peter gabriel, unassuming

Last Friday I noticed that there was a massive dump of peter gabriel rarities in the form of a digital-only BSOG. Of course, that made me think of my attempt at such a beast back in 2006. I had wanted to compile all peter gabriel rarities from the moment he left Genesis to just after the “So” album. I had a lot of this material on singles, but I tackled the web and looked up what else I needed on the nascent internet and found out what early, obscure single material I would need and set about buying it up. I started this in the late 90s. I recall finding one or two of the rare 7″ singles from his first two albums on ebay. The fact that I was buying records on ebay really dates this part of the tale! It’s been well over a dozen years since I can remember that happening! I also remember buying one or two things in an actual store! Heartbeat Records in Kent, Ohio, which was packed with good finds the one time I went there in the summer of 2001. I also remember buying a copy of the “Red Rain” single for the instro B-side on it only to find out the record was trashed; necessitating the purchase of another copy. By 2006, I had all of the pieces of the puzzle in hand and made my move; a 3xCD set with 32 tracks from 1976-1988.

Now peter gabriel’s label Real World, has done all of that and more. In theory. As of last Friday one can buy/stream gabriel’s “Flotsam + Jetsam;” named for a deep cut on his second album. Let’s examine the contents.

Real World | DL | 2019

peter gabriel: Flotsam + Jetsam DL [2019]

1976-1985

1. Strawberry Fields Forever
2. Slowburn (Extended Version)
3. Perspective (Single Version)
4. D.I.Y. (Re-Recorded Single Version)
5. Teddy Bear
6. Mother Of Violence (Single Mix)
7. Solsbury Hill (Live at the Bottom Line)
8. I Don’t Remember (Alternate Version)
9. Biko (Remixed Version)
10. Shosholoza
11. Jetzt Kommt Die Flut
12. Soft Dog
13. Shock The Monkey (Instrumental)
14. Across The River
15. Kiss Of Life (Live)
16. I Don’t Remember (Live Single Version)

1986-1993

1. I Have The Touch (85 Remix)
2. Sledgehammer (Dance Mix)
3. Sledgehammer (Extended)
4. Don’t Break This Rhythm (Full Version)
5. In Your Eyes (Single Mix)
6. In Your Eyes (Special Remix)
7. Big Time (Extended Version)
8. Curtains
9. Ga Ga (‘I Go Swimming’ Instrumental)
10. Walk Through The Fire (Single Mix)
11. Biko (Live)
12. Digging In The Dirt (Raw Stylus Mix)
13. Digging In The Dirt (Instrumental)
14. Quiet Steam
15. Bashi-Bazouk
16. Games Without Frontiers (Massive/Db Mix)
17. Steam (Oh, Oh, Let Off Steam Mix)
18. Steam (Oh, Oh, Let Off Steam Mix Dub)
19. Mercy Street (William Orbit Mix)
20. Blood Of Eden (Special Mix For Wim Wenders Until The End Of The World)
21. Digging In The Dirt (Rich E Mix)
22. Kiss That Frog (Mindblender Mix)
23. Shaking The Tree (Bottrill Remix)

1994-2016

1. Summertime
2. Suzanne
3. I Have The Touch (Remix)
4. In The Sun
5. Shaking The Tree 97 (Jungle Version)
6. I Grieve (City Of Angels Version)
7. The Tower That Ate People (Red Planet Remix)
8. Animal Nation
9. Signal To Noise (Gangs Of New York Version)
10. More Than This (The Polyphonic Spree Mix)
11. More Than This (Elbow Mix)
12. My Head Sounds Like That (Röyksopp Remix)
13. Sky Blue (Martyn Bennett Remix)
14. Growing Up (Trent Reznor Remix)
15. Growing Up (Stabilizer Remix)
16. Growing Up (Tricky Instrumental Mix)
17. Darkness (Engelspost Remix)
18. Curtains (Broad Mix)
19. Father, Son (Daniel Lanois & Richard Chappell Mix)
20. Courage
21. Courage (The Hexidecimal Mix)
22. I’m Amazing
23. The Veil

This was a big, fat core dump of 62 cuts. Almost twice the 32 tracks of my more modest set. But anything he did after “So” had not resonated with me. And though the rarities from that album period are slightly stronger than the bulk of the album itself, there were a few things done immediately afterward that weren’t too bad. I didn’t like “Shakin’ The Tree” or anything else after that I’d heard. So now I’ll compare and contrast with my own set.

