Why the Human Rights Movement Is Ultimately Doomed: And why Peter Gabriel should get out of the human rights business

“Folks, I hate to spoil your fun, but there’s no such thing as rights. Okay? They’re imaginary. We made them up, like the Boogeyman.” (George Carlin)

On January 19, 2010, Peter Gabriel made his usual monthly vlog for his official website. He announced that he wanted to start a human rights charity called The Toolbox which would be sort of a social network for human rights activists in the field. Many fans, including myself, smacked our foreheads and groaned, “Not again!”

Let’s get some perspective here. Gabriel already initiated two human rights charities – Witness and The Elders. Oddly enough, humans seem to be treating each other worse than before. And Gabriel wants to start a third human rights charity? Who is he kidding? Himself, apparently...

Read the rest of my article at Yahoo!Voices.  Thanks!

Peter Gabriel New Blood 2011 Hammersmith Apollo London 23 & 24 March

Holy timpani, Batman!

In a rare move, Peter Gabriel made a decision. Two concerts and two only of New Blood (PG & orchestra) will be on March 34 & 24, 2011 at London's Hammersmith Apollo, Real World announced today. PG would like to release his DVD of the tour in 3D. (Bad luck for all of us with monocular vision.) In order to convert last year's filmed Verona concert to 3D, new material has to be filmed with a frightfully expensive camera -- hence the shows.

Tickets for PG fans go on sale through Petergabriel.com TOMORROW at 9am GMT. Tickets for the general public go on sale Monday, January 24.

I blew my savings account on last year's tour and cannot go. Besides -- I'm not sure I would be allowed back in the UK. (Long story.) Good luck to all of you lucky sods that will be going.

Peter Gabriel Has Grammar Problems

It's been a bizarre last week or so. I got contacted by someone claiming to be Dickie Chappell, Peter Gabriel's long-time engineer. You think I believed him? Especially after my battles with a cyberstalker? Naaaahhhh. But I did play along and honestly told him what I thought. Sorry, Dickie -- but at least I was honest.

I'm not going to go into details of the email exchange because as luck would have it, it WAS Dickie Chappell that contacted me. He has also contacted at least two other PG fans that bought VIP tickets to last year's New Blood tour and have a Facebook account.

But Dickie did mention that PG was going to start doing once a month posts on Facebook. Of course, PG has been doing about 10 vlogs a year since 2002 but why the jump to online text only contact? Because Facebook is far more of a frighteningly powerful promotional tool that anyone could have expected. If the comments on PG's FB page is any indication, only about a third of PG's worldwide fan base was even aware that he had an official website, let alone a monthly vlog.

So PG posted. And, oh, I see why he shied away from posting before:

Hi there everyone, It's Peter. Welcome to the first full moon message http://bit.ly/hJRmeb of the year. This is for anyone who wants to check out what we are working on and up to each month.

I wanted to also say that I don't really think that my life is that interesting to be talking about it everyday and also I don't want my life to be a slave to a piece of technology. I do though make a commitment to directly communicate once a month which does work for me and I hope it will work for you too.

It's an easy way to remember you only have to look up at the sky and if the moon is getting full you know that its time to check in on what we are doing.

We have been very busy music-wise recently but things are almost finished, so at the end of this month's video you will get a taste of my 'New Blood' version of 'Wallflower'.

Have a great month and hope to see you when the moon is full again.

Peter

The love of my life, my inspiration and my aspiration -- cannot write his way out of a wet paper bag. I guess with the recent layoffs at Real World there isn't anyone left who can do elementary proofreading. And I don't think I impressed Dickie any with my brutally honest emails.

Off to bang my head against a wall.

Peter Gabriel; "Curtains" Uscita Mix

(PG portrait done for Mojo by Andy Fallon)

I've been busy and even managed to get an article published on Yahoo! News. I managed to wean myself off of Xanax over the holidays. I had my last dose December 27 and hopefully I'll never touch the stuff again. From now on, I'll deal with panic attacks the old fashioned way -- with ice cream.

Not a lot of news to report on the PG front. It seems that long-time engineer Dickie Chappell has been recruited to the unenviable task of replacing Tina, PG's 20-year fan liason who retired (or was let go) in Spetember. "New Blood" is scheduled to be released "any day now" (ie -- "sometime before the sun engulfs the solar system.") In the meantime, here's a remix of one of PG's most beloved B-sides, "Curtains."