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The Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture on 10 March 2005 in aid of 'Save The Rhino' and 'Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund'.  The event is in celebration of the life and universe of Douglas Adams.  

This year’s speaker is Mark Cawardine who will be describing some of his experiences and encounters with wild animals around the world.

After the lecture, we will be holding an auction and raffle.  The auctioneer will be Nick Baker (ex presenter of the Really Wild Show) and one of the items up for auction is a waistcoat donated by Peter Gabriel and signed by himself and Youssou N’Dor (the waistcoat was a gift from Youssou N’Dor to Peter Gabriel on their 1987 tour).  
Details for the event are;

Date:   Thursday 10th March
Venue: The Royal Institution,
Albermarle Street,
London W1
Time: 7.30pm – 10pm

Price:
£20 for tickets downstairs with wine
or
£12 for gallery seating without drinks

February's video update should now be easier to view, it should download more rapidly as it's being hosted on the Akami network care of our friends at Apple.

Full moon greetings to you. We're well into a dark wet evening here at Real World, a flurry of snow and heavy clouds allowing us little evidence of our lunar timepiece. We can't see it, but you may be able to, so we bring you two offerings. The first in the form of a video update from Peter Gabriel. Find out more on about the burning issues here, and why Peter's so happy with his extra six inches. Secondly we offer some music with which to celebrate Februarys lunar peak.

Sign into the Full Moon Club and watch Peter, with exclusive clips of happenings, musical and otherwise around Real World, and listen to "Shock The Monkey" live in the very warm sounding West Palm beach on 14.06.03.

Is there no stopping them? The wonderful Blind Boys of Alabama have just picked up their forth Grammy in as many years for their collaborative album with Ben Harper 'There Will Be A Light'! Their win was in the catagory of Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album.
Coming up in March will be the release of a DVD of Ben and the Boys performing at the Apollo Theatre. Both album and DVD are available on Virgin Records.

The results are in and those of you who sat through the full 4 hours 10 minutes will have seen Sledgehammer come in at number 2.

Peter's video was just beaten to the winning post by Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. Thanks to everyone who voted for Sledgehammer - not a bad result!

1. Michael Jackson: Thriller
2. Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer
3. A-ha: Take on Me
4. Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody
5. Madonna: Like a Prayer
6. Robbie Williams: Rock DJ
7. Michael Jackson: Billie Jean
8. The Verve: Bittersweet Symphony
9. Madonna: Vogue
10. Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit

8:00pm - 12:10am Channel 4

Incredibly short notice, and possibly of minority interest to those reading these pages this evening as it relies on the ability to receive UK Channel 4 TV, but I’ve just seen this show listed, for which I seem to remember Peter doing some filming last year.
Those of you who decide to find out if I’m right have the possibility of 4 hours 10 minuets of “The 100 Greatest Pop Videos” ahead of them tonight.

January is usually a dark month, but it's even darker if you've spent most of it with your head in a flight case...As you will see, there is no competition this month - yet. I thought that I might try something different.

"We are all very upset to learn of Martyn's death. It has been such a delight for us to work with him over the last 4 years. He was mixing traditional Scottish music with contemporary grooves and arrangements in a very unique and soulful way. He will be badly missed as a creator, player and inspiring man."

Peter Gabriel

It is with enormous sadness that we announce the death of Martyn Bennett after a long struggle against cancer. Martyn died in Edinburgh on Sunday 30 January. He has left behind an extraordinary and seminal body of work - influential recordings and the memory outstanding live performances. His last album 'Grit' is an image of a struggle and endurance - both of the singers featured and of Martyn himself.

"On various levels this is an extraordinary album. The charismatic fiddler/bagpiper/dance innovator has endured an horrendous couple of years battling with cancer, and Grit - born of pain, passion, emotion and a very real sense of roots - is the immense response. Paradoxically it's tender yet explosive; ancient and futuristic; beautiful yet violent; scarred yet triumphant; quietly reflective yet full-on dance.... Remarkable stuff." ( fRoots Magazine)

Anyone wishing to pass on their condolences to Martyn's loved ones can do so by mailing webmaster@realworldrecords.com and we will pass them on.

"During the past few days here, we've been able to do as much hustling for our cause as we probably will be able to achieve during the rest of the year." Peter Gabriel

Being a legendary rock star tends to make things a tad easier. It helps to open doors and gives you access to the media.

So if you are a human rights organisation like Witness, it obviously helps to have been founded by Peter Gabriel - and be taken along to an event like the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Read about Peter's visit to Davos to campaign for Witness

Greeting Lunatics, I hope 2005 is surpassing your expectations. If it's not, have no fear January the 24th is statistically (at least in the UK) the low point of the year, and it's now behind us.

As a 'Kendal Mint Cake' like boost on the climb up the often slippery annual slope, we bring you the timely message of "Don't Give Up" once again in the remixed form that emanates from our Swiss friends Engelspost.

If you haven't yet heard the new Dan Lanois and Richard Chappell 5.1 mixes to be found on Peter's new DVD "PLAY" you can now sample the all enveloping delights by simply sucking them through the ether. All you need is some serious hardware that will run the latest Windows Media software and a big fat pipe to the Internet.

The following video/5.1 streams are available in 200k and 400K forms
The Barry Williams Show
Digging in the Dirt
Father Son
Shock the Monkey
Sledgehammer

On January 24, 2005 at 3:00 PM U.S. Pacific Time / 6:00 PM Eastern Time / 11:00 PM UK Time, Peter will be participating in a live online chat with MSN.

I've added the link provided below, but sadly in the UK you get redirected to a page saying 'MSN has decided to no longer offer MSN Chat in the UK". Apparently this is to save our delicate British sensabilities from various forms of "abuse of the Internet" ...good luck to the rest of you, but be carefull!

I've briefly logged in to bring you news of a Full Moon update, the website never sleeps!

I must say I was dubious that a remix of 'I Grieve' was the right thing for this season of festivities, but events have unfortunately conspired to make it a rather more appropriate choice. Our thoughts are very much with those around the world affected by today's earthquake, for those of us more fortunate, The Full Moon Club would like to offers an Engelspost remix of 'I Grieve' as this months bounty.

Since the release of the PLAY DVD we have become aware of an issue with the DTS soundtrack on the latest generation of surround amplifiers.

PLAY is the first disc produced using a new DTS encoder and it seems that the version we used has set a flag within the DTS audio stream that can cause a 30db reduction in volume.

We have only experienced the issue on a Denon AVR-3805 amplifier (kindly lent to us by Denon UK), although it may be more widespread as new audio decoder chips reach the consumer market in other products. Reading through our DVD forum, our experience would tie in with the comments of people on the boards . A 30db volume reduction is very noticeable, so the DTS audio heard through these amplifiers is going to be both disappointing, and give a you big shock if you turn it up and then flip back to one of the other audio tracks, or navigate back to a menu.

Only the latest amplifiers are reading the 'Dialogue Normalization" setting in the DTS audio which is causing the volume reduction. Other amplifiers are simply ignoring this information, so during the product development and testing, and to most consumers the DTS was and still is the best sounding audio on the disc.

We are currently working with DTS, Warner Vision and Denon to find a solution, and will keep you posted.

Please let us know if you have experienced this problem on any other equipment.