A guy who I think is super underrated as a creative force is Peter Gabriel. Dude did prog rock, ballads, pop songs, and didn’t just do them but made some of the best versions of them ever
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Giving me a fucking panic attack making me wonder why Peter Gabriel is being brought up.
Also Peter Gabriel is such a humble Bowie level musical powerhouse, man produced nothing but bangers his entire life and I still listen to old Genesis albums as comfort food.
I have never underestimated his talent. I knew he was a genius when I listened to his self titled album that was released in 1980. I still thing the song song “Games Without Frontiers” is genius.
When I was a kid, "Peter Gabriel (Melt)," "Security," and "So" were on really heavy rotation in my Walkman, and I spent a good chunk of my teens going back through the Genesis 1970s catalog
Also, all the best needle drops from The Americans are Peter Gabriel songs
Those records are all so crazy and singular. There’s a “no cymbals” rule across most if not all of those records that really put them in a really interesting sonic space.
i/o is a fantastic album and shows how he keeps doing things that are on the cutting edge. Release one song per month, produced by two different people, on opposite phases of the moon. Take a year to spotlight the whole album, release both versions.
You must be young if you think Peter Gabriel is underrated. Great that you just discovered him but most of us have known about him since years before you were born. Don't assume that just because you're just finding out about someone no one else must know about them. 😂
I have a difficult time understanding how he's underrated, given his awards needs its own page on Wikipedia. He's won basically everything and been lauded by basically everyone. Dude's won 8 Grammys.
So has been a top 5 album for me for almost my entire life, my dad had the tape in his car in the late 80s and just played it over and over. never got old
In addition to all the wonderful comments here, I loved Peter's early embrace of multimedia. XPLORA1 for Mac and Windows 3.1 in 1993 and EVE for Mac and Win95 in 1996 were both weird, brilliant, and awesome. Highly recommend tracking them down, but you'll need VMs to play them.
EVE especially. The game part is a little obtuse and tedious, but the rewards are well worth the effort. The collaborations with different artists for the various "levels" are fascinating. It's what eventually led to Yayoi Kusama becoming my favorite visual artist.
Yeah, the one that Isabella Rossellini did a voice for. Though while it was developed by Peter's Real World Multimedia software development company, it wasn't built around Peter's works like the other two titles were.
Beautiful game though, and absolutely worth playing.
I wish I could like this a million times, I am a huge Peter Gabriel fan. I listened to his most recent album I/o more than any other album in 2024, it is a masterpiece and it is amazing that he is still able to write music of that caliber at 70 years old.
Unless you grew up with Genesis I imagine most people have a pretty clear vision of the band as this sort of accessible fun but kind of cheesy Phil Collins thing but then there’s this whole other weird thing you can discover
Kinda funny 2 of my 3 favorite albums of my parents while growing up were genesis invisible touch and peter gabriel’s so. Had no idea he used to be there until later. (Third was dancing on the ceiling)
The nice thing about discovering Genesis later is that you can enjoy both the cheesy fun stuff and the prog rock opera stuff equally while knowing that if you were around for it you’d definitely have to hate one or the other
Being real, while I was not around for it myself, my understanding is a great many people who were hated both iterations. Many of these same people enjoyed Peter Gabriel’s solo work. I have yet to meet anyone who hates solo Peter Gabriel
I'm old enough that I had to go through a period of hating the second Genesis. Eventually I grew to accept them as a separate pop band that happened to have the same name. Still Peter Gabriel >>> later Genesis.
Peter Gabriel was the superior Genesis frontman for me. Don't get me wrong, I liked the Collins stuff too. But Selling England by the Pound is one of my favorite albums
Collins Genesis comes alive when it's loud, too many folks think of TV sound from the 90's or their dad's crappy garage radio. Play That's All or Land of Confusion with some volume/bass, and suddenly there's the band from the earlier era, working away.
It has always astonished me how Gabriel-era Genesis is arguably one of the two greatest prog-rock acts, and late Genesis is mall-rock of the blandest sort. And I guess that take does indeed mean I am old.
One weird thing about rediscovering Genesis is watching the video for Land of Confusion and seeing that the right wingers (or their spiritual successors) getting criticized in that video all now have plastic surgery that make them look like the puppets.
The way I discovered there was a Gabriel-helmed Genesis, as a kid, was when I was given one of their older albums, even though what I’d asked for was “Invisible Touch” (huge at the time). I put on the Gabriel-Genesis album, & was none too pleased at my mom’s mistake. (Appreciated it later in life.)
I'm hardly one to recommend a compilation album over simply exploring an artist's catalog, but Shaking the Tree really is a mind-blowingly good compilation album. And it's a great starting point if one wants to explore his catalog from there.
