While you count down the months until Peter Gabriel's 25th anniversary reissue of So later this year, we have another catalogue project of his to anticipate this year: an expanded Blu-Ray release of 1993's Secret World Live.
After the much-anticipated release of Us in 1992, Peter Gabriel had a big surprise up his sleeve: his (arguably) most ambitious solo tour, a multimedia event so big it took two stages to perform. (For pop trivialists out there, it was also the first major appearance by Paula Cole, who went from guest vocalist to Grammy-winning singer/songwriter in her own right, with songs like "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?" and "I Don't Want to Wait.")
That tour was memorably chronicled on the video Secret World Live, an arresting audiovisual document recorded over two dates in Italy, drawing heavily on material from So and Us.
For its DVD and Blu-Ray reissue on July 2 (July 10 in the U.S.), the program has been remastered and restored from the original 16mm negative for a new 2K transfer. There's some old and new bonus footage, too: "Red Rain," omitted from the original set list, is presented as a bonus feature, along with time-lapse footage of the stage setup, a making-of featurette, a photo montage set to a remix of "Steam" and Gabriel's performance of Us' "The Rhythm of the Heat" with The New Blood Orchestra from last year's New Blood: Live in London DVD.
Pre-order your copies on DVD and Blu-Ray from Amazon here and here.
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It's weird that PG has been talking about the "So" reissue for the past six months, and yet he has somehow managed to sneak out the "Live Blood" 2CD set, the mega-huge Italian catalog box set, and now the "Secret World" DVD before we get "So" in September.
So... Is this blu-ray going to be fixed up, unlike the mess that was released on DVD? Among other problems, the audio and video wasn't properly synched, the audio was just bad in general (fades in and out), and even the picture was grainy. The old VHS release of Secret World Live was much better.
Great concert (and live album), but a terrible DVD. I can only hope they fixed the many mistakes for the blu-ray. If they did, I might actually buy it. But I'm going to want to read some reviews first.
Fantastic! I have a fondness for this era, as it's the last time Gabriel visited my hometown (Rochester, NY) on tour. I distinctly recall the local paper publishing a piece on Gabriel the night of the show, which included a mention of his habit of biking along the Erie Canal while visiting the area. (I've no idea why that tidbit always stuck with me...)
This was the first concert I ever taped (off of the Disney channel - no, really) and somehow, I never bothered to buy the DVD or the remastered CD set. I do have the original CD, though.
The Rhythm Of The Heat is from Security, or PG4 if you prefer.
i bought the remastered dvd (not blue ray) but it does not play. neither i tunes nor media player is capable of recognizing it and it just sits in the cd drive making noise and blinking a green light. can anybody help us poor technophobes?