Pink Floyd and EMI have signed a new five-year deal and ended their legal dispute. The band have been with EMI since turning professional in 1967, and since then have sold over 200 million albums worldwide.

"Pink Floyd are one of the most important and influential bands of all time and I know I speak for everyone at EMI when I say that it is a privilege to have the opportunity to work with them," EMI Group CEO Roger Faxon said in a statement.

"We're looking forward to continuing to help the band reach new and existing fans through their incredible body of work". EMI added that "All legal disputes between the band and the company have been settled as a result of this new deal".

The dispute centred around the band's last record deal, which was signed before the days of legal downloads and said individual songs could not be sold without the band's permission. The band argued that the rule should apply to download sales in stores such as iTunes as well as CDs, saying their seamless albums should not be split up. The Judge sided with Pink Floyd, despite EMI appealing the judgement.

Our very best wishes go to Guy Pratt today (January 3rd), who is celebrating his 49th birthday. Born in London in 1962, son of the actor Mike Pratt from Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Guy took to a career in music, which lead to his first world tour whilst still a teenager!

Working with the likes of Bryan Ferry and Robert Palmer lead to him being noticed by David Gilmour, who invited Guy to play for Pink Floyd in 1987. This lead to work with other major artists such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, but Guy has stayed loyal to David, performing alongside him up to the most recent tours.

Life as a musician on the road, and in the studio, inspired Guy to write his hilarious "My Bass And Other Animals" book, an essential read for any Floyd fan. He has toured his memories in a tour of the same name, and has now developed a new show, "Wake Up Call", which sees a couple of dates coming up this month.

Many happy returns, Guy, from all of us at Brain Damage!

Published today on the Pollstar website is an interesting interview with Ron Delsener, concert promoter for the last 50 years, most recently taking the reins on the Roger Waters Wall Live tour - a huge undertaking.

In the interview, which you can read in full here, Delsener reveals that his involvement in the tour started in 2009, and at that stage, Roger had already been working on it for a year and a half, alongside Sean Evans and Andy Jennison.

He noted that "Roger changed the show every night. He added one archival camera. He reviewed the show every night. He went back to the hotel where he, Andy and Sean would go over changes as dictated by Roger. Little things that no one could pick up but Roger did, whether it be sound or visual."

On the subject of return dates in North America, he says "You never know. Now he's got Australia, two to six shows there, maybe more. And so, if they go to Australia, the question is where do they go from there? That's a question for (tour manager) Andrew Zweck. Do they do Japan? I don't know if Floyd was ever big there. That's a question mark. Singapore? Where do you go from Singapore? China? I don't think so. So it's very tricky to take all that stuff over there and it's huge for just six to 10 shows. So they're trying to ascertain right now whether they should continue through the fall of 2011 or perhaps 2012. That's up in the air right now.

"Meanwhile, I've presented something that is currently very sketchy – to return to markets, very few, for a one-night-only encore performance and/or secondary markets where he hasn't played. We've mapped out a little tour about that and it's up to Roger whether he's in the mood or if it's financially feasible to make this thing work on the secondary markets where the ticket prices have to be a little lower. Especially with this economy. It’s hard to get a $250 ticket in Albany."

Visit Pollstar.com for the full interview.

Just released is a new CD and DVD set, "Smoke On The Water - The Metropolis Sessions" which should be of great interest to David Gilmour fans. This is a special package released for the 21st anniversary of Rock Aid Armenia's "Smoke On The Water", which was released as a single in 1989, followed in 1990 by "The Earthquake Album", a compilation CD featuring a 1990 remix of Smoke On The Water recorded in 1989, plus 14 other titles from famous prog and hard rock bands (Free, Rush, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Yes, ELP, Whitesnake, Asia, Starship, Foreigner, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple and Mike And The Mechanics). In addition to the various mixes included on this new edition are some very interesting video features...

As you may know, David Gilmour participated to the 1989 recording sessions of Smoke On The Water (actually, he was the first artist to be contacted by Rock Aid Armenia founder Jon Dee, and he immediately agreed to participate and gave permission to use his name).

This new edition is housed in a fold-out digipack with an introduction by Jon Dee, talking of the reasons behind the reissue of this project. Called, at the time of the original release "the greatest array of hard rock talent ever assembled", the project is still raising money for Armenia, still affected by the 1988 earthquake, and the money from this release will go towards rebuilding the children's music school in Gyumri, which is still in ruins some 22 years later.