Peter Gabriel
Hammersmith Odeon, London
December 20, 1978
Audience-recording of unknown gen., supplied by “The Marathon Zephead”
Disc 1:
- Peter Gabriel Introduction – 3.24
- Me and My Teddy Bear – 2.22
- On Presuming to Be Modern – 2.46
- On the Air – 4.38
- Moribund the Burgermeister – 5.13
- Perspective – 4.46
- Humdrum – 4.42
- Nothing (early Not One of Us / Family Snapshot) – 3.40
- White Shadow – 5.59
- D.I.Y. – 3.38
- Waiting for the Big One – 6.06
Disc 2:
- Band Introductions – 1.40
- Mother of Violence – 4.31
- Indigo – 4.04
- Slowburn – 5.17
- I Don’t Remember – 5.43
- Solsbury Hill – 6.22
- Modern Love – 5.25
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – 5.52
Total Running Time: 47.14 + 38.54 = 86.08
Nearing the end of the tour supporting his second album, like the previous one simply called
ëPeter Gabrielí, Gabriel played five nights in sequence at the famed Hammersmith Odeon in London.
The first of these is documented on this recording. The five gigs are memorable for several reasons:
one night had Phil Collins drumming, another one was a special duet gig with Tom Robinson to
celebrate Christmas, but overall the gigs were memorable for their performances, which had been
finetuned after the many gigs played during that year.
Where the 1977 Tour was as basic as possible in the dressing department, this yearís tour saw the
band wearing fluorescent vests, while Peter was apart from this also wearing gardening gloves and
brought his teddy bear to accompany him for the first song ëMe and My Teddy Bearí. Along with some
lengthy verbal bantering by Peter this can be heard on the recording as well. It takes quite a bit
ëtil the actual first full band song commences after another intro, this time one of Larry Fastís.
With full power the band launch themselves into a rousing version of ëOn the Airí.
This first night of the Hammersmith Odeon shows features ëIndigoí, which was only rarely done on the
1978 tour, but made a short reappearance into the set over here. The highlight of the gig
performance-wise might be ëWhite Shadowí though. Where early on in the tour the song was fairly
similar to the album, here the song is played extremely tight, with Jerry Marotta banging the kick
drum in the instrumental intro and interlude.
With itís unusual first 10 minutes and Peter talking more than ever, this tour was quite playful.
Another example of this is the rendition of an unreleased song by the name of ëNothingí, which would
eventually be worked into both ëNot One of Usí and ëFamily Snapshotí. During ëWaiting for the Big Oneí
Gabriel went into the audience this tour, with him disappearing and then popping up at a totally
different spot in the venue, picked up by a spotlight. At the end of the song the whole band switch
instruments and finish the song that way. This lets Peter return to his very first instrument:
the drums!
All in all, the 1978 tour and this show in particular were fun gigs, where Peter and the band didnít
take themselves too serious, but were able to deliver by rocking out with some strong performances.
WHAT WAS DONE?
The tape was first transferred as a 32-bit wave, with the azimuth adjusted to zero.
Since the recording turned out to be mono, only one channel was used to eliminate phasing problems.
As the recording was very hissy, noise reduction was used, in various small steps to reduce the noise
with less annoying artifacts, but with good overall results. After this, the recording was speed
corrected, as it run at the wrong speed.
Equalisation was done to get a better balanced sound.
The biggest of the improvements was done with multiband compression. Since the recording was quite
distorted and compressed the dynamics in the different frequency bands were expanded quite a bit
to let the recording breathe more and mask the distortion. It’s still very much present, but not
as much in the way as before, and it’s now certainly listenable. Also, during the multiband
compression some of the heavier reverb and some more hiss was reduced.
After this, a little equalisation was again done to get the optimum balance in sound. In between
songs Peter was hardly understandable due to heavy reverb on his voice, which turned out to be mainly
in the bass regions. Here the lower frequencies were reduced a bit to make Peter’s speech more
audible.
Since the recording was still mono, two slight different multitap delays were added, and a little
reverb to open up the space.
Finally Ozone 3 was run over all of it, not to change the sound very much for which it can be used as
well, but only slight changes and especially to normalize the sound.
Then fade-ins and fade-outs were applied, the whole file was converted to 16-bit again and then cut
up in tracks. The files were converted to FLAC.
THANK YOU TO:
Thanks to “The Marathon Zephead” for letting me browse through his complete 1978 collection!
As always, hope you enjoy this remaster!
Jesper Moonen
January 28, 2007
If you have any comments, a question, or perhaps even have an unusual Gabriel
recording (on tape, CD, or anything else), which you would like to offer to the
project, just send me an e-mail at sledgehammer86 AT hotmail DOT com
themidnightcafe.org 