Anyone expecting Shock the Monkey or Sledgehammer at Peter Gabriel’s Wednesday night show at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre might have left the two-and-a-half hour show feeling disappointed.
But then they probably wouldn’t have been a hardcore Gabriel fan.
If they were, they’d know the adventurous and challenging 61-year-old British musician is currently touring with The New Blood Orchestra – or as the billing goes “no guitar, no drums” – in support of his 2010 covers album, Scratch My Back, although there was a percussionist and pianist among the two dozen or so players on stage culled from England and Canada.
Seriously, Gabriel brought some major strings, horns, and woodwind players, conducted by the elegant and physical Ben Foster, along with two female backup singers – his daughter Melanie and Norwegian opening act Ana Brun – to perform alternately somber and dramatic orchestral arrangements of some of his best known songs and covers while stunning visuals were provided on multiple LED screens at the front and back of the stage.
Gabriel, dressed in a black vest and pants, even briefly appeared before Brun’s two-song opening set to explain to the audience the idea behind Scratch My Back, what he called “a songwriter’s exchange,” that will eventually see those artists whose songs he covered, cover his songs.
Hopefully.
“Herding songwriters is a bit like herding cats,” he explained.
In the meantime, a new album called New Blood, featuring orchestral arrangements of Gabriel songs – many that he performed on Wednesday night – is reportedly due this year.
Opening with a very serious, sad, slow and almost completely unrecognizable version of David Bowie’s Heroes, it took a few songs for Gabriel and the New Blood Orchestra to hit their stride with Paul Simon’s The Boy In The Bubble and Montreal band Arcade Fire’s My Body Is a Cage as he grew stronger vocally, hitting some mighty high notes, and the arrangements became more powerful.
He even screwed up the opening of the second song, Wallflower, and joked about it before beginning again.
But nothing could prepare the audience for the tearjerking presentation of Father, Son that followed as Gabriel explained how he had spent a week with his 99-year-old father and a yoga instructor and had burst into tears at one point but his father had caught him and held him.
“What do they say about country music? Three chords and the truth? T
Edward “Kidd” Jordan works with students during the 2008 Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp in New Orleans.
Lady Gaga broke down in tears on Thursday as she was honored by officials in Japan for her efforts to support tourism in the aftermath of the country’s earthquake/tsunami disaster earlier this year. 
It’s time to dust off the bustier, slide into some velvet and sew on some sequins! In news that will make music fans from several generations very, very happy indeed, it’s been reported that both Lady Gaga and Stevie Nicks will perform on the ‘American Idol’ season finale later this month.