In Pheonix, AZ, we walked up the road to the America West Arena for the Peter Gabriel Concert.

We were a little late getting in to the arena. Ducking past the merchandise stand (one of several I think) and making our way around and around the perimeter of the circular venue, we made our way down a stair and through an alleyway to finally emerge into an enormous indoor arena space, where the Blind Boys of Alabama were already kickin’ up a gospel storm. They were scattered around a large circular stage, located in the middle of arena with the audience spread around the stage 360 degrees.

So began the Phoenix date in Peter Gabriel’s “Growing Up” tour.

We had great seats. There were two opening acts: The Blind Boys of Alabama, and some singers from Tanzania.

The Blind Boys sang four songs, each taking a turn in the spotlight, backed up by their excellent (and presumably sighted) backing band.

The Arena was not completely full, but still a tremendous crowd.

After the Blind Boys left the stage, Gabriel himself came out and introduced the next warm-up act: Tanzanian singers Charles and Dr. Hukwe Zawose. Traditional dress, amazing vocals, and native instruments. Very entertaining.

Then there was quite a long pause, with Gabriel’s _Passion_ soundtrack sounding out while the stage crew set up the stage for Gabriel’s band.

After about 30 minutes Gabriel took the stage and performed “Here Comes The Flood”, accompanying himself on piano in a solo performance, with a single light (a flood light perhaps?) illuminating him from above.

Then the band joined him on stage as the show really kicked in, with “Darkness”, the first track on his new album called “Up”. It was a good thing that Lisa and I had listened to “Up” in the car on the drive to Phoenix, because it’s tricky music to appreciate on the first listen, but it grows on you. (Is this what “growing up” means?).

A word about the stage: it was circular, and above it hung a circular lighting rig. It seemed innocuous at first. Gabriel had a keyboard and laptop set up on a chrome-and-white custom table thingy on one side of the stage, and Rachel Z was similarly set up opposite him, with a couple of keyboards ( Kurzweil K2500 and Korg Triton I believe) and a large LCD monitor at her feet. Arranged around the perimeter were backup singer Melanie Gabriel, Tony Levin (bass), David Rhodes (guitar) and another guy (whose name eludes me) on supplemental instruments: flute, recorder, bagpipes, guitar, viola… whatever was needed, it seemed.

The drums appeared to be located in the center of the stage, but as the show progressed, it was evident that they were on a separate independent platform that could be moved around as necessary.  In fact, the entire stage would reconfigure itself almost on a song-by-song basis.

Familiar tracks “Red Rain” and “Secret World” were up next. During Red Rain, the outer ring of the stage rotated so that the performers were moved to different points around the stage without have to walk or move their instruments. Still didn’t have a good view of Rachel Z though. Drat.

During Secret World, the lighting rig lowered a big egg shaped thing, suspended above the center of the stage. Lighting and projection effects are thrown upon it.

Then a new song: “Sky Blue”, during which the Blind Boys of Alabama rise up on a platform in the middle of the stage to sing the final verse a capella in their inimitable style. It seems spontaneous, but in fact it is almost exactly as presented on the album “Up”.

“Downside Up” from the London Millenium show soundtrack “OVO” was next. In a mind-blowing stage theatrical moment, the lighting rig was lowered to about 12 feet above the stage, and Peter and Melanie somehow strapped themselves to harnesses on opposite sides of the rig and commenced walking around and around the rig, upside down, while singing the song!

“Barry Williams Show” was next, from “Up”, and it’s an ok song. Gabriel has this TV camera on top of the lowered lighting rig that he used to film the audience and throws the picture up on a couple of big screens on either side of the stage.

During “More Than This”, the lighting rig is then hoisted back up into the ceiling, and the egg thing splits open to reveal an inner globe, a sphere – a seed?

“Mercy Street” is next, the first verse delivered in barbershop quartet style, with no instruments, just every member of the band in exquisite harmony. The globe thing is lit up like a moon.  Melanie sits in a boat shell which, sitting on the outer ring of the stage, rotates around the rest of the band, who have all taken a step backwards onto the inner, non-rotating part.

“Digging In the Dirt” was next, and it rocked.

Then another new song: “Growing Up”, during which the globe is lowered and an outer “skin” is removed, revealing a hollow plastic ball made of giant bubble wrap or something. It is disconnected from the suspension rig; Peter Gabriel climbs inside, and continues singing the song while running around the stage in the ball like a hamster, chasing the other members of the band around.

The Zawoses come back to join the band in performing a new as-yet-unrecorded song called “Animal Nation”.

For “Solsbury Hill”, Peter Gabriel rides a bike around the stage perimiter, in the opposite direction from that which it is turning – almost appearing to go backwards while pedalling forwards, if you can imagine that. Weird! but very effective.

“Sledgehammer” rocks, with Gabriel wearing a jacket made of lit light bulbs.

“Signal to Noise” kind of drags a bit, the band descending into the stage as the song fades.

Encores: “In Your Eyes” extended to a 10 minute jam, and then, after much clapping and yelling from the audience, Gabriel comes back to the stage with Tony Levin and performs “Father, Son” from OVO.

What a show.

We’re kind of stunned as we walk back to the hotel, and collapse in bed.