REVO | US | CD-R | 2006 | REVO 037

peter gabriel: Trilogy US 3xCD-R [2006]

Disc 1

1. Strawberry Fields Forever
2. D.I.Y. [Re-Recorded Single Version]
3. Me + My Teddy Bear
4. Perspective [Single Version)
5. Here Comes The Flood [Exposure version]
6. Screaming Jets [Johnny Warman]
7. I Don’t Remember [Alternate Version]
8. Biko [Remixed Version]
9. Shosholoza
10. Jetzt Kommt Die Flut
11. Not One Of Us [Live Leicester 1980]
12. Humdrum [Live NYC 1980]

Disc 2

1. Ain’t That Peculiar [Live 1977 Chicago]
2. Soft Dog
3. Across The River
4. Excellent Birds [Mister Heartbreak version]
5. I Don’t Remember [live single remix]
6. Kiss Of Life [Live]
7. Walk Through The Fire [Single remix]
8. Out Out [‘Gremlins’ OST]
9. No More Apartheid [‘Sun City’ LP]
10. Sledgehammer [Extended]

Disc 3

1. Don’t Break This Rhythm
2. I Have The Touch [85 Remix]
3. Sledgehammer [Dance Mix]
4. In Your Eyes [Special Remix]
5. Big Time [Extended Version]
6. Curtains
7. Ga Ga [‘I Go Swimming’ Instrumental]
8. Biko [Live single version]
9. My Secret Place [7” version – Joni Mitchell duet]
10. Biko [live @ Secret Policemen’s Ball]

The back cover to the box

While the title of my set is admittedly perfunctory [I’d used it earlier for another 3xCD-R of rarities by Bryan Ferry in 2003], It looks like I was on the front end of the zeitgeist train by choosing to use blood platelet imagery along with photos of gabriel in the packaging. I seem to recall that I took the opening footage of the “Sledgehammer” video as a jumping off point for the design and thought to myself, “blood cells – that’s what this design needed!” Then following the “Scratch My Back” album of 2009, gabriel began using  blood cells the way Simple Minds used Claddaghs!

After 2009, gabriel was all about the blood! As the album and DVD designs above clearly show. What I want to know is, was I influenced by something other than my memories of the “Sledgehammer” video? Or was I just ahead of the design curve? I really can’t decide.

To weed out the differences in the sets, I have colored any tracks on “Flotsam + Jetsam”that I lacked in blue. While coloring any songs I included that are not in this new larger set in red. The tracks gabriel included that were not interesting to me, I made gray.

The first thing I immediately saw was a track that was a 1978 flexidisc in ZigZag magazine in the UK. This was “Solsbury Hill” recorded live at The Bottom Line in New York City. This wa sonly added to the Discogs database four years ago, so I clearly had no idea about the existence of this track 13 years ago! This is a candidate to buy ala carte from iTunes should I want to remaster my set to something more complete.

The next thing I didn’t have was the “Slowburn” extended version. That’s because this was uncovered just for this set. Much more galling was the fact that there was a single version of “Mother Of Violence” included on the B-side of the “D.I.Y.” UK 7″ single [which I did own, thank you very much]. I included the very different single remix of “D.I.Y.” as well as “Me + My Teddy Bear,” but shamefully neglected to needle drop “Mother of Violence” also on the B-side of the disc! Yes, it was another buried treasure that I neglected to verify by simply playing my records! The pain, the pain!

I had the UK 7″ of “Shock The Monkey” for the “Soft Dog” B-side. The 12″ single un the UK was the same as the US 12″ with the LP version of the A-side and “Soft Dog” on the flip side. What I did not know at the time was that there was a second UK 12″ [cat. no. SHOCK 350] which had a cover proclaiming “Soft Dog” as the B-side while actually containing “Shock The Monkey [instrumental version].” That sounds like one of those things that drive collectors mad. Only by looking at the label can you be assured of getting the track! Those sorts of hijinx make mail order so less than optimal for building a collection!

Another new track in the set was the full length 6:05 version of “Don’t Break this Rhythm,” the “Sledgehammer” B-side. Another anomaly was the 6:15 A-side version of “In Your Eyes!” The LP version was 5:29 so that one was different. I had the 7 minute+ “Special Mix” on the B-side of the UK “Don’t Give Up” 7″ that Mr. Ware had given me and at the time, that was as far as I thought that thread went. I may have not known at the time that “In Your Eyes” was not a single in the UK.

Next: …The Other Side Of The Coin