PETER GABRIEL GIG GUIDE 1998 - 2004

A typical 2002 set ran as follows: Darkness/Red Rain/Secret World/My Head Sounds Like That/Animal Nation/Sky Blue/More than This/Mercy Street/ Growing Up/Downside Up/No Way Out/Solsbury Hill/The Tower That Ate People/The Barry Williams Show/Signal To Noise/Sledgehammer/Digging In The Dirt/Here Comes The Flood.

A typical 2003 set ran as follows; Red Rain/More than This/Secret World/ Games Without Frontiers/Mercy Street/Darkness/Digging In The Dirt/Don’t Give Up/No Way Out/The Tower That Ate People/Growing Up/Shock The Monkey/Solsbury Hill/Sledgehammer/Signal To Noise/In Your Eyes/Come Talk To Me/Father To Son.

A typical 2004 set ran as follows: Here Comes The Flood/Darkness/Red Rain/Secret World/White Ashes/Games Without Frontiers/Burn You Up, Burn You Down/Downside Up/The Tower That Ate People/More Than This/San Jacinto/Digging In The Dirt/Growing Up/Solsbury Hill/Sledgehammer/Signal To Noise/In Your Eyes/Come Talk To Me/Father To Son/

Capitalising on the success of the tour, a compilation album was released, but as usual when it comes to such things from Peter, this one had a twist. Titled Hit it was a two disc set with the first one labelled Hit and the second labelled Miss. Taking the strongest and most popular tracks from his oeuvre and putting them into one nifty package was a shrewd idea. Also added was the bonus of a non album new track and in this case, it was also a particularly strong one which should (in my opinion) have been included on UP - Burn You Up, Burn you Down which was destined to be come a firm live favourite.

Unusually for Peter, these shows were also to be documented with a plethora of live recordings. Finally (and wisely) deciding to beat the bootleggers at their own game, he joined forces with online music group TheMusic.com to release soundboard recordings of every gig from these tours, which could be bought separately or together housed in miniature replica flight cases much to the delight of the fans.

That wasn’t all however as during the course of 2003 and 2005 two live DVDs were also released documenting the changing face of the show beginning on 3rd November 2003 with Growing Up Live and subsequently on 31st October 2005 with the humorously titled, Still Growing Up - Live & Unwrapped. Both releases featured complete recordings of gigs from their respective tours and enough extras to keep fans happy. Peter also released the Play DVD which was the long overdue compilation of virtually all of his promotional videos although, of course being Peter, there were a couple of notable omissions!

By the time the tour came to its end in Europe in the summer of 2004, Peter’s profile was riding high again. Another successful album, not quite as successful as its predecessors, but one that garnered plentiful praise from the critics and adulation from the fans. It was time for Peter to withdraw from public view once again to take a well-earned break and review his options for the future. More of that next time, folks!