Playing Live - The Peter Gabriel Live albums

Anyone familiar with Peter's career either in Genesis or since will know that the live incarnation is infinitely different than the studio one.

Peter's live shows have always been special, out of the ordinary, and occasionally bizarre - Expect The Unexpected was an early mantra which summed them up perfectly.

As such, you would expect that Peter would have recorded them for posterity. Maybe he has? However, he has, until recently at least, been rather stingy with live offerings. The first of which Plays Live didn't appear until 1983. Thankfully it captures Peter at the height of his powers with a set drawn predominantly from the third and fourth albums, the latter of which he was promoting at the time . Nothing quite captures the sheer drama and electricity of tracks such as The Rhythm Of The Heat and The Family And The Fishing Net but we get pretty close here. We are also treated to a genuine rarity - an as yet unreleased song: I Go Swimming which was already a live favourite. Effectively this is …not a greatest hits, but a greatest moments set with every track being ingrained in most PG fans' hearts an essential part of any PG collection.

Ten years were to elapse before the next live offering Secret World Live which, as its title suggests was recorded during the extensive 1993/94 tours. As such it serves as a total contrast to its predecessor as barely a nod is made to the previous albums, the set places its focus very much in the here and now. Here we have the glories of Come Talk To Me, Blood Of Eden and Digging In The Dirt to contend with along with a couple of surprises including an amazing version of Across The River. Once again, you don't get the full “PG Effect” well, that's not possible unless you are at the gig! Another (family) snapshot of Peter at another
important stage of his career.

If you leave the various live videos/DVDs which have appeared with increasing regularity since the early 2000’s, then Peter's most recent live offering is Live Blood, taken from one of Peter's orchestral gigs in support of the Scratch My Back project.

Now this was a project which, with my love of orchestral music, could, and should have been a delight but which fell short probably because of Peter's rather perverse choice of tracks to cover. However, the live album redeems this situation somewhat. Stripping the rock accoutrements away to the bare bones and inserting the orchestral palette breathes fresh life into songs such as Intruder, Wallflower, Signal To Noise and even that anthem of anthems, Biko work incredibly well. That's Peter all over, even on a live album he still manages to challenge his listeners' preconceptions and as his recent I/O shows have demonstrated, he still has that power to move and satisfy.