I am the intruder.
Hey.
It's been a month and a week since I posted. What have I been up to in all that time?
Getting accustomed to the new apartment. Holding a housewarming shindig in said pad. Discovering a hidden bird's nest on the balcony of said pad. Going to my sister's wedding in Saskatchewan. Writing a couple of news stories for Digital Journal. Skyping with the lady in London. Working too much.
There are a thousand things I ought to be doing right now, instead of updating an LJ that I don't use much these days. But when I work late at the day job job (as I frequently have lately), I come home too tired and grouchy to do anything constructive. All I have the energy left to do is watch TV or surf the net, stealing away the free time I rarely seem to have these days.
This week, I've seen three shows in a span of five days. (No wonder I can't seem to save any money.) Two of them were Soulpepper plays, and both were excellent: Our Town last Saturday and Billy Bishop Goes to War on Monday. I hear they're doing The Glass Menagerie, one of my favourite plays of all time, next month. Must make a plan.
Last night, I went to the Peter Gabriel concert at Ontario Place -- the tour he's doing with the New Blood Orchestra (no guitars, no drums). It was wonderful. Pete's gotten old -- he's nearly bald, with a very visible paunch and a white goatee that made him remind me a little of the Burl Ives snowman from Rudolph -- but his voice is still in great shape. It was a little disorienting, finally seeing in person a singer whose voice and music has been a soundtrack to so much of my life, only to see him as a silver-haired sixty-one-year-old. In many of his old videos, he's younger than I am now.
The show didn't have the wild, spectacular laser visuals of his older concerts (as I've seen on DVDs), but some of the orchestral arrangements were beautiful. "Wallflower" was amazing, "Digging in the Dirt" seemed surprisingly Wagnerian, "Biko" and a few others had everybody on their feet. And "Rhythm of the Heat" (usually not one of my favourite Gabriel tunes) played so well that I completely forgot that it was with an orchestra, until the end, when it whipped up into a stunning frenzy of noise and rhythm. Only "Intruder" (a song I love in its original rock version) seemed jarring and odd in a classical arrangement.
I would have liked to hear more of the earlier songs from the late '70s/early '80s, particularly from the "Melt" album. I would have loved to hear him do Genesis, but of course he's rarely done Genesis material since he left the band. But he mainly stuck with the 1980s hits and some newer stuff I didn't recognize but enjoyed. I'm very thankful he didn't do "Sledgehammer", or "Shock the Monkey".
It's not my last concert this year. Going to see Weird Al next month, and in December, it's The Musical Box again (recreating the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour) with a bunch of people. Good times.
One Gabriel song I've really come to admire a lot more is "Don't Give Up". I liked it before, but probably became turned off by the way it was so overplayed in the '80s. Now, distanced from that, I find it unexpectedly emotional, in its straight simplicity. And it makes me fantasize about hugging Kate Bush for six minutes straight, too.
It's been a month and a week since I posted. What have I been up to in all that time?
Getting accustomed to the new apartment. Holding a housewarming shindig in said pad. Discovering a hidden bird's nest on the balcony of said pad. Going to my sister's wedding in Saskatchewan. Writing a couple of news stories for Digital Journal. Skyping with the lady in London. Working too much.
There are a thousand things I ought to be doing right now, instead of updating an LJ that I don't use much these days. But when I work late at the day job job (as I frequently have lately), I come home too tired and grouchy to do anything constructive. All I have the energy left to do is watch TV or surf the net, stealing away the free time I rarely seem to have these days.
This week, I've seen three shows in a span of five days. (No wonder I can't seem to save any money.) Two of them were Soulpepper plays, and both were excellent: Our Town last Saturday and Billy Bishop Goes to War on Monday. I hear they're doing The Glass Menagerie, one of my favourite plays of all time, next month. Must make a plan.
Last night, I went to the Peter Gabriel concert at Ontario Place -- the tour he's doing with the New Blood Orchestra (no guitars, no drums). It was wonderful. Pete's gotten old -- he's nearly bald, with a very visible paunch and a white goatee that made him remind me a little of the Burl Ives snowman from Rudolph -- but his voice is still in great shape. It was a little disorienting, finally seeing in person a singer whose voice and music has been a soundtrack to so much of my life, only to see him as a silver-haired sixty-one-year-old. In many of his old videos, he's younger than I am now.
The show didn't have the wild, spectacular laser visuals of his older concerts (as I've seen on DVDs), but some of the orchestral arrangements were beautiful. "Wallflower" was amazing, "Digging in the Dirt" seemed surprisingly Wagnerian, "Biko" and a few others had everybody on their feet. And "Rhythm of the Heat" (usually not one of my favourite Gabriel tunes) played so well that I completely forgot that it was with an orchestra, until the end, when it whipped up into a stunning frenzy of noise and rhythm. Only "Intruder" (a song I love in its original rock version) seemed jarring and odd in a classical arrangement.
I would have liked to hear more of the earlier songs from the late '70s/early '80s, particularly from the "Melt" album. I would have loved to hear him do Genesis, but of course he's rarely done Genesis material since he left the band. But he mainly stuck with the 1980s hits and some newer stuff I didn't recognize but enjoyed. I'm very thankful he didn't do "Sledgehammer", or "Shock the Monkey".
It's not my last concert this year. Going to see Weird Al next month, and in December, it's The Musical Box again (recreating the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour) with a bunch of people. Good times.
One Gabriel song I've really come to admire a lot more is "Don't Give Up". I liked it before, but probably became turned off by the way it was so overplayed in the '80s. Now, distanced from that, I find it unexpectedly emotional, in its straight simplicity. And it makes me fantasize about hugging Kate Bush for six minutes straight, too.
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