Andrew Robins enjoys Peter Gabriel more than he thought possible.
Peter Gabriel
LG Arena
Confession time: I don’t really like Peter Gabriel to be honest. But about five years ago, I made my partner sit through Steely Dan at the NIA (I don’t know how this is even humanly possible, but she hates them), and as a result made a promise I’d return the favour some time. This was that night.
The reason she wanted to go was because Gabriel was performing the So album in its entirety. I actually quite liked bits of that record, so as it turned out, I quite enjoyed it.
He started with three acoustic numbers done with the lights up, which I assume was some sort of artistic statement, but it just didn’t work. It was weird. The woman sat in front of me actually dozed off halfway through the second track.
When the lights then went down, though, it got much better. Have to say, I was hugely impressed. The visual side of the performance was excellent, there was some really impressive stuff done, members of the band wearing Go Pro cameras, loads of hand operated tower camera things on stage, excellent visual stuff going on at the video screens (Kraftwerkish style effects for some tracks).
As for the most important part, Peter’s voice still sounds very good indeed (he’d apparently cancelled the gig before, somewhere in France, due to a bad throat).
I guess my enjoyment of it is limited in that I don’t really know much about his stuff and therefore, other than the So album tracks and Solsbury Hill, it was all pretty new to me, but it was still very enjoyable. The band were extremely tight. Sledgehammer, Big Time, In Your Eyes were highlights.
One thing that was odd, though. was the number of Italians there. We heard loads walking from the car park, and found ourselves sitting next to a run of about ten of them. Strange.
It’s the first time I’ve been to a gig at what I still call the NEC in ages, and the last few times we have been on the sides where the sound quality was awful. This time we were on the flat bit, although quite a way back, and it sounded miles better.
The interior has also been tarted up massively in the last five years. It’s now actually quite a nice venue as opposed to my last visit, when there was work going on so much of the venue was temporary, but it was still a horrible, dark, smoke-filled dump.
