.com/So-25th-Anniversary-Deluxe-Edition/dp/tracks/B008V59AFW/ref=dp_tracks_all_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1351303046&sr=8-2#disc_2

honestly this album means so much to me (and my original copy is on vinyl at my parents' house) that I don't care that there are no b-sides

I think every corpuscle in my body would explode if "Mercy Street" sounded better than it already does.

"Mercy Street" is one of the greatest songs ever recorded and it's playing on my computer right now

I shouldn't be so happy, given the downer nature of the song, but I am

just sitting here in my boxers, jammin out to "Mercy Street"

yay Friday (ps I have been drinking)

here's your bloody mary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt87bLX7m_o

yay "Big Time" one of the best songs EVER

the place where I come from
is a small town
they think so small
they use small words

THIS IS TRUTH

one doubt
one voice
one war
one truth
one dream

one of the best albums EVER

That guitar hook on "That Voice Again" is so ODD.

and instead of a guitar solo we get this really simple keyboard one -- ugh. I love this record.

"That Voice Again" is the one that really grabs me and shakes me when I listen to the record these days.

"Red Rain" never gets the respect it deserves IMO

One of the coolest things I learned when watching the episode of Classic Albums on So was that—and it never registered with me before—it was first time Gabriel ever really included high hat work. Daniel Lanois talked him into it and they brought in Stewart Copeland for "Red Rain" and then allowed it on some of the other songs. If you go back and listen to the previous albums, anything that sounds like a high hat probably isn't.

If there's one thing I am sure, it is that the climax of Red Rain will always be a part of me. It's just down there, embedded in my earliest musical memories and it's coloured too much. It's almost too close really.

"I'm BATHING in it....red RAIN..coming down.."

this is my favorite album... the last time i listened to it was yesterday. i was gonna go see his 25th anniversary tour thingy when it came by recently but i wasn't able to due to work :(

v tender revive. ILM could use more slightly-sauced livetweets of classic albums.

"livetweets"

can't believe the three-disc set doesn't include the "special mix" of in your eyes. i guess that maintains the special-ness?

One of the coolest things I learned when watching the episode of Classic Albums on /So/ was that—and it never registered with me before—it was first time Gabriel ever really included high hat work. Daniel Lanois talked him into it and they brought in Stewart Copeland for "Red Rain" and then allowed it on some of the other songs. If you go back and listen to the previous albums, anything that sounds like a high hat probably isn't.

I haven't seen the DVD, but there should be bonus footage on there discussing the other songs... I've known this to the case with other DVD editions of the Classic Albums series.

Always thought it was kind of funny how Gabriel went from zero crash cymbals on his records to nothing but cymbals on So.

That new "So" boxed set supposedly has a bonus disc that shows the evolution of the album from demos to the final versions. I'm curious.

Saw him a few months back touring the 25th anniversary of this. It's amazing how supple his voice still is. I wouldn't have pegged him for a technical singer (I've always loved his voice but assumed that grizzled/manic timbre was something of a fluke). But he must have been doing serious vocal yoga through the years to still sing That Voice with power.

Missed the set, because I didn't feel the need to go, but he has had an uptick in vocal abilities I think. Or at least he paces himself well. I think it helps that his daughter sings backup. Genetics help.

Listening to So DNA for the first time today and i'm finding it rather engaging. Instead of showing primordial versions of each track, they're mixed to demonstrate how the individuals matured, so you start out with the basic sketches of the track up front and the nearly finished track at the end.

I've never seen anybody take this same approach; leave it to Gabriel to bring something fresh to the concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvzQyhzCK7c

Thanks for the push to listen to this. "Sledgehammer" origins are radically melancholy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJU_MLQc2fc

Yes; i've played this through several times and it continues to reward.

That's completely wonderful, I need to get hold of this

This is definitely interesting – if for no other reason than it demonstrates again how a big part of success in the studio often involves doing semi-embarrassing things with your voice. He and Eno are big proponents of dada vocals.

Except that Eno leaves the dada lyrics in!

Fair enough.

I'm also kind of impressed with how certain songs, like "That Voice Again," really are sequenced as a crescendo of sorts – where it begins as a fragment on piano and climaxes as you hear all the elements begin to come together.

I'll be interested to see if this is any kind of influence on other artists who want to demonstrate how a work of theirs came together.

It's hardly surprising then I guess, that it takes him a while to release records if there are 5 incrementally evolving, demo versions of each song to be worked through first. That's what happens when you have your own professional recording studio.

Between this and "Scratch My Back" and "New Blood" seems like reworking of old material is about all he can currently manage. While it's all interesting, i sure hope it serves to recharge his batteries towards some truly new material.

Wasn't he working on something new? Thought I read that recently.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/is-peter-gabriels-new-album-finished-20131209

March, then. But no year.

I hadn't heard about that new material; some other neat stuff in that interview as well.

Gah, where the hell did that threat of Phish come from?

Also, that March thing was clearly a joke.

watch them fall

There's obviously some slick stuff on here, but it's still a weird, different sort of record. His sideways version of sophistpop, if you will. It's aged well, too, which may be surprising, given how much its "gaseous cloud" sound has been copped.

"We Do What We're Told" is stunning, and I love that it's about Stanley Millgram's Stanford Prison Experiment

one of the lesser free jazz combos of the 60s iirc

They were no Pavlov's Dog, that's for sure

Saw this in a 2019 Billboard interview with Don Was:

In 1986, I hit rock bottom. I was producing records unsuccessfully, including for this English guitar band that the record company wanted us to put synthesizers all over...I was flying out to L.A., and left the multi-tracks of one of the band’s songs in a New York taxi with no safety copy. In the end I was able to recover them, and all I had to do was move the session back one day. But in that moment, I thought I’d fucked up so badly. I think I had the advance copy of Peter Gabriel’s So, and I kept playing “Don’t Give Up” over and over on my Walkman on the way to the Newark airport, crying — I just felt like such a schmuck.

And of course, like something out of a Hollywood movie, pretty much everything turns around for him - "because that session moved back a day, I got to a studio in L.A. called The Complex on a Sunday instead of a Saturday. Because I was there on a Sunday, Bonnie was there, working in another room. That’s how I met her. I wouldn’t have met her if I hadn’t lost that master tape." But first Was (Not Was) out of nowhere blows up, even landing a top ten hit, then within months he'd produce Bonnie Raitt and the B-52's first (multi-) platinum-selling hits. "Don't Give Up" indeed.

The Ward Brothers?

I think so. Floy Joy is the only other possibility but it looks like they didn't even have a guitarist in 1986.

one doubt
one voice
one war
one truth
one dream

― the ones that I'm near most: fellow outcasts and ilxors (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 26, 2012