(or how to cause the Hillers unjust discomfort by answering a survey
in four times as much space as a normal human being should...)
Favourite Album
That's a very easy one: the next
Favourite Song
Another very easy answer: Mercy Street, live in Athens, 8.10.1987 (as should
be featured on the POV video but is not as it's so f***ed up with overdubs).
My only personal possible alternatives are way down in the non album tracks
section (I wouldn't have split the two...)
Favourite Gabriel-Era Genesis Album
Ultra easy: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (which is copyrighted
to Peter Gabriel, the lyrics anyway, so it makes for a good first pre-solo
album)
Least Favourite Song (you must be joking...)
This was really tough, but I do have a pair of aces down my sleeve.
1) La visite est terminée (from the Jam Nation Way Down
Below Buffalo Hell - CDRW46). This is certainly the only one I can think
of: a song he wrote but never sung or performed himself (or it wouldn't'
fit in this category): he co-wrote the music on this, and I must say that
it is not so much that I don't like it but that it is in a section of my
record/cd collection (the PG Covers - by definition something that Peter
wrote but is sung by someone else - though sometimes enough to make the
biggest and toughest weep like babies...) that I hardly ever go to for ear
refreshment (but still I do collect, don't I?).
2) An alternative title, hardly known at all (except for my own home...
or those who have learned about it from me!) would be Be for Bebop
: by Do It!, which was an Italian music TV program theme built around sampled
bits from the interviews given by different artists to the program's host.
Peter is actually featured three times, and his deeply meaningful words
(this is not a pun, and to prove it I quoted the lines before and after
PG's) are as follows:
Bum Bum Bum (Nick Rhodes)
- Again (PG)
Make Love, Make Love (Red Ronnie, the TV show host)
Don't dream it do it (Red Ronnie)
- Peace and Love (PG)
Don't dream it do it (Red Ronnie)
- Break Up (PG)
Believe in Love (Simon Le Bon).
In case you really want to know more, other artists featured are David
Bowie, James Brown, Public Enemy, Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger
and so on, while the cover also boasts that "This is the first time
there are so many interviews of famous artists in the title track of a tv
show" - which of course never even considered the possibility that
there has never been another, so that was a very cheap win...).
Favourite Music Video
Another very hard one: my favourite "video clip" is probably Steam.
The best acting I've seen from Peter on a video, though, has to be on "Another
Day" the duet with Kate Bush's TV Special "Kate" from 1979:
the middle part where he is not singing but only acting with Kate still
sends shivers down my spine 18 after it was first performed...
(I enclose a couple of pict files in case you're wondering which video I
am talking about).
Favourite Tour
Bloody easy: Secret World (first leg - the one with the double
stage). A pity something like that can't be reproduced in a venue like Edinburgh's
Playhouse or a theatre as such...
Favourite CD ROM
Bit obvious here too, as it has to be Eve. Personally I thought
when it came out, and I still do, that Xplora 1 was and is a bit too "clever":
too much recycling and almost nothing new at all except for the interface
and the medium. Remixing Digging? Ok, for a while, I hardly touch it any
more nowadays, as I'd rather watch any of those clips on TV rather than
on a 3"x2" window inside a 15" computer monitor...
Best Hair Era
Mmmmmh... Possibly the longish cut of 1977, during the first couple
of tours of the US and Europe and also on PG II's sleeve.
Favourite Album Cover
You mean front, don't you? As a whole package US would have won over everything
else (except maybe PG II), but if you only want the front then the one with
the most impact is still So.
Favourite Non-Album Song
Ah, here we go, and I'm sorry but I can't make a choice between the following
four, that are given here in strict chronological order:
Why Don't We? (live in Cleveland, especially, but also in Detroit
& New York in April 1977);
Dog 1 Dog 2 Dog 3 (sometimes written down as Dock 1,2,3 - a
beautiful, moving improvisation and duet between Peter 's voice and Shankar's
violin on stage at the first ever Womad Festival in Shepton Mallet, 18.7.1982
- with the backing of David Rhodes on guitar, Steward Copeland on drums
and Peter Hammill on guitar and voice.
Islamic Offbeat (a working title for a sort of medley of bits
and pieces taken from Passion and Of These Hope
- performed live with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Youssou N'Dour and Shankar
at the Womad Festival in Saint Austell's Cornwall Coliseum, 28.8.1988);
Signal To Noise (from VH-1 Honours; the second live Nusrat
Collaboration that I know of and positively a masterpiece).
Favourite Collaboration
Answered above if we're talking live stuff or just single people. In case
you mean or want know anyway my favourite best studio collaborative work,
I'll come up with another tie break:
Here Comes The Flood from Robert Fripp's Exposure album - still
the unequalled and definitive version;
Qualquer coisa a haver como el paraiso , from Milton Nascimiento's
Angelus album - 7 minutes of Gabrielese bliss.
Favourite Non-Gabriellian Artist
Peter Hammill
Favourite Pastime Between Album Releases
Dreaming, but not necessarily at night, new pieces of music by
Monsieur Gabriél. It's tough, 'cos it only happens four or five times
a year...
Best *Idea* For a Collaboration
Pete and the Spice Girls, an album of duets between PG and female
singers such as Tori Amos, Laurie Anderson,Kate Bush, Sheila Chandra, Tony
Childs, Paula Cole, Sinead O'Connor...
I Think the New Album Title Should Be...
Ha!
(or maybe Hi!)
Comments:
Don't you think you've had enough yet?
60. Kimmie