Peter Gabriel on Pussy Riot

There's been a lot written about Pussy Riot; one of the best pieces came from Peter Gabriel in yesterday's Times. Unfortunately, of course, The Times is locked behind a paywall so, ironically, it's difficult to share Gabriel's words on freedom of speech. I hope he'll not mind if I share his words here:

OK, here we go again — another cause celeb with a bunch of overpaid, underinformed musicians banging on about a part of the world they don’t really understand. A punk group playing rude, subversive music in a cathedral — it has outrage, blasphemy and sacrilege all wrapped up in one fell swoop.

At first glance the campaign to free Pussy Riot looks like another bandwagon for the Save the World gang to jump on. There’s a lot worse stuff to worry about than a Russian punk group when even President Putin, on his visit to the UK this month, called for the courts to be lenient in sentencing them. Although presumably he filed that under “notes to self”.

A number of musicians, myself included, have spoken out against the threat of many years in jail for these three young women. Pussy Riot have become a focal point for the protest movement and the campaign is warming up. By supporting Pussy Riot — and gay rights — Madonna found herself criticised by none other than Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister who, in an extraordinarily personal attack, accused her of being an old whore who should take her cross off or put her pants back on.

When it comes to religion, I do believe that we need to respect each other’s faiths and most musicians supporting Pussy Riot would not have chosen the cathedral as a place of protest. However there are certain fundamentals on which democracy and freedom have been built and one of those is the separation of Church and State. So when an archbishop, the head of your Church, publicly backs a very repressive head of state who so obviously now follows a doctrine very different from the Christian one, something is clearly amiss.

I am told by those who know Pussy Riot that the three girls on trial are all believers and quite serious about their faith. This might put their action in a different context, more similar perhaps to Martin Luther’s hammering protests against the sale of indulgences by the Pope on the door of his church, or Christ causing havoc by throwing over the tables of the moneylenders in the temple.

Going back to the days of Mikhail Gorbachev with all the hope for the reforms of perestroika and glasnost and then Boris Yeltsin leading the country to economic collapse, Russian morale had sunk very, very low. The West made the decision not to offer help or to get seriously involved, and perhaps we are now reaping the result of that decision.

When Vladimir Putin first came to power, he was a genuinely popular hero, bringing back services, prosperity and pride and many were willing to overlook the negatives. But each term of office has exposed more of what is rotten and seen the erosion of more and more human rights. The clampdown continues and so does the fall from grace. Recently we witnessed the previously unimaginable sight of Mr Putin being booed at a judo match.

But on the street, older Russians are saying that they have not seen such use of force — such brutality, bullying and threats of violence — since the bad days of Stalin. Russia is now regularly described as a gangster state: in which protesters are routinely imprisoned and beaten; in which investigative journalists are murdered; in which the tax authorities have been known to sell an individual’s tax returns to gangs so they can be a little more precise in their extortion demands; in which a young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, hired to investigate corruption, is murdered.

It is a country that has continued to supply arms to the Assad regime while it slaughters its own citizens; where once again there are only two sides to choose from, with two shirts, one saying “Foreign Agent” the other saying “Agent of the State”.

And yet, as in many other parts of the world, there are very brave young people willing to risk their freedom, along with all the accompanying threats to family, for a better, freer and more open Russia.

The Russians are a very smart, able and independent people who will, for sure, determine who governs them and how they do it. We outsiders (and musicians) are now being asked to help them to throw off the heavy blanket of silence, to let a little light into Russia’s darkest corners.

Turning away doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.

[Thanks to Michael M]

Gabriel decides to sit down for an extra minute

Peter Gabriel has decided he won't play the Oscars, after all. He was - rather understandably - miffed to discover he was only going to get a sixty five second slot:

"We were originally hoping to perform," he said. "We'd assumed, as there are only three nominees, that the songs would be performed [in full. But the producers came in to revamp it as audience figures were falling off.