We went to a 2:00 pm showing of Equilibrium today. It was pretty good. Yeah, it is heavily influenced by The Matrix, and owes a lot to Fahrenheit 451, but I chose to think of it as a re-exploration of the same concepts rather than a rip-off. It has some plot holes, but I really enjoyed it and for a low-budget film written by the director, it deserves a decent showing at the box office. Check your brain at the door and enjoy.

I might as well reinforce the impression that all I talk about here is food, concerts, and movies…

It was with great surprise my.yahoo.com told me that the film _Equilibrium_ was playing at several nearby theaters. So, Lisa and I decided that, after her chiropractice and our subsequent monthly sushi meal at Shogun, we would drive a little further and see a 7:00pm showing at Texas Station.

When we got there, the clerk behind the counter said, “We don’t have that showing here this evening.”

Turns out it doesn’t open for another week or so. Yahoo lies!

We had a choice: drive back home, or see an alternative film. We voted and somewhat lacklusterly chose “Die Another Day”, the latest James Bond film.

All the reviews I had read about this film praised it as a “return to form” and that the only thing wrong with it was the dreadful title music – by Madonna.

Apparently they saw a different movie, because the best parts of the film in my opinion were the title song, and John Cleese’s turn as “Q”. And of course, Judi Dench is terrific in anything.

I think what got me most was that the Science (which is dodgy in *any* modern action flick) was just totally stupid. OK, I *know* James Bond is fantasy but I found I just didn’t have the energy to raise my level of disbelief high enough to truly enjoy the film. Explosions, cars, helicopters, chase sequences… Like the baby in the carry-cot several rows in front of us, I found “Yawn Another Day” overstimulating to the point of boredom.

Can’t escape the puns… or the MORONS.

We were a little late leaving the house – I’d decided to cook spaghetti and it needs time, you can’t rush it – but as it turned out we were fine time-wise.

The Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas has a very nice 2000-seat venue called “The Joint” which was aptly named considering the *cough* ambience. We had basically the best seats: third tier, which means a way back, but up a couple of levels; but the very front row of that tier. This meant that if we were the kind of people who trek back and forth to the bar every 10 minutes (see MORONS above) then we would very easily be able to accidentally dump the drink contents on the heads of the people in the back row of the second tier. And they get to pay $25 more for that privilege.

We had the two seats nearest the center aisle, so got to enjoy the rest of the row pushing past us to get to the bar. Oh well.

The show kicked off a little after 8:00pm, with the whole band looking kind of tired, as though they’d just got off the plane. A lack-luster version of “Siberian Khatru” started off a little slowly, and never really came together – was it the sound mix? Timing? Hard to say. This is a shame because SK is a favorite of mine and deserves better.

Jon was wearing a bandage on his hand but he took it off at the end of this song. Perhaps all his banging on the tambourine loosened it up?

“Magnification” was next, going straight into “Don’t Kill The Whale”. A nice transition, very heavy and the band was playing tightly by this time.

Uh oh… Next up was “In The Presence Of” which is ok but nothing special. Very languorous piece, sucks the energy out of a concert.

The vocal rounds of “We Have Heaven” – heavily supported with vocal backup tapes – segued nicely into “South Side of the Sky”, another favorite of mine and they pretty much nailed it. Why must people inist on TALKING LOUDLY throughout the quiet piano bit? Why? (See MORONS above.)

Steve Howe played a couple of solo steel guitar pieces and proved he still has the speed and dexterity of a top-class finger-picker.

After a 10-minute intermission, Jon Anderson came out. He was more spaced-out than usual, but played a solo number called “Show Me”.

Rick Wakeman played a solo spot consisting of 16 bars each from all “Six Wives” and some “King Arthur”.

The rest of the setlist was “Heart of the Sunrise”, “Long Distance Runaround/Fish”, and “Awaken”. The encore was “Starship Trooper”.

There was a funny bit during the encore, when Steve switches to acoustic for the hillbilly fingerpicking part, he started playing and no sound came out! Jon was holding the note, “Shared….aaaaarrrred” and then Rick picked up the plinky riff on piano for a few bars, then the guitar tech came running out, gave the acoustic guitar a “boff” with his fist, and the sound came back and Steve picked up the riff again. Pretty funny.

What was wrong? They didn’t play CLOSE TO THE EDGE! They had done so on every other date so far on this tour. Why not here? My only guess is that Jon’s voice was giving him trouble – which it was – and they skipped this to cut him some slack.

Apart from “Long Distance” and “Starship” it was essentially the same setlist from the previous two times I’d seen Yes, so this was kind of a shame. Still – bonus concertgoers can’t be choosy.

How do you detect a MORON? On the way filing out the door they say things like “Well, I actually enjoyed that!”

We are so behind on our movie watch list that we made a special effort today to go out and see a film. We selected “Solaris” which just opened on Friday.

It’s very good, but relies on a careful balance of several things: a) the music, which is very atmospheric and good; b) the actors, who are very good; c) the script, which walks a fine line between boring and subtle. Oh, and d) might be that it expects a certain level of intelligence from the audience, but maybe I’m just being elitist.

I enjoyed it. If you want things explained for you, you might not enjoy it.