He's rated exactly where he should be IMO - very highly, but suffering sometimes from not wanting to bring the spotlight, and aging like all of us. Unlike many, he doesn't have a lot of detractors!
wanted to add his work on the last temptation of christ is great and his cover of the magnetic fields' "the book of love" is one of the best covers ever
holy fucking shit dude he has been my fave for years. he was my first concert, floor seats, which were metal church chairs on a concrete floor, and it was SO LOUD and POWERFUL and DRUMS and it was complete bliss.
YES and its crazy to me the costumes, the lyrics, and vision he brought for the Genesis golden years (which were really only four years) and then to still go on to define the 80’s sound blows my mind.
And on top of all his accomplishments, Peter Gabriel also has one of the most compelling voices in rock history. From the beginning his singing, with just a bit of warm rasp, always carried weight.
My absolute musical hero. Peter Gabriel 4 (“security” for any US folk) and Passion are my favourite albums. But like with Brian Eno, it’s the PROCESS of his compositions as much as the result that I admire.
His third self titled (AKA Melt) is a surprisingly menacing album also, which showed him both catching up with and even predicting production techniques for the time in similar fashion to Berlin era Bowie.
From the mid Seventies through the late Nineties the dude was simply way ahead of his time.
It’s only since then that he’s kinda been stuffed into the “elder statesman” role, but during those years he was as avant garde as anything you could possibly hear on normie radio.
Feel privileged to see him for the Growing Up tour. I think it was 2002. Amazing show [despite some technical glitches I recall]. Blind Boys of Alabama opened.
And the conjoined twin to U2 is REM. Two cool, quasi-underground, college radio standards from about the same time period who became bigger than Jesus and it did nothing good for their output.
Nothing was as cool after Achtung Baby and Monster.
I didn't know anything REM did after Monster.
Wouldn't have had much interest, but We got free tickets to see REM in maybe 2004. Much better show than I was expecting. Stipe seemed really happy and grateful to be playing in front of a large crowd.
I have the BlueRay of the concert movie he shot for the Secret World tour with a baby Paula Cole as the female vocalist and lemme just say... it is on a very short list of concert films I actually enjoy watching behind Stop Making Sense and basically nothing else.
I feel like that tour was just like him at his apex, the peak of his power as it were. Age had not yet slowed him down, but also a lifetime of experience and practice refining his craft and presentation. The whole band gave everything knowing that show was being taped.
I’m a connoisseur of album making-of documentaries and this one about his Security album is, musically, the best I’ve ever seen. Laying out the evolution of every song on the album from concept and ideas through every intermediate stage
Two of my favorites: Selling England by the Pound, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Sit down and listen to the entire album in one sitting, start to finish, with headphones. Then do it again. I still get new things every time.
Selling England (1974) is probably my favourite record of all time. The young Peter Gabriel on Trespass is a delight hinting at a brilliant future, and Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme are epic explorations of long-form prog rock. The Lamb is a disjointed but brilliant final gasp.
Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back/And I'll Scratch Yours is the most amazing album I've heard him do. So much good material from him, I love his take on other artists, and artist's take on him.
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Also Peter Gabriel is such a humble Bowie level musical powerhouse, man produced nothing but bangers his entire life and I still listen to old Genesis albums as comfort food.
Also, all the best needle drops from The Americans are Peter Gabriel songs
Like a woobie blanket... Security
All while every song is ridiculously good.
It's kind of revealed by his obsession with age.
I considered clowning on him but it's not worth my time.
& he's showing everyone his ignorance on his own... 🤷♀️
Guess imma block him and split.
Just why do that?
https://youtu.be/WZ2hY6Fetw0?si=pgKTYihcXAfhX_pN
Beautiful game though, and absolutely worth playing.
https://youtu.be/Qt87bLX7m_o
I'm rebuilding my music collection, & I lost most of my prog.
But I hadn't listened to early Gabriel/Genesis, though I've liked what I have heard of the later.
So I'm picking up that Selling England By The Pound is must.
Maybe self titled I-IV?
Fielding album suggestions!
so is Gabriel: just look at the guy
Wasn’t an ideal to aim for folks
https://mixdownmag.com.au/features/rig-rundown-peter-gabriel/
Doesn't hurt he had/has a pretty damn good singing voice too.
https://youtu.be/luVpsM3YAgw?si=46h4eMYu_NdF3ADe
(I'm thinking of gated snares, but that's just the most notable influence that he and Genesis had)
It’s only since then that he’s kinda been stuffed into the “elder statesman” role, but during those years he was as avant garde as anything you could possibly hear on normie radio.
Nothing was as cool after Achtung Baby and Monster.
Wouldn't have had much interest, but We got free tickets to see REM in maybe 2004. Much better show than I was expecting. Stipe seemed really happy and grateful to be playing in front of a large crowd.
https://youtu.be/O3mZPggXQ74?si=pR3E83D79wSKvVoc
https://youtu.be/scmYG1Pv1_Q?si=Rz00D0EG6Im4CVVE
https://youtu.be/49mdn20QsbM?si=nXdrth5yschaTcoW