Robson Square Theatre

In the liner notes for the 2002 edition of Let The Power Fall, Sid Smith writes, "After making a solo record, the conventional step was to play some shows and promote the hell out of the thing. Fripp put a tour together but as a “small independent mobile unit”. Taking two Revoxes and a driver/road manager out to play Frippertronics, not only subverted the usual tour process but, appropriately enough given the album title (Exposure) he was nominally meant to be promoting, leaving himself truly exposed with nowhere to hide. This was music pared back to its very essence, a direct form of expression built for active listening by audience sizes ranging from 12 to 250. Having been given a budget of only $10,000 by Polydor/EG, to say it was challenging is an understatement. The Revoxes were always going wrong, on one occasion even catching fire. Then there were the spectators who reached out and started messing about with volume pedals. “Things like that were happening all the time,” Fripp laughs. What was the value of it for him? “Well, I suppose in one word - authenticity. It was authentic. It was there. It was in the moment. It was real. And in practice, as soon as you begin to be known, like ‘Oh, Fripp’s going into record stores, I’m going to go down and get him to sign something. I’m going to ask him a question’, immediately the innocence begins to be lost. So what do you do? Well, to begin with, you keep going. But for me, there was an authenticity and reality in meeting audience and innocent punters face to face.”