"One of the things they've decided to cut is the songs. So we've only been offered 65 seconds as part of a medley. So I've now decided to withdraw from the ceremony, but I'll still go along.

"I do think it's a bit unfortunate. I do think songwriters, even though they're a small part of the filmmaking process… we still work bloody hard and I think deserve a place in the ceremony as well.

"So I'm an old fart, and it's not going to do me any harm to make a little protest. But the ceremony will be fun and I'm looking forward to it."

In a bid to increase audiences, the 65 seconds originally planned for Gabriel will now be given to Owen Wilson to run around the stage in an amusing costume and suprising wig.

Genesis hope to bring back Gabriel

Genesis are shopping for lawnmowers, as they consider reuniting with Peter Gabriel. Somehow, though, you suspect it's not so much the idea of Gabriel singing again that's the real driver here:

“We’ve never said never about it, you know,” Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks told Billboard. “I know Phil (Collins) would be quite happy with the idea of just playing the drums; it would be quite fun for him.

Yes - it'd be fun. Also, if Collins is busted back down to drummer, it'll be up to him to rent the band's van from Enterprise and he'll have to put up the money for the petrol - although he'll get it back, promise, just as soon as the dude from the venue gives over the band's share of the door money.

Labels must change

Peter Gabriel - wearing his We7 hat, of course - has called on record labels to reinvent themselves:

"There's still room for record companies but they should reinvent themselves as a service industry and not as owners.

"The structure of the old album and waiting for that to be finished still has some merit but you can do a lot of other things and I think it should be a lot looser and mixed up."

You have to wonder why Gabriel believes that there is a role for record companies, as if it's a given. There might be a way for those companies to continue to exist, certainly, but the radical reinvention they'll require means they won't be the companies they are now. In other words, in the long run, the record companies of today may only have their stock market initials in common with the beasts they are tomorrow.

It's surprising that Gabriel has assumed there must be a role - it's like telling coal delivery companies that they'll still have a role when the country goes all nuclear; it's simply a matter of giving their delivery team lead trousers.

Gabriel loses servers

Peter Gabriel has been knocked off the web by the theft of servers from his ISP. Claims that it was the BPI who seized them to inspect suggestions that there were music files on them are, of course, wide of the mark.

Peter Gabriel: Can't pay, won't pay, will they?

Pete Gabriel takes space in the Times to promote his entry into an already overcrowded unsigned band market disguised as a rumination on the modern music industry, which starts from a slightly alarming claim:

Many people no longer want to pay for recorded music – it’s a fact.

A fact? "Many" seems less like a fact and, at best, an anecdote. Gabriel then tempers this assertion:

They will pay above the odds to go to a live concert, they will even pay for mobile ring-tones of their favourite artists, but the majority of people under 30 can’t or won’t pay for online recorded music any more.

So, the "fact" is slightly less than a fact, then - already, Pete has recast his "recorded music" into "online recorded music", so he's not actually suggesting an upswing in CD theft from Tesco. But is the claim that "people under 30 can't or won't" pay for downloads even true?

Sure, there is a segment of people under 30 who can't pay for the music they consume - although it was ever thus, and if they can't afford a single single, it's unlikely they'd be willingly paying "above the odds" to go to gigs, either. And is Pete really suggesting there are people who would pay £1-50 for a ringtone willingly who'd baulk at buying the same track for 79p off the iTunes? Or does he simply mean that if it's as simple to get something for free as pay for it, people will take the free option?

Because that's hardly news, Pete. If you'd have left a large box of Genesis albums outside the HMV shop with "free- help yourself" written on a card tucked on top, how many people would have gone inside to buy a copy for seven and sixpence instead?

After a little bit of waffle about the Beatles, Gabriel cuts to the chase. His answer to this dilemma:

There are, as you would expect in the digital world, many different models that can be tried out. The new company We7 (www. we7.com) is one that I am currently supporting. The principle is simple: it’s an advertising-funded music download service that gives everyone what they want. Fans get free downloads and artists get paid. The only “cost” is listening to some ads, which people do all the time on commercial radio.

