Peter Gabriel - Growing Up Live

Starring:Peter Gabriel, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Hukwe Zawose, Blind Boys of Alabama
Studio: Geffen Records
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Peter Gabriel: Growing Up Live presents the complete 2003 Milan concert from Peter Gabriel's tour based around the album Up, featuring 17 tracks across 134 minutes. Literally central to a memorable show is a revolving stage that sees Gabriel going for a cycle ride in an exuberant "Solsbury Hill," performing "Growing Up" inside a Zorb ball, and delivering a gravity-defying sky walk in "Downside Up" with daughter Melanie. Accompanied by regular sidemen David Rhodes (guitar) and Tony Levin (bass), Gabriel is joined by the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama for the spine-tingling "Sky Blue," throughout mixing recent tracks like the abrasive "Darkness" and "The Barry Williams Show" with established crowd pleasers such as "Red Rain," "In Your Eyes," and "Sledgehammer."

Gabriel may be less wired than before, but he commands the arena with effortless charm and charismatic presence, his voice retaining all its paradoxically fragile power. Presented in an understated blue light and shot in an unobtrusive, gimmick-free style, the concert begins and ends in virtual darkness with Gabriel alone at a keyboard; from the opening "Here Comes the Flood" to the final "Father, Son," Growing Up is rock theater of rare intimacy, emotion, and intelligence.

Amazon.com

Peter Gabriel: Growing Up Live presents the complete 2003 Milan concert from Peter Gabriel's tour based around the album Up, featuring 17 tracks across 134 minutes. Literally central to a memorable show is a revolving stage that sees Gabriel going for a cycle ride in an exuberant "Solsbury Hill," performing "Growing Up" inside a Zorb ball, and delivering a gravity-defying sky walk in "Downside Up" with daughter Melanie. Accompanied by regular sidemen David Rhodes (guitar) and Tony Levin (bass), Gabriel is joined by the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama for the spine-tingling "Sky Blue," throughout mixing recent tracks like the abrasive "Darkness" and "The Barry Williams Show" with established crowd pleasers such as "Red Rain," "In Your Eyes," and "Sledgehammer."

Gabriel may be less wired than before, but he commands the arena with effortless charm and charismatic presence, his voice retaining all its paradoxically fragile power. Presented in an understated blue light and shot in an unobtrusive, gimmick-free style, the concert begins and ends in virtual darkness with Gabriel alone at a keyboard; from the opening "Here Comes the Flood" to the final "Father, Son," Growing Up is rock theater of rare intimacy, emotion, and intelligence.

Amazon.com

Recorded in Europe in the summer of 2004, Peter Gabriel's Still Growing Up - Live and Unwrapped is a follow-up to 2003's Growing Up Live. The idea this time was to capture Gabriel and his band performing a variety of songs not heard on the earlier tour, with the gigs taking place in what he describes as "all sorts of smaller venues," where "we get up onstage with minimal lights and simply play the music." Of course, "smaller" is a matter of perspective; the town squares, outdoor amphitheatres, and other sites in Belgium, England, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and France where the band appeared are still plenty big enough to hold several thousand people, and the production values are hardly what you'd call spartan. But whatever their dimensions, the shows yielded some extraordinarily powerful performances. After a haunting "The Feeling Begins" (a track from Gabriel's Passion, the score for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ), played solo on the Armenian doudouk, Gabriel and company take the stage and almost immediately forge a palpable bond with their audience. Indeed, what we are witnessing is as much a tribal rite as a concert, with the febrile, hypnotic intensity of the music matched by the crowd's chanted responses on such tunes as "Solsbury Hill," "Sledgehammer," and "Biko" (along with the latter, songs not heard on the previous DVD include "San Jacinto," "White Ashes," "The Tower that Ate People," and "Games Without Frontiers"; there's also a wonderful performance of "In Your Eyes" among the bonus tracks). Overall, this is a moving experience that viewers with sophisticated home systems will delight in sharing. The centerpiece of the set's second disc is Unwrapped, an approximately 70-minute "band on the road" documentary that would have been a standard variation of the form were it not for Gabriel's strong visual sense; check out the cool lighting and film projection effects used during the interviews with the artist. --Sam Graham

Description

November 2003 saw the release of Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live DVD , chronicling his world tour, which was celebrated for its spectacular theatrics. Still Growing Up Live & Unwrapped brings Peter Gabriel together again with the award-winning director Hamish Hamilton, capturing his performances in all sorts of smaller and more intimate venues around Europe for the Live version of the DVD. For the "Unwrapped" version (Disc 2), which explores the world behind the songs, Anna Gabriel took over the director's chair with the collaboration of Hamish Hamilton. A simpler approach suggested a different set list, and Peter, Hamish, and Anna were determined that this should be filmed in a very different style. It shows Peter Gabriel as many of his fans love to see him, just playing his music.

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Play/Growing Up Live
Starring: Peter Gabriel
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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