r/petergabriel

This sounds pretty good! I had previously heard a recording, but the crowd noise was so brutal you could barely hear the song. This is nicely restored! Not the best quality ever, but a huge improvement. You can really hear Kate. So lovely. I can’t help but wish they’d sing on a song together again.

Re-post from earlier, since it is nearly the 40th anniversary.

November 1983 (estimate): Tracking of "Excellent Birds" over a two-day session with Laurie Anderson at The Lobby in New York City, with the music video shot the next day for Good Morning, Mr Orwell... Premiered New Year's day in 1984. Laurie released her version on Mister Heartbreak (1984) while Peter's was yet to come...

Summer 1984: Peter goes on various trips to Brazil and Senegal to find new rhythms... The Forro percussion on "Mercy Street" was recorded during this time, performed by Djalma Correia at Polygram Studios in Rio de Janeiro.

February 1985: Recording officially starts on So at Peter's Ashcombe House studio, with Daniel Lanois co-producing and Dave Bascombe engineering. Peter worked on mostly new material, revisiting older ideas for "Milgram's 37" (Melt era) and "Don't Give Up" (PG4 era)... The tracks were mostly demoed as keyboards and guitars to a Linn 9000 drum machine, with Peter, Dan and David Rhodes playing together to get the feel of the songs down on tape, with a rough early structure in place.

April 1985: By then, bass and drums are being added to the tracks... Tony Levin and Manu Katche were involved for around 2-3 weeks each... Drummer Jerry Marotta, however, did sessions for four days, as he was busy working with Paul McCartney. Stewart Copeland also came down for a week at Ashcombe to lay down drums on the songs.

For the most part, each musician overdubbed their parts, with "Sledgehammer" being the only song recorded live as a full band in 2-3 takes with Manu... All three drummers did takes on all the songs that were there at the time, with the parts with the desired feel being selected & combined... "Red Rain" wound up having Stewart Copeland on the hi-hat while the rest of the drums were Jerry, for instance. The Up album marked another time that Peter used multiple drummers on any given song.

Late May 1985: Engineer Kevin Killen joins the project, taking over from Dave Bascombe who left due to disagreements with Lanois... By then, the backing tracks had been recorded but mostly in long, extended form, which would be edited down and arranged.

Summer 1985: Peter continues working on the tracks like usual - overdubbing parts, changing sections, coming up with new song ideas... Occasionally, he would invite Manu and Tony back to re-do the rhythm parts (plus David Rhodes etc.) as the songs kept evolving. And later, it would be a case of compiling the performances down... In August, Peter acquired a 32-track digital tape machine for creating a master recording from numerous tape reels after experiencing synchronisation issues between the 24-track tape recorders he had, long story short.

Early-mid September 1985: Peter Gabriel and Dan Lanois fly to New York for additional recordings at the Power Station over 5 days... This mostly included backing vocals, horns and acoustic piano by Richard Tee. Engineer Bruce Lampcov also recalls feeding the snare on "Sledgehammer" into a 4-story stairwell at the Power Station as an echo chamber, a trick used by Bob Clearmountain on records he mixed there.

October 1985: Peter starts focusing more on the vocals and lyrics, which is normally a slow process for him... He would do five to six vocal passes and compile them, but if a lyric was changed, he would go back and re-sing that line and the vocal was compiled again... PP Arnold and Dee Lewis add vocals to some of the tracks.

November 1985: Kate Bush records her vocals for "Don't Give Up"... The song "Excellent Birds" is pulled off the shelf and updated from the original 1983 recording with Laurie Anderson's approval.

January/February 1986: Finishing touches laid down on the So tracks. Larry Klein also comes in to record bass parts for "In Your Eyes" and "Mercy Street".

mid-February: album is officially finished and mastered at The Townhouse

19th May: So is officially released.

It seems like Peter never finished Big Time. The final lines are

Look at my circumstance
and the bulge in my big, big big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big

And then it ends.

Microfinance?
Waggle Dance?
a l'outrance?
Second Glance?
Outside Chance?
Exceedance?

There are no words for today's algorithm find 😭❤️

https://preview.redd.it/v39umn1ceo1h1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b15ea3bb12750643bbe3aa9b9e3c7a679ee7463

petergabriel

Peter Gabriel

I only just recently learned about it and I’m bummed I didn’t get it during release 😞

I’ll start off by saying that I’m usually a very biased fan and sometimes (oftentimes) blindly appreciative of anything PG puts out- now that being said:

I’ve been having perpetual anxiety while listening to the live WOMAD 1982. It feels like many of the songs (namely I Go Swimming) are just a tempo struggle between the drums and the rest of the group. To a point where it actually makes me feel a little stressed. As if I was one of the musicians on stage trying to fix it.

Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I being too nitpicky?

I also know the bandcamp notes mentioned some tempo troubles, but it’s more apparent than I would have anticipated.

Looks like extended versions of the footage used as b-roll during the full moon club video. Some moments match up to the song so it really does seem it’s from the time in the studio working on this particular track. Since we aren’t getting deep dives this time around, it would be pretty cool if once the full album is out there is a documentary on the making of the album or something.

Hey guys I've recently been thinking about a Peter Gabriel DVD we had when i was a kid. I was curious to know which one it was i always thought the box looked nice. It had jewels on it ? Like rubi stones or something i dont really remember we lost everything in a house fire. And i dont really have anyone else to ask. Tried looking for it on google but no luck. Hopefully it was actually a peter Gabriel dvd, i dont want to waste your time!!!

Thanks

I wonder if they have the entire show recorded. That would be an awesome watch. It looks like the footage is in bad shape, but with the tools available today, it could certainly be cleaned up or at least edited in a way to make the artifacts stylistic. Would love to watch the whole show… and, if I can be greedy, maybe include some bonuses of Dog 1 and the other tracks not on this album :D