PETER GABRIEL 3 [AKA: MELT]

"I don't remember, I don't recall. I have no memory, of anything at all" except for the memorable concert intro for this album's promo tour in 1981, when the arena's lights dimmed , "Intruder" blaring from the speakers and the avid fans waiting for the musicians to show up on stage. As usual with Gabriel, always expect the unexpected, especially in a theatrical live setting, where all seven musicians arrive each dressed in orange overalls, each with a portable Klieg light apparatus and each entering from a different entrance throughout the building, wildly sweeping beams of white light crisscrossing the cavernous hall's airspace. Visually spellbinding, as they meet in synchronized time, at the mixing console, seven columns of light create a pyramid like effect that has each spectator enthralled. Before a single live note is played, the accumulated fans are already hoarse from the exalted creativity of this much maligned artists. For those who incorrectly judge Gabriel as too pop for a once progressive icon, they have never attended one of his concerts! With that kind of context in proper perspective, this is undoubtedly Gabriel's solo career recording apex, a shimmering set of masterful songs, extremely progressive (the deliberate omission of any cymbals) in a percussive sense, thus giving Levin's Stick and Giblin's fretless a front and center showcase to blow the listener away (I consider this one of the finest displays of four string rumbling ever). The quality just keeps coming from "Intruder" on, with the genius simplicity of "I Don't Remember", the introspective "Family Snapshot", the imperial and apartheid critical "Biko", the Cold War sarcasm of "Games Without Frontiers" and the raging "Not One of Us". Just looking at the line up of musicians is enough to make one's head spin (Levin, Giblin, Marotta, Collins, Fast, Rhodes, Bush,.) and Peter surely delivers with some of his best vocal work ever. When music is this well slapped together, you got to give credit to his courage and his progressive attitude in creating such a milestone. Still welcome after all these years. 4 faded pics