Well, except for the half of the time when people don't listen to commercial radio, of course. Obviously, it's great to see someone trying something - well, not new, exactly, as ad-funded mp3 services have been going for almost as long as the technology has made them possible, but at least interesting. But since commercial radio has proven itself incapable of sustaining anything other than a broad, populist, playlisted sludge of broadcasting, it might not be the best model to be building a service upon.

In the We7 model we intend to personalise the ads, based on information that the consumer volunteers, which should make them more useful and digestible.

Hmm. Again, the principle is fine, but in my experience of answering those surveys which attempt to make emails, cold calls and mailshots "relevant" to you, they seldom make the resultant advertising more useful - it's in the interests of the service to collect information in a way that will inspire commercials, rather than close them down. So, for example, you're asked when your home contents insurance expires, and not given an option to say "I would rather not have insurance companies trying to get me to change my insurer"; so you meekly tick a month (always a guess, because what sort of person knows off the top of their heads when their insurance is up for renewal? Who would go and look?) and once every year get deluged with adverts from insurance companies who have interpeted "I renew my contents insurance in May" as "please send me lots of leaflets explaining why I should change my insurance to me every April."

Maybe we7 have a more sophisticated system.

Artists would also have the chance to exclude some advertising to which they had ethical objections.

Let's hope that, if I'm able to say no to any financial services ads, or anything from oil or motoring companies, right-wing publications, companies that deal with regimes who are unelected, and the artists are screening out booze, drugs and companies with a record of sexist advertising, there's a wide enough range of advertisers left to support everything.

In addition, an average hour of self-chosen content from We7 would have approximately two minutes per hour of ads against an average of nine minutes per hour in commercial radio.

But if the adverts are so relevant and digestable, why should this be a problem? And, come to that, since I think of playing stuff on my Mac as being akin to playing records, rather than listening to radio, why would the fact there's seven minutes more advertising on Capital Gold make me feel any better about having ads in my record collection?

Still, there was the Sigue Sigue Sputnik album, I suppose.

More interestingly, Gabriel reveals how he was persuaded away from the strict RIAA-BPI "music must never be free" line:

Of course, there will be those in the industry who feel that, even if you can develop ad-funded models whereby artists still get paid, at the transaction level music should never be free, because people should expect to pay for the commodity they receive. For years I would have agreed; however, the fundamental revolution that has occurred is that value has left ownership and moved to access. It used to be said that possession was nine-tenths of the law, but you can see – in a world where hits on a site are valued higher than sales, in which I don’t have to own a huge printed library when I can google or go to Wikipedia – that access is king. In the old world copyright – the right to make copies – was based on physical goods. In the digital world that rug has been pulled away. We need to be fluid, fast and flexible and explore all the new models emerging. How can you compete with free? The We7 model is one solution that artists can try. Filtering content is another.

We might not agree with Gabriel's solution, or even how he's framed the problem. But at least he's embraced that there is a need for change. For that reason, he's more credible than any figure in a trade assocation currently chiseling subscriptions out of record labels for their expertise in the music industry.

Er... N'Dours?

Time Magazine has filled a quiet news week by drawing together the 100 most influential people in various fields. We're not entirely sure the order is anything other than arbitrary, but having said that... The arts and entertainment list is quite curious - the top musician is Youssou N'Dour, who gets a touching tribute from Peter Gabriel. Now, N'Dour is a great artist, and when Gabriel says he influenced him, we believe him. But does N'Dour really influence the entertainment world more than anyone else? (Except, erm, Tina Fey, who comes out on top.)

Justin Timberlake, at four, is the second highest placed pop musician in the chart. On that calibration, N'Dour certainly comes out higher. Timberlake's applause-piece comes from admirer Timbaland, which raises the possibility of the two of them going into a post-modern Tweedledum and Tweedledee style double act. Timberlake and Timbaland. We'd pay to see it.