Saturday, 3 September 2022



































Peter Gabriel
Rockpalast
Grugahalle, Essen
September 15th 1978

Early solo footage of PG
with nicely reworked soundtrack (not by me)
Peter Gabriel - vocals, keyboards & drums 
Tony Levin - bass, stick, backing vocals & piano
Jerry Marotta - drums, backing vocals & bass 
Larry Fast - synthesisers
Timmy Capello - piano & sax
Sid McGinnis - guitar & backing vocals 






















Gabriel looks worryingly thin.
Now he looks worryingly bald. :)
regards
Titus

1 intro
2 On the Air
3 Moribund the Burgermeister
4 Perspective
5 Here Comes the Flood
6 White Shadow
7 Waiting for the Big One
8 Humdrum
9 I Don't Remember
10 Solsbury Hill
11 Modern Love
12 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
bonus:
interview with Peter Gabriel

6 comments:

  1. This looks like interesting, thanks Titus :). Larry Fast was into also into a rather obscure synth group called Synergy but i´d say from what i´ve heard his biggest accomplishment was his work on the dreamy and experimental pop album "She went pop" by as i understand a losely connected group named I Am Siam. Hardly any info to be found on the web it seems, except for a few short notes on Discogs and such (i wonder about a track mentioned called "Escape to Lamoria", that´s not on the vinyl LP released in 1985 that i´ve got). I´ve read somewhere that their videos was frequently aired on a NYC cable TV channel in an obscure late night artsy TV show called "Nightdrive" or something like that. Discogs has links to the videos but only two of them are to be found on Youtube, the rest have been removed. The title track here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPux0igoNfs&t=7shttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt3275270/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
    Here´s the song that i suppose gave name to the group, but audio only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRoPxOf_lkM
    And here´s the perhaps strangest one, "Talk to me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdz0Akdh6zU - it actually made it for a while on the New York club scene as a 12 inch mix, had some radio play before disappering into oblivion but it also was included on a pop compilation . I wonder if this piece has some inspiration from Peter Gabriel´s "Shock the monkey"? Was it maybe Larry Fast that did the programming on that? Oh well, something more to explore... :)
    Discogs lists the members as
    Brian Rothschild (note; vocal on "Talk to me"), David Sonenberg, Stefan Vienna so perhaps Larry Fast was only a hired technician, as was the female singers Elizabeth Barnitz and Alexia (was it?) Vassiliou, i haven´t got time to pull out the record and check her name on the sleeve. https://www.discogs.com/artist/585063-Iam-Siam

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  2. I was familiar with Synergy back in the 70s.
    Larry was quite well known I guess hence his invite
    from the likes of Peter Gabriel.
    I didn't know Iam Siam (that's how they spell it BTW)
    but I didn't like it much.
    Larry is credited for synth etc.
    Made me think of other notable people re electronica:
    Malcolm Cecil who created an early polyphonic monster
    known as T.O.N.T.O.
    (The Original New Timbral Orchestra)
    He made an album Tonto's Expanding Head Band
    and also worked with Steve Hillage on Motivation Radio.
    Giorgio Moroder deserves a mention for his early work,
    His Chicory Tip stuff is really cool IMO
    Terry Riley was also of interest.
    A Rainbow in Curved Air was popular.
    It inspired Pete Townshend it create Baba O'Riley
    (the title obviously referencing the imitation)

