Peter Gabriel has brought out another Encore Series from his Back To Front tour 2012. Soundboard recordings from all shows (except one) are officially available from the website themusic.com, which makes them something like official bootlegs. Each show can be bought individually as a 2CD set. You can also buy a North American Collectors' CD Box in a cardboard box and a North American Deluxe CD Road Case. To top even that, you can get all shows and cases with microphone-shaped USB sticks instead of CDs.
All about that and the shows themselves below.
The exterior
The CD Road case has the tour logo. Apart from that it is the same design as the road cases from earlier Encore series. It is also made by the same company, only it is slightly bigger than, say, the 2003 roadcase, though that had more shows.
In the size of a CD booklet the tour programme has been added as a bonus. Unlike the big programme that was available at the shows it contains only photos that appertain directly to the tour alongside a list of tour dates and nothing about Gabriel's other projects and fields of interest. The box also comes with five tour photos as individual prints.
The CDs come in the same sleeves as the individually available ones. They are made of simple brown cardboard with the five confused faces, place and location. The back shows the track lists in a print that is intentionally lopsided and blurred. The CDs themselves are white with clean black print. The Encore concept that was conceived in 2003 is thus being continued consistently and without major changes.
USB Sticks
This time around for the first time the shows are being offered on USB sticks. Unless they are ordered in the Road Case or the Collector's Box they come in a specially made little box with a foam inlay. Cover and tracklist are provided on a separate sheet. The stick is quite heavy, some 3in long (7.5cm) and 1in wide (2.5cm) at the widest point of the mike. The microphone handle has the colour of anodized aluminum. It actually is metal with an engraving (or imprint) that reads So Back To Front 2012 you can just about make out with the naked eye. The USB contact is located in the silver mike head that can be pulled off the handle. The width makes it a bit ungainly, depending on what kind of equipment you use to read the stick and how the USB ports are located.
If you plug the stick into your computer it shows up as "show XX“. It contains full-blown wave files so that the data is lossless. There is a subfolder called PG Tour Bonus Material. In it there are two live shots (one of which has been used several times for promo purposes) and the cover artwork without the concert engraving. As a nice gesture a 70MB PDF document of the tourbook was included; this is not on the 2CD sets.
The USB sticks leave an excellent impression. Though there were apparently some issues with the first batch the sticks we examined are perfectly alright and of good quality.
Band
The fans were equally surprised and delighted to hear that Gabriel would play this tour with the same band as on the So concerts in 1987. It is particularly great that he managed to get Manu Katché who has become a respected artist in his own right in the meantime. Though he does not play as furiously as back then he still drives the songs forward with his trademark elegance. David Sancious, whose jazzy influence left a strong mark on the 1987 performances, remains a bit more unobtrusive. There are few moments for him to shine. Old hand Tony Levin grooves with lots of soul, as is his wont, and still finds the time to shoot photos for his website. David Rhodes and his guitar work have, surprisingly, been moved to the fore in the mixes. His input had not been heard so clearly so far. The 2012 tour brings in „two new friends“, too. Jennie Abrahamson and Linnea Olsson take over backing vocal duties. Linnea joined the band at very short notice when Ane Brun got sick, and Jennie was promoted to „backing vocalist with solo duties“.
Setlist
Gabriel has played the same set throughout the 2012 tours. In San Jose he began to occasionally drop Washing Of The Water for Humdrum. Apart from that the evening is divided into three courses, as he explains before: The first course begins with an unfinished song without concrete lyrics and leads into two and a half acoustic songs, This is meant to represent the evolution of songs that begin their lives as raw piano versions before they are developed in sessions. The second course consists of pieces in the usual, fully plugged-in arrangements, a cross-section of Gabriel's oeuvre. The third course, the dessert, as it were, consists of the full So album without any announcements in the playing order Gabriel originally intended. Encores comprise The Tower That Ate People and Biko. No songs from Up are played...
Arrangements
On the whole, Gabriel plays his songs in the old familiar arrangements, which is a bit regrettable because he does not lift the whole potential of his musicians in order to preserve the „Gabriel sound“. Apart from that it is worth while pointing out some other things.
The fact that Gabriel offers acoustic versions of Come Talk To Me and especially Shock The Monkey, a song he has not played regularly for twenty years, may be a result of his work with the orchestral arrangements. With those he has seen that pressure and tension can be created with quiet means, and Shock The Monkey proves the point. No Self Control follows the live version of 1987. It is also one of the few moments where David Sancious can really shine. Jennia Abrahamnson as a duet partner is a piece of luck; she sings a great Don't Give Up, perhaps the best version since Paula Cole's. That Voice Again is played consistently for the first time ever on a tour. It has an austere, too austere, arrangement that does not make full use of the song's potential. Big Time, which returned to set lists in 2007, remains a challenge. The vocals are often a bit muddled. This Is The Picture is back after a long time. It has been given an attractive structure and benefits from the female voices. The coordination amongst the musicians goes wrong in many shows (because of the dance moves?) so that the song begins to wobble a bit.
The recordings
The sound quality is as excellent as we can expect from the previous Encores. The mixes are basically clear and well-balanced. Sometimes single instruments stick out, particularly keyboards or guitars. The latter really come into their own, though it is also overdone at times. The volume of the audience is much reduced and depends on whether you hear music or an announcement. There is often an annoying surge in volume for the long applauses before the encores.
It should also be notes that the track marks have been placed with no sense at all so that they cut into the last word of the announcement or even into the first note of the music.
16/09/12 Quebec City - Pepsi Colisée
18/09/12 Montreal - Bell Centre
19/09/12 Toronto - Air Canada Centre
21/09/12 Philadelphia - Wells Fargo
23/09/12 Wantaugh - Nikon at Jones Beach
24/09/12 Boston - TD Garden
26/09/12 Detroit - Palace Of Auburn Hills
27/09/12 Chicago - United Center
30/09/12 Denver - Red Rocks
02/10/12 San Jose - HP Pavilion
05/10/12 Las Vegas - Planet Hollywood Showroom
06/10/12 Los Angeles - Hollywood Bowl
08/10/12 San Diego - Valley View Casino
09/10/12 Santa Barbara - County Bowl
13/10/12 Uncasville - Mohegan Sun
14/10/12 Virginia - Patriot Center
Encore Series - ordering information
To order the 2CD sets or the USB sticks please visit TheMusic.com. You will need a credit card or a paypal account. 2CD sets are US$15, the USB sticks cost US$20. Add P&P to that: usually US$6,88 to Europe, unless you choose „fast delivery“ at a higher price. Because of customs regulations it may be a good idea to order only two or three 2CD sets in one go. The USB sticks are shipped individually in small boxes. As the number of items grows so do the shipping costs. There are also several other shipping option. Every now and then there are specials where you can get older Encore Series items, e.g. by Genesis, at reduced prices.
by Thomas Schrage, Volker Warncke, Christian Gerhardts and Steffen Gerlach, English by Martin Klinkhardt
Peter Gabriel created a mixture of the World Music in Passion with the Mainstream of So.
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