I'm going to be sick…

I've been a fan of Peter Gabriel's music for years. He's a fabulous musician and a brilliant, amazing performer. I've only seen him live twice, but his Growing Up tour was hands down the best live show I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of shows in my day, but the stage show for the growing up tour took everything I've ever seen to a whole new level. In concert, His crowd interaction was very genuine and made the show feel more intimate and personal than any show I'd ever been to. Blown away doesn't even begin to describe my experience.

Peter was instrumental in the creation of WOMAD.

Basically, I've got a lot of admiration for the guy.

Tonight I'm lying in bed reading my email while my wife is watching TV. I hear "Solsbury Hill", but a bastardized version, and look up to realize that cingular wireless has bought the rights to use the song in their ad for a "family talk" plan. Ugh. Cough, hack, sputter… the horror. I feel nauseous. As far as I know, Peter's never sold his soul to corporate interests, especially not to a souless corporation like cingular wireless, which is owned by the even more insidious AT&T. YUCK!!!!!!!

Maybe he's taking the profits and giving them to WOMAD. Maybe he's giving them to needy children. God, I hope so, because Solsbury Hill has always been a really beautiful song that held a lot of meaning for me, and it's been commodified, chopped up (and no, not in a good "remix" kind of way) and stripped of it's soul and meaning so some lame cellular company can have some background music for a meaningless ad that no one cares a rat's ass about. Dear lord I despise the corporate commodification of art.