LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Peter Gabriel: So
built 503 days ago
After hitting a sophomore jinx with Peter Gabriel, on Atlantic, the first man of Genesis fulfills the promise of Peter Gabriel, on Atco--with pessimistic postprog art-rock minidrama rather than DIY DOR. "Games Without Frontiers," a different kind of internationalism, and "Biko," a different kind of Africanism, lead and finish side two rather than side one. Either he doesn't know his own strengths or he underestimates his audience--or both.
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As alluded to in the first verse, Peter was ... at the time, highly influenced by short wave radio. He was particularly facinated that the radio would burst into life at night. Peter has rather confusingly stated that "...night time is more of an internal landscape, because you have more sensory information." Perhaps what he was trying to say was that for humans as highly visual creatures, the night time reduction in visual stimulation leads to a more introspective bent. Such a state of mind would provide fertile ground for the "psychic breakthrough" of Here Comes the Flood. For the flood here is a metaphor for a mental revolution. Peter envisaged a telepathic society where people would instantly be able to read each others' minds.
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Gabriel ... had an interest in film and in theatrics. In the 1970s, he wore a variety of increasingly outlandish costumes while in Genesis. In the late '70s and early '80s, even before MTV debuted, he began making a series of groundbreaking videos. His 1982 video for "Shock The Monkey" was practically a template for aspiring MTV rockers: its editing mixed black and white and color film, and rather than simply present Gabriel singing on stage, or in front of the then-ubiquitous blown-out white backdrops, placed him in strange make-up, in some of nightmarish scenario. It's difficult to make out what's going on-but boy does it look simultaneously scary and cool!
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In 1989, Gabriel released Passion, the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's movie The Last Temptation of Christ. For this work Gabriel received his first Grammy Award, in the category of Best New Age Performance. He ... received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score - Motion Picture.
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Gabriel's methods are similar to those of Graham Greene, Raymond Chandler and Eric Ambler. The singer establishes an "innocent" character who watches the corruption of society from a distance until he finds himself being pulled inexorably toward the center of events. Finally, he's uncertain where observation ends and complicity begins. This is the essence of modern-day moral geometry – even the passive man must act–but that doesn't make it any less scary.
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Before he kicked off the So tour in 1986, Peter had embarked on a political tour for Amnesty International which would find a repeat in 1988’s HUMAN RIGHTS NOW world tour with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour. On the latter tour concerts took place in the strangest locations. With these tours and assorted appearances at political or charity concerts (e.g. the concerts for Mandela or the Simple Truth gig for the Kurds) he had become the leading actor in the charity-circus.
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