Thursday, September 9, 2021

Peter Gabriel - Rarities, Volume 1: Free at Last - Studio Recordings, 1974-1977 (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post. I really like Peter Gabriel's solo career music (most of it, anyway), but Mike takes that fandom to a different level. So I'm leaving the curation of that career for this blog to him. This is just the first album in what promises to be a long series, which is why the title includes the part "Rarities, Volume 1." To be honest, he'd post a lot more of Gabriel's rare music than I would, but I figure more options are always better than fewer.

As usual, Mike has created a PDF file that's included in the zip file with his own comments. Please read that. I'll just say a few additional things here.

One, Peter Gabriel has a history of being a musical perfectionist who is very selective over what he's allowed on his albums. As a result, there's a surprising amount of unreleased material. For instance, the vast majority of this album is made of originals that never made it to any of his albums, and still aren't released as bons tracks or the like. One might even imagine this to be his true first solo album, since there's another material for it.

Two, there are two songs where there have been some musical edits. I want to explain those, since Mike doesn't mention them in the notes. A few weeks ago as I write this, PJ at his blog "Albums I Wish Existed" asked me to use the Spleeter music editing program to remove some weird clapping noises on the song "You Get What You Want." So I did. That was such a good idea that I've used that same edit here too. The other edit is something new. When listening to this, I noticed the lead vocals for the song "Get the Gun (Down the Dolce Vita)" were buried down in the mix. So I used Spleeter again to bring those vocals more to the fore.

However, in case you're someone who doesn't like those edits, the unedited versions for both songs are included as bonus tracks. The edits (or lack thereof) are the only differences with those versions.

This album is 50 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. And if you like this, there's a lot more where it came from. Mike has already sent me six more volumes that I hope to post relatively soon. And that's for just a fraction of Peter Gabriel's solo career!

01 You Never Know (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
02 Firebirds (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
03 You Get What You Want [Edit] (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
04 Howling at the Moon (Peter Gabriel)
05 Excuse Me (Peter Gabriel)
06 Funny Man (Peter Gabriel)
07 No More Mickey (Peter Gabriel)
08 Get the Guns [Down the Dolce Vida] [Edit] (Peter Gabriel)
09 Here Comes the Flood (Peter Gabriel)
10 God Knows (Peter Gabriel)
11 Strawberry Fields Forever (Peter Gabriel)
12 Slowburn [Extended Version] (Peter Gabriel)
13 Jetzt Kommt Die Flut [German Version of Here Comes the Flood] (Peter Gabriel)

Get the Guns [Down the Dolce Vida] (Peter Gabriel)
You Get What You Want (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292299/PeterGab_1974-1977_RaritiesVolum1FreeatLstStdioRcordings__1974-1977_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I asked Mike to pick a photo, and this is the one he chose. I don't know the details, but I'd guess it's from around 1977, when the punk look was all the rage.

18 comments:

  1. Thanks Paul & Mike. The use of Spleeter opens many doors. There's some removable artifacts on You Get What You Want, Get the Guns is all the way better mix now. Looking forward to your improvements. PS. remember the Paul McCartney solo with Linda's camera noise? Maybe worth to try. Cheers, MZ

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    1. Howdy, MZ. You're right about the problematic bits on You Get What You Want. I'll see what I can do about that, if anything. Also, I don't recall the Paul McCartney solo problem. Can you refresh my memory on that one?

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  2. Aloha Paul & Mike... Cool & thanks guys. I am a big fan of Peter and am really looking forward to this and any more that you guys want to do.

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  3. Thanks puffinrandy and mztoinen! The noise he is referring to is during the filming of his first solo tv special he plays an acoustic guitar set where Linda is circling him the whole time and taking pictures of him. It is marred (if you are bugged by such things...I'm a good tunerouter LOL) by the clicks of Linda snapping the pics. Paul I have the whole special and set both edited and unedited about 12 different ways and in various formats... if you want to try spleeter on it let me know!

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  4. Here are the unedited extended version outtakes and the currently best video version of the special...Enjoy!

    hXXps://spaces.hightail.com/receive/SnDgpANGXC

    Change XX ot tt on link!

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    1. Ah, okay, I remember now. Thanks for sending that, Mike. I just tried looking at the audio in Spleeter, and I have good news and bad news. The clicking sound got split up between the guitar track, vocal track, and drum track. The drum track part can completely removed, since there's no other drumming. The vocal track part could be mostly fixed, but it would require using Audacity to go through and quiet each click individually. That would be relatively easy for when the clicks take place between singing bits. But if it happens during the singing bits, one would have to do more careful work to remove them without bothering the singing. The part that stayed on the guitar track I don't think can be fixed though, since that gets mixed up with the guitar sound too much.

      I tried some fixes on one small portion, and it ends up much better. Most of the clicks disappear completely. But it would be a lot of work to remove them all. MZ, is this something you'd want to take on? I think the best option would be to do this work only if the song is really needed. Some of the songs are repeated multiple times, and some aren't that rare, like yet another version of Blackbird. But some have never been done acoustically by him, so it would be great to have those cleaned up and sounding good.

      If MZ isn't up for doing this, anyone who knows their way around Audacity could give it a try. I can send the sound files after they were split by Spleeter for anyone who is interested.

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    2. Oh, and Mike, that mp4 file you included is interesting. It has a different sound profile than the others. But it's for only 15 minutes of the hour long show. I could be wrong, but I don't think it has all the photo session parts. Do you have the rest in that format?

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  5. Unfortunately not...that was "as broadcast" and upgrade by a master techie guy who runs in my Beatles circle.

    Send me the files and I'll see if I can do anything with the clicks in the split files...

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  6. ps... please check again...that's the whole 47 min show...

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    1. I'll try posting PG volume 2 in the next day or two. As for the McCartney/Spleeter issue, I'm too busy these days to do the painstaking work of removing each and every click sound. But as I said above, I can hand the Spleetified separate tracks to someone else, if anyone wants to do it.

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    2. After the whirl, do you think it can be cleaned? I could work on the detailed cleaning, if the main sound is acceptable. Please send the project to my e-mail, if extra hand is needed.

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  8. Isn't that a photo of Rael, his character from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway?

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  9. Thank you for making this available. Very interesting compilation and a nice addition to the other PG rarities comps that always miss most of these tracks.

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