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  3. You say Tonto´s Expanding Head Band? That rings a bell somewhere. And that "polyphonic monster" sounds strange, i have to look into that and get back on the subject of early attempts at making synthetic music, a thrilling subject indeed. For starters, wonder if the french Ondioline of 1939 was the first precursor to the syntheziser.
    Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondioline#:~:text=The%20Ondioline%20is%20an%20electronic%20keyboard%20musical%20instrument%2C,instrument%20is%20considered%20a%20forerunner%20of%20the%20synthesizer
    Examples: "More", a 1963 instrumental performed by trombonist Kai Winding and orchestra. Theme from ”Mondo Cane”, an italian documentary movie that seems mysterious at best and has been said to be banned in some countries. The beautiful tune must be in total contrast as the film seems to be unavaible today through normal channels due to claims of in part containing depictions of animal cruelty - Creepy. I guess the dubious underground film genre term "Mondo" was coined from that title, but just my two cents, not my subject.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiyGgxV9g1U
    The Ondioline was also used on the 1962 hit pop song ”Runaway” by Del Shannon. Here´s a short video of a test play of the Ondioline https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2014/12/09/ondioline-olivier-briand/ (and don´t forget to dive into the other articles such as this https://www.synthtopia.com/content/tag/history-of-electronic-music/) but somewhere on the WWW you can listen to a set of early original sound samples presented as a sales pitch to display all the variables of the apparatus that was intended to emulate a series of natural instruments such as strings and organs, be that as it may but it sure has a worth of its own as inspiration for what was to come.

    Well, the Iam Siam album is certainly more of a not very well thought out collage than an actual album IMO, seems to me like the participants went into the studio with one or two pieces of paper each with a an idea for a song and put it all in a hat... Admitting that when i put it on a tape to go, i rejected a few of the tunes i hardly could stand but most of the remaining grew to be personal favourites.
    Got to say Giorgio Moroder seems to have an almost synesthecial and/or savant relation to his music when he´s not on a bread-and-butter job like making soundtracks for big Hollywood movies and such. It was mentioned in a documentary (lacking his presence, so hard to judge what´s facts or just factoids) that he put two full weeks at work into patching tape bits together for the perfectly monotonous baseline of Donna Summer´s megahit ”I feel love” because there was no way to do that automatically at the time. As for Chickory Tip, i can´t recall anything from back in the day except for ”Son of my father”, on the other hand that got some heavy rotation in swedish public radio P3 when it was released, Otherwise most anything he did at Hansa Studios a k a ”The Munich Machine” swept over like a storm here, like most anywhere i suppose. True genious when it comes to production, a pity he turned full on into the commercial stuff as like you said his early stuff is real good judging from what i´ve heard. Back in the day i only found singles in his own name and my favourite was (and still is) an extended mix of ”From here to eternity” that differs especially at the end from the album track and i still only have that version on a mixtape compiled by some german company. Still sounds beyond the times but maybe it´s just my perception from back then colouring it. Then again, if Moroder hadn´t gotten into music production then mainstream pop from that moment on propably would´ve sounded totally different. Must add that rock hero Pete Townsend was also quite the pioneer (as usual) and brave and bold too when he started messing with synthesizers and other machines, changing the proven heavy analog rock sound of the Who, most of the fans back then must have thought "WTF!?!" at least at first :D.

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  4. Hmmm... I just came across this later video of Peter Gabriel & Friends doing a show in LA back in 1996 that aired on VH-1 https://ulozto.net/file/KCzTDzS5sKtJ/peter-gabriel-friends-los-angeles-ca-1996-by-viander-rar#!ZGyzAmR2Amp4MwtmA2SxBQWxLzHlBRc0F3AxFRW5rJIfFmt2Aj==, haven´t found the time to watch that either yet so i have no clue about set list or such but it should be worth the time to check out. Hope it´s okay to post the link publicly in the comments like this (didn´t find any option) but just delete it otherwise. Cheers and thanks for all the work you put down on updating the blog with more good stuff. :-)

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  5. Well, i saw a link for the Rockpalast show posted the other day over at Exy (that ought to be enough of a clue ;-) ) in their chatbox along with a couple of other related pieces, so i believe it can´t do no harm to copy a link to a rare bootleg of demos - enjoy https://nitroflare.com/view/F64CD9EF05F370B/Peter_Gabriel_-Ashcombe_Works_(2000)_flac.7z and of course thanks to the original uploader.

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