P.O.V.

"P.O.V."= "Point of View". This video was filmed during several concerts that Peter Gabriel and his band played in Athens, Greece, between 5 and 9 October 1987. The first time that I watched this video was in a T.V. broadcast in my country, in a goverment`s cultural T.V. channel, in September 1993, some days before Peter Gabriel`s concerts in my city. I also watched this video, but in edited form, in another T.V. channel`s broadcast in 1994. It seems for me that this last broadcasted version was a specially edited version for T.V., as it was a version of 60 minutes, but with the final credits being shown over the images of "Lay Your Hands of Me", in a different form than in the complete version. I recorded both broadcasts in videocassettes. I can`t say if the 60 minutes version was also available for buying in record/video shops. My comments are about the full version of 90 minutes. It is a very good concert video, directed by Martin Scorsese, which not only includes the images from the Athens concerts, but Scorsese and Gabriel also filmed some video scenes on which Gabriel appears singing or "acting" the songs. These videos were edited and shown with the concert images, without really affecting the concet images, and sometimes illustrating the content of the lyrics. Some examples of these successful uses of these videos for illustrating lyrics are :"Games Without Frontiers", "No Self Control", "Mercy Street".In my opinion, Gabriel is one of the artists who does a very good use of images to illustrate lyrics, and I also think that his videos are among the best I have seen. Seeing Gabriel in concert is really very interesting. I went to one of the concerts that he played here in my city in September 1993. Despite that he is not one of my favourite musicians (sometimes I have to be really in the mood to hear his albums or to watch his videos), seeing this "P.O.V." video and being in the 1993 concert were for me very good experiences. Gabriel sings with feeling in concert and he really moves the listener with some songs. In this "P.O.V." video, particularly in "Mercy Street", I can see that Gabriel is a very good artist, singing with great feeling. It seems that this video is out of print, and it has not been relased on the DVD format.