Peter Gabriel

Rock veterans Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno are launching a musicians' alliance that would cut against the industry grain by letting artists sell their music online instead of only through record labels. With the Internet transforming how people buy and listen to songs, musicians need to act now to claim digital music's future, Gabriel and Eno argued Monday as they handed out a slim red manifesto at a huge deal-making music conference known as Midem.

What does rock singer Peter Gabriel have in common with the Cal State Dominguez Hills women's soccer team? Both will use the same grounds for events this weekend. Gabriel's concert has priority, so the Toros must move two matches to a practice area adjacent to the main field. Gabriel will perform Saturday afternoon as part of the World of Music Art and Dance Organization, which he founded in 1980.

Peter Gabriel is such a thoughtful and caring artist that his concerts can feel as much like a missionary crusade as a traditional pop tour. He's not interested in just entertaining us, but in bringing us together -- individuals and cultures -- in a cleansing, inspiring experience. With the underlying humanitarianism in his music and manner, his performances could be held in a cathedral as easily as an arena.

Michael Jackson might be the King of Rock, Pop & Soul--or, hey, might not--but there's still one unofficial and unsolicited pop-royalty title that's not the slightest bit in dispute: Peter Gabriel remains the King of Music Video. Gabriel's riveting "Digging in the Dirt" clip, his first of the '90s, is a cogent reminder that the form can still be an art form, an idea that's been easy to lose sight of during the paltry pickings these last few video years.

When Peter Gabriel has a great new album, such as 1986's "So," his tours, too, tend to be extraordinary. When the British singer-songwriter has merely a good new album, such as 1992's "US," his tours remain extraordinary. Sense a pattern here? In a frequently exhilarating performance Thursday at the Forum, Gabriel showed he is a singer-songwriter who doesn't go on the road to just play his new songs.

Rock was built in the '50s around a musical energy and spirit that so perfectly reflected the independence and celebration of youth that any words beyond Little Richard's awop-bop-a-loo-bop alop-bam-boom sometimes seemed irrelevant. The cultural explosion that gave us rock was followed, in the '60s, by Bob Dylan and the Beatles, who showed how you could add ideas to rock 'n' roll.

Marymoor Park, a verdant, rural setting 15 miles east of Seattle, becomes a global village on Friday when WOMAD, the World of Music, Art & Dance, sets up its multiple stages, workshops and markets. For three days, an eclectic array of more than 30 world music performers--among them Ravi Shankar, Marta Sebestyen, Baaba Maal, King Sunny Ade and the Klezmatics--will perform in concert and participate in workshops, artist discussions and master classes.

If Raban valued his credibility, he would have analyzed George Bush with the same clinical fervor with which he painstakingly critiqued not only Clinton but Perot and Brown as well. Let's face it! This is just another election year with two mere mortals running against each other, neither of whom hold all the solutions to this country's (or the world's) ills. Both candidates expound "change" but are really just two more politicians playing the same old game using this season's buzzwords.