Now How About "Plastic Spoon"?
Probably the first time I had heard a Genesis song was when I was about 6 or so. The song was "Paperlate", only I didn't know the song was called "Paperlate" or that it was by a group called Genesis. The only thing I remember is hearing this song a lot on my parents' car radio, and I'd think, "Gee, being in the music biz must be cool. You can sing a song about a paper plate and it can get radio play!"
Lith as a Member of the Q Continum
Angel and I were visiting our friend Lith in Sarasota on day, and she had a videotape that had various video clips of Gabriel in interviews and what not. We were watching some clip where Gabriel was either talking about something serious but we were paying more attention to Gabriel's appearance. Gabriel had that "Secret World Live" look with the little beard. While we were watching, Lith said, "Ugh. Pete...ditch the beard! I don't like it!" The clip then went to show something else for a few seconds, and then it went back to showing Gabriel talking...only now the beard was gone! Same lighting, almost same sitting position, and different but similar clothes. (Gabriel does the same stunt on Xplora 1. He's got the beard in one clip, and moments later, he pops up sans beard.) Angel and I looked at Lith and said, "Cool! Lith tells TV Peter to do things and he does it! Lith is all powerful!" Then I said, "Quick, tell Peter you don't like his clothes, either!"
It's Gotta Be the Shoes
I was in college when US came out, and I was anxious to see some good Gabriellian videos, espcially the video to "Digging in the Dirt". Unfortunately, I didn't have cable. Many of my friends did get cable, so I told them that if they knew in advance that a Gabriel video would be played, for them to call me and have me come over, or at least attempt to record the video for me.
However, that plan never seemed to work. Either my friends would miss the video whenever MTV played it, or they saw it when it was too late to either call me or get ready to videotape it. So it became common for me to ask my friends, "Did you see the 'Digging in the Dirt' video? What's it like?" And they said things like, "Hard to describe...really weird, but cool! Gabriel is like, buried and stuff, and there's all of these snails and worms crawling on him and...really creepy!" So I was able to gather that this was a dark and disturbing video, which made sense since I knew that "Digging" was a dark song.
One day my roommate had one of her friends over to our room. This friend struck me as kinda weird...wore old, black clothes, not Goth, but more like...I don't know, a cross between a gypsy and someone pretending to be witch for Halloween. I couldn't understand why my flaky, preppy rommate hung around with her. However, one time, I actually started listening to their conversation, and I quickly learned that this "weird" friend, named Josette, was extremely intelligent, witty, thoughtful, and funny. I was soon drawn into their conversation.
At one point, Josette mentioned she was watching MTV a while back, so I asked her if she had seen the "Digging in the Dirt" video. Her eyes lit up. "Yes! It's an awesome video! I really liked it!" Hoping to get a good description from her, I said, "What did you like about it?" She said, "He was wearing the coolest shoes!"
Huh? None of the other people I'd talked to who had seen the video mentioned anything about shoes. "Uh...shoes?" I said. "Yeah! They're just like mine!" and she pulled up her floor length dress to reveal a pair of black men's boots. I thought, "This chick is weird. We'd make perfect friends." And that we were until she moved away. And yeah, for three seconds in the "Digging" video, you can see Gabriel's shoes which sure looked a lot like Josette's...
More to come...