It shows no or at best only the most minuscule traces of the style that would make them well-known later, and therefore frequently meets with a refusal and lack of affection. Justly so?
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An interesting documentary, " No Admittance" aired in 1991 to complement the release of "We Can't Dance". Included within the doc are: excerpts from music videos; a round table Q&A with the band; and the writing, recording, and editing of the album itself (quite like Phil Collins' "The Making of the 'Mama' Album")
Originally released on VHS in September 1994, and re-released on DVD and Bluray in 2012, Secret World Live captures the extraordinary live tour, conceived by Peter Gabriel and Robert Lepage, that accompanied the release of Peter’s sixth solo album, US.
The concert is also available on CD, LP and digital.
The Secret World tour saw Peter and his band play more than 150 shows around the world during 1993 and 1994. The concert was filmed across two nights (16 & 17 November 1993) at the Palasport Nuovo in Modena, Italy and was directed by François Girard.
During this tour Peter’s band consisted of Manu Katché (drums), Tony Levin (bass, vocals), David Rhodes (guitars, vocals), Jean Claude Naimro (keyboards, vocals), Shankar (violin, vocals), Levon Minassian (doudouk) and Paula Cole (vocals) with special guests were Papa Wemba and Molokai. Peter on vocals and keyboards.
Robert Lepage is a French Canadian writer, actor, director and multi-disciplinary creator. From his background in 80s experimental punk drama to his position in the 90s mainstream, his work has always been highly visual and thematically wide-ranging. He works with traditional theatrical conventions and, using language and image as equal purveyors of his vision, radically transforms them.
Recently Robert worked closely with designer Rolf Engel of Atelier Markgraph and with Peter Gabriel on the set design and staging of the Secret World Tour. I met Robert at the production rehearsals for the show. An animated but soft-spoken man, energy teems below the surface of his carefully chosen words and his intense, spectacularly eyebrow-less gaze.
The Secret World Tour production design presented Robert with the challenge of integrating the intimacy and very personal nature of the music on US into the impersonal environment of the large arena settings that the tour will be playing. “The emotions on US are very complex, going from the solitary notion of oneself, to the relationship of the couple and out into the wider context of the world, US, everyone.” Robert wished to explore all of these relationships, and to use the design of the stage to personify the male and female, the singular and plural nature of US. He also wanted to provide a space where these interpersonal relations could be clearly acted out.
So the stage production shows US and becomes US at the same time. Robert plays with the themes of collision, clashing, meeting and overlapping and resulting separation – the sexual and personal aspects of meeting and then pulling away again.
"Games Without Frontiers" is a song written and recorded by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel. It was released on his 1980 self-titled third studio album, where it included backing vocals by Kate Bush. The song's lyrics are interpreted as a commentary on war and international diplomacy being like children's games. The music video includes film clips of Olympic Games events and scenes from the educational film Duck and Cover (1951), which used a cartoon turtle to instruct US schoolchildren on what to do in case of nuclear attack. This forlorn imagery tends to reinforce the song's anti-war theme. Two versions of the music video were initially created for the song, followed by a third one made in 2004.
The single became Gabriel's first top-10 hit in the United Kingdom, peaking at No. 4, and – tied with 1986's "Sledgehammer" – his highest-charting song in the United Kingdom. It peaked at No. 7 in Canada, but only at No. 48 in the United States. The B-side of the single consisted of two tracks combined into one: "Start" and "I Don't Remember".
Gabriel's first two solo studio albums were distributed in the US by Atlantic Records, but they rejected his third studio album (which contained this track), telling Gabriel he was committing "commercial suicide". Atlantic dropped him but tried to buy the album back when "Games Without Frontiers" took off in the UK and started getting airplay in the US. At that point Gabriel wanted nothing to do with Atlantic, and let Mercury Records distribute the album in America.
The song's title refers to Jeux sans frontières, a long-running TV show broadcast in several European countries. Teams representing a town or city in one of the participating countries would compete in games of skill, often while dressed in bizarre costumes. While some games were simple races, others allowed one team to obstruct another. The British version was titled It's a Knockout—words that Gabriel mentions in the lyrics.
"It seemed to have several layers to it", Gabriel observed. "I just began playing in a somewhat light-hearted fashion – 'Hans and Lottie ...' – so it looked, on the surface, as just kids. The names themselves are meaningless, but they do have certain associations with them. So it's almost like a little kids' activity room. Underneath that, you have the TV programme [and the] sort of nationalism, territorialism, competitiveness that underlies all that assembly of jolly people."
The lyrics "Adolf builds a bonfire/Enrico plays with it" echo lines from Evelyn Waugh's V-J Day diary ("Randolph built a bonfire and Auberon fell into it").
Musically, "Games Without Frontiers" opens with a mixture of acoustic and electronic percussion accompanied by a countoff. Synth bass and an angular slide guitar figure enter with Kate Bush's vocals, creating a "dark sonic environment" as described by AllMusic reviewer Steve Huey.[5] Following the final chorus, the song segues into a percussion breakdown punctuated by synth and guitar effects.
Gabriel's 1991 performance of the song from the Netherlands was beamed via satellite to Wembley Arena in England as part of "The Simple Truth" concert for Kurdish refugees.
