Peter Gabriel - 1980-09-04 - Berlin, DE (AUD/FLAC)

(Audience FLAC)

Peter Gabriel

Eissporthalle, West Berlin, 4th September 1980, uncirculated

CD1 [51:40]

01. Eindringling

02. Start / I Don’t Remember

03. Solsbury Hill

04. Schnappschuss (Ein Familienfoto)

05. Milgram’s 37

06. Modern Love

07. Du Bist Nicht Wie Wir

08. Ein Normales Leben

CD2 [54:25]

09. Moribund The Burgermeister

10. Mother Of Violence

11. Bully For You

12. Spiel Ohne Grenzen

13. Humdrum (break)

14. Und Durch Den Draht

15. I Go Swimming

16. Biko

Encore 1:

17. On The Air

Encore 2:

18. D.I.Y.

Another couple of old cassettes from Andy and Gary’s box in the loft, and yet another previously uncirculated recording.

Let me start off by saying, it’s not great quality. I’ll put up an MP3 or two to give you a taste, but please……..don’t download it and then tell me it sounds like shit or something. I repeat, the quality IS NOT GREAT. In fact, it’s a bit shit.

It was recorded on a BASF portable stereo recorder and time has not been kind to the recording. So it goes, I’m afraid.

What’s interesting about this recording though, is that he performs a lot of the show in German. It’s a standard 1980 set, but most of the songs, six in fact, from the German version of the third album (“Ein Deutsches Album”), he sings in German. “Start / I Don’t Remember” and “Biko” are performed in English.

I can remember the astonishment of the crowd when they realised he was singing in German, at the start of “Eindringling.” You can hear it too.

He spoke a lot in German too. Before Solsbury Hill, he tells them that tonight he is going to try and sing some songs in German, but not this one. The crowd cannot believe it.

For those who don’t speak the language, there is a lot of commotion after “Solsbury Hill” which Peter attempts to sort out in German. Basically, there were a lot of people at the front standing and dancing and clapping, while a lot of the crowd towards the back can be heard chanting at them to sit down (“Hinsetzen, hinsetzen”). A compromise is reached, whereby Gabriel persuades the rowdy lot at the front to sit down so the other lot can see, on condition that everyone can stand and dance later on. He actually asks the whole crowd to vote on it at one point. “Hinsetzen, oder aufstehen?”

This was a very unusual reaction with a German audience. In my experience, the crowd would often sit through a whole set of a band, stroking their chins and ‘appreciating’ the music, much to the amusement of British bands, who assumed the lack of reaction meant they didn’t like them. Not so. At the end of the set, they would go completely bananas, baffling the artists. This lot was split 50/50. You’ll also hear the traditional German demand for an encore, a chant of “Zugabe, zugabe,” at the end of the set.

Anyway, I’ve done my best with a bit of a ropy recording, but I’ve put it up for Gabriel nuts, who may not have realised he played these songs like this. I have not been able to find any other live recordings of him singing in a foreign tongue. I hope you like it.