Hello fellow Solsburians!

Wow! Peter Gabriel acknowledged and thanked us for the clock we got him for his birthday in the March Full Moon Update! I just found out about it today! Yeah, yeah, I know…I really need to read the Hill frontpage more often. As it stands now, gabrielized could talk trash about me all over this blog and I’d be the last one to know. (Note to g’zed: Don’t even think about it.)

Anyway, as you probably already know, Uncle Tony has announced a mini-summer tour for Peter. That includes the Womad fests in the UK. Reader Paul Davies sent us this spishy link about it. As of now, there’s no talk of U.S. dates, but hey, we can dream, can’t we? If anyone is planning on going to the shows, you may want to make use of our forums to meet up with fellow Solsburians.

And finally, we want to introduce the latest member of the Gabeweb community. The webmaster is a man outstanding in his field, even though he only stands about six inches tall. That man is Mini-Peter, and his website is The Adventures of Mini-Peter. Click on the Adventures link to see some pictures to make you smile. We Here at the Hill can identify with the "Mini-Peter Makes a Website" adventure, especially with stuff not working, the shouting, the swearing, and the throwing things around the room. Hey, it’s why we don’t update more often.

I think Peter enjoys the clock with IO all over it and thanked the Solsbury Hill Team specifically! Check here for this month’s Full Moon Update!

Also some very good news here from KOCH Records:

KOCH Records and The Machat Company announce a new partnership to release new artist albums and compilations through the WOMAD Festival.

The Machat Company, which specializes in World and Spiritual Music, is owned by Steven Machat, a visionary and music industry veteran. Machat founded WOMAD, the acclaimed world music label with Peter Gabriel and Thomas Brooman 25 years ago. WOMAD (which stands for World of Music, Arts and Dance) brings together and celebrates many forms of music, arts and dance drawn from countries and cultures all over the world.

For PG’s birthday, we got him some toys and a cake, a bobblehead doll, and a gift certificate to Bubba’s Tattoo and Piercing Imporium. We hope in return, he gives us Gabe Geeks the gift of new music this year!

Thanks to forum Solsburians KittyLugnut, wamde tanka & vorkosigan for the fun and laughs.

News from the TimesOnline!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2557733,00.html

Gabriel deals a blow to the record business
Paul Durman
PETER GABRIEL, a pioneer of digital music, is taking another step towards weakening the role of the record industry by raising £2m towards the recording and distribution of his next album.

Gabriel, a founder member of Genesis, has formed a joint venture with Ingenious Media, the investment and corporate-finance boutique headed by Patrick McKenna. Ingenious is investing funds from two of the venture-capital trusts that it manages.

Duncan Reid, commercial director at Ingenious, said the arrangement could more than double the amount of money Gabriel makes from his next as-yet-untitled album. Now in his fifth decade in the music industry, Gabriel’s most recent record still sold more than 1m.

The deal covers North America, where Gabriel is currently out of contract, and where he toured with great success in 2003. The joint venture, called High Level Recordings, will outsource CD production, probably to Warner Bros.

Reid said: “If you’re paying a small distribution fee and covering your own marketing costs, you enjoy the lion’s share of the proceeds of the album.”

He added: “The world is changing. With digital distribution, the barriers to entry are far lower. But for the long term, there’s going to be a role for the majors [the record companies] in terms of rolling something out worldwide quickly.”

Ingenious has also worked closely with Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, another singer who has chosen to release albums without the backing of a record company.

Separately, the world’s independent record labels have come together to create a new licensing agency, called Merlin. This is intended to provide a single point of contact for YouTube, MySpace and the multitude of other websites that are expected to follow in their wake.

Internet users are already mixing copyright-protected songs into the content of numerous websites. The music industry is seeking ways to license and earn money from this usage, but the sheer number of independent labels poses a particular challenge.