[Kronomyth 10.5]
Peter Gabriel (I & II), remarketed.
This, this is what happens when supply doesn’t meet demand! (Crickets.) Okay, so maybe the idea of Atlantic Records profiting from Peter Gabriel’s supply chain problems doesn’t light a fire under your butt. With the success of So and Us, who could blame Atlantic for getting that nostalgic pang under their money belt? The thing is, they could have just as easily reissued his first two albums. Instead they decided to revisit them, which is mucking about with history and making more work for discographers. If you’re afraid to spend the money on two Peter Gabriel discs, oeuvres un et deux wouldn’t be what’s for dinner anyway; you’d save the cash for So, the third, Security. So who, other than a helpess collector like me, would want this disc? Was there really a market for people out there who bought the first two albums (or were thinking of buying them), and decided that investing the cash in a digitally remastered compilation of the two would be the better investment? (That’s three questions, for anyone counting, and all No answers.) It really is a shoetree for a snake*, this Revisited. Heaven forbid you enjoy it, you’ll be on the hook to buy the first two Gabriel records to hear what you’re missing. (And you are missing something.) It’s the very definition of dispensable. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a more useless record than Revisited. No alternate versions, no freebies, no nuthin, just a pre-made mixtape from Gabriel’s first and second for the clueless consumer. Tsk. You hate to see a snake like this loitering in Gabriel’s garden, but there’s no undoing it now.
(* I have no idea what I originally meant with this. Sometimes that happens. I usually mean something—I mean, I don’t just string meaningless words together—but the allusion is often lost on me years later.)
The Songs
1. On The Air
2. Modern Love
3. Indigo
4. Solsbury Hill
5. Perpsective
6. Waiting For The Big One
7. Animal Magic
8. Humdrum
9. D.I.Y.
10. Mother of Violence (Peter Gabriel/Jill Gabriel)
11. Slowburn
12. Exposure (Peter Gabriel/Robert Fripp)
13. Moribund The Burgemeister
14. Flotsam And Jetsam
15. Here Comes The Flood
All songs written by Peter Gabriel unless noted.
The Players
Peter Gabriel (voices, keyboard, flute, recorder, synthesizer, piano), Jozef Chirowski (frontal keyboard, synthibam, bones), Larry Fast (synthesizer & treatments), Robert Fripp (electric guitar, classical guitar, banjo, Frippertronics), Steve Hunter (full frontal guitar, electric and acoustic rhythm guitar, pedal steel), Tony Levin (bass, tuba, background vocals, string bass, recorder arrangements, Chapman stick), Jerry Marotta (drums, background vocals), Sidney McGinnis (electric guitar, steel guitar, background vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin), Allan Schwartzberg (drums & directories) with Bayete (keyboards), Roy Bittan (keyboards), Timmy Capello (saxophone), George Marge (recorders), Dick Wagner (background vocals, solo guitar). Compiled by Bob Kaus; research coordinated by Michael A. Mazzarella; executive producer: Val Azzoli.
The Pictures
Art direction by Tom Bouman. Design by Tom Bouman, Ron Jaramillo.
The Plastic
Released on compact disc and cassette on November 10, 1992 in the US and Canada (Atlantic, 82429).
What a sorry compilation. As you once said that no matter how uneven Peter Gabriel’s first two solo albums were, “a shortcut to [his] early work is a disservice; fans should hear both albums in their entirety.” As for the “shoetree for a snake” remark, someone once informed me that maybe what you meant is the fact that snakes don’t even wear shoes, so what good is a shoetree for them? They wouldn’t even be able to pick one up.
Thank you, Miles. Yes, I don’t know why the shoetree for a snake thing threw me. Maybe I got stuck on the sound of the words, since I sometimes throw things together just for sound’s sake. (A little sneaky/snakey sibilance there.)