{"id":1307,"date":"2008-03-20T17:44:44","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T21:44:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-15T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T16:16:56","slug":"the-untouchables-starring-peter-gabriel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-untouchables-starring-peter-gabriel\/","title":{"rendered":"<font color=\"orange\">The Untouchables<\/font>, Starring Peter Gabriel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hqyc37aOqT0?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nWhat is it about <strong>Peter Gabriel<\/strong> that&#8217;s made him an <em>untouchable<\/em> among critics and rock nerds? Beside the <strong>&#8220;Sledgehammer&#8221;<\/strong> single\/video, which rock nerds feel free to dismiss and mock, the guy seems to have been given a free ride despite having been one of the most over-the-top of tuneless prog-rockers and a long-time enabler of players of geeky instruments, like the <strong>Chapman Stick<\/strong>, headless guitars, and hi-tech synths that I can&#8217;t understand enough to fully describe and then mock. <\/p>\n<p>For some understandable reasons, Peter Gabriel is thought of as having a higher degree of integrity and relevancy than his prog-rock contemporaries &#8211; and even moreso than most of his more readily embraced &#8220;Art Rock&#8221; contemporaries (I trust you understand these fine lines). In fact, <em>Salon<\/em> termed it <a href=\"http:\/\/dir.salon.com\/story\/ent\/music\/review\/2002\/09\/24\/gabriel\/\" title=\"http:\/\/dir.salon.com\/story\/ent\/music\/review\/2002\/09\/24\/gabriel\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;weirdly arty integrity.&#8221;<\/a> Understandably, this shields him from the slings and arrows so freely directed at former bandmates and members of other prog ensembles. Along with the prog-transcendent <strong>Robert Fripp<\/strong>, he&#8217;s reached out to younger, non-prog artists for collaborations on his albums, such as <strong>Paul Weller<\/strong>, at the time still a member of the decidedly un-prog The Jam, and <strong>Kate Bush<\/strong>. He&#8217;s done the charity\/world music scene as well as anyone, some cool soundtrack work, and other deeds befitting a musician of <strong>David Byrne<\/strong>&#8216;s rock-crit stature, but even Byrne gets beat up now and then. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a sampling of some of the <strong>worst things<\/strong> I&#8217;ve seen critics say about Peter Gabriel:<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI&#8217;ll start with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/artists\/petergabriel\/albums\/album\/88409\/review\/6067727\/up\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/artists\/petergabriel\/albums\/album\/88409\/review\/6067727\/up\" target=\"_blank\">an extremely rare, outright negative review<\/a> (in <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, no less!) for 2002&#8217;s <em>Up<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;Long one of rock&#8217;s most innovative artists, Gabriel has never sounded more out of touch.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now here are more typical examples of what passes for a review of a subpar Gabriel album. This one&#8217;s from <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/donignacio.com\/gabrielpeter\/security.html\" title=\"http:\/\/donignacio.com\/gabrielpeter\/security.html\" target=\"_blank\">Don Ignacio&#8217;s Album Reviews<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Imperfection abounds in Peter Gabriel&#8217;s follow-up to his brilliant third self-titled album. But imperfection abounds in a lot of things. So, it&#8217;s not like it&#8217;s a shock that <em>Security<\/em> is imperfect. It&#8217;s really hard to make a really good follow-up to such an excellent album as Peter Gabriel [3], and Gabriel seemed to do the best he could.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, the titanic rock critic Don Ignacio said he did the best he could. Think of all the artists who&#8217;ve gotten bad reviews. Did any of them get props for doing &#8220;the best they could?&#8221; I think not. I&#8217;d show you more examples of the lukewarm reviews that the Mighty Peter Gabriel has received over the years <em>but they don&#8217;t exist!<\/em> At least not electronically. He took so long to make that <em>Up<\/em> album that he released no other material during the age of the Internet. Genius!<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_oaSZxd9jOY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI like my share of Gabriel solo recordings, but even his best work, like <strong>&#8220;Shock the Monkey&#8221;<\/strong>, is tinged with heavily dated &#8217;80s touches. For me it&#8217;s close to admitting that a particular song by <strong>The Fixx<\/strong> or <strong>Duran Duran<\/strong> is &#8220;actually not bad.&#8221; I have to filter out a lot of annoying stuff to hear Peter Gabriel&#8217;s best &#8217;80s hits like an overproduced <strong>XTC<\/strong> song.<\/p>\n<p>The work the man puts into his labored albums cannot be denied. Check out <strong>The Master at Work<\/strong>! This guy moved well beyong prog; although we&#8217;ve not yet fully defined the term, I&#8217;d say he&#8217;s absolutely <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=working_definition_cont_proctomusicology&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php?title=working_definition_cont_proctomusicology&amp;more=1&amp;c=1&amp;tb=1&amp;pb=1\">Prock<\/a><\/strong>!<br \/><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nv0p9W48hyc&amp;feature?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He says, in the above clip, that he&#8217;s trying to &#8220;enlarge&#8221; what he does by his voice, but &#8220;not by technique.&#8221; One of the first things I think about when I hear a Peter Gabriel song is, <em>Can Gabriel sing at anything but that narrow cluster of notes at one impassioned pitch?<\/em> How do fans of his music put up with his tone? How do non-fans of his work, among us I know there are many, not cut on the guy for singing what sounds like the same harranging note through countless songs?<\/p>\n<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ij738Q-wWmk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe guy made the most of the video age. It sure beat dressing up onstage like an alien clown\/sunflower. Here&#8217;s another stop-action video from 1992, for the minor hit <strong>&#8220;Digging in the Dirt&#8221;<\/strong>. Take a listen to what Gabriel&#8217;s up to musically: the ideas are pretty cool in that David Byrne\/Brian Eno post-World Music way, but he&#8217;s applied the <strong>Sam Ash Sound<\/strong> to his arrangement. Almost all his music, for all the props he gets for his progressive, lakeside studio, sounds like it was recorded using the Sam Ash Sound. <em>Isn&#8217;t it time he&#8217;s taken to task for this? What makes Gabriel untouchable when every other established rock artist is fair game?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is it about Peter Gabriel that&#8217;s made him an untouchable among critics and rock nerds? Beside the &#8220;Sledgehammer&#8221; single\/video, which rock nerds feel free to dismiss and mock, the guy seems to have been given a free ride despite having been one of the most over-the-top of tuneless prog-rockers and a long-time enabler of <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-untouchables-starring-peter-gabriel\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[87,96],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}