Music Matters
After decades of being a progressive alt-rock frontman has Peter Gabriel run outof ideas?
I’m truly scared for what might happen on Thursday night at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion when Peter Gabriel & The New Blood Orchestra take the amphitheater stage.
I’m uncomfortable because I feel that, after 40+ years of being ahead of the curve with his brand of theatrical rock, it’s possible that the former Genesis vocalist-turned-solo-genius might finally have landed in an artistic rut he can’t dig out from.
I’m tentative because I have been a die-hard Gabriel fan since the first time I saw that landmark stop-motion video for mid-80s hit, “Sledgehammer,” while glued to MTV as a teenager, and I don’t quite get what he’s doing right now.
In past incarnations, Gabriel has been an avant-garde thespian who embodied characters like Rael from the 1974 Genesis concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. His bawdy showmanship in the band’s early rock operas was one-of-several factors that forced him to leave the group. He wowed audiences with early alt-rock solo hits like “Games Without Frontiers,” “Shock The Monkey,” and the aforementioned “Sledgehammer,” just to show he could be a mainstream radio idol.
And then Gabriel turned around and started a world music label, Real World, just to show how little that sort of celebrity meant to him when compared to bringing unknown artists from the edges of the Earth to prominence.
Gabriel has been a statesman, a political and humanitarian activist, an artist and — as of last year — a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (along with the rest of Genesis). But now, at the age of 61, Gabriel is nearly two decades removed from his last hit single (1993’s “Kiss That Frog”) and watched a decade go by since his last full album of original music (2002’s Up).
I don’t understand how a new album of randomly-chosen cover songs, Scratch My Back, enhances his catalog and I don’t understand why featuring these songs live to start his current show – as opposed to more of his own rich, original catalog — is a good idea. Finally I don’t understand why Gabriel would do all of this with an orchestra instead of one of those wildly theatrical rock bands of the past.
After all that time on the cutting edge it seems that Gabriel is now playing it safe… and he finally lost me in the process. I truly hope I’m wrong about Thursday’s show.
Peter Gabriel & The New Blood Orchestra, Thursday 8 p.m. at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
