Robert Fripp's Diary

The Rest of the World Tour.

11.15

The day has begun on Tourbus Quite Acceptable, at least for myself. Jared Driver's day began before midnight & has never ended. The corridor of bunks, separating front lounge & RF HQ in the back, is dark with (presumably) sleeping Crims & tour manager MJK. I left them, last night, watching Elvis And June on DVD. A Beast of Terror Cheesecake, a gift especially made for the band & delivered last night, was sampled, tested & past as exemplary of its kind.

The amount of motion-noise audible in my bunk is astonishing. This is not a complaint. Traveling horizontally, to one who has been climbing into vans & buses for 41 years and 10 months, is a treat. The first gigster vehicle of my acquaintance, for The Ravens, transported logs in the day. It was emptied in the evening and filled with young players - Tino, Gord, Graham & Bob - and their pitiful equipment (a Watkins Dominator, 17 watts of aggressive self-assertion, came later) before setting off to their next audience-encounter. Stapehill Youth Club, The Beacon Hotel, Wimborne Church Hall, suffered as much as the players in this van.

In 1969 the Ford Transit revolutionized gigster life in England. The addition of reclining aeroplane seats, in Crimson vans during 1971, was as close to luxury as one could then hope. But the fact is this: however one travels, it's traveling. One is in constant motion.

The good news is, our hotels now are much much better than the cheap motels that characterised Crimson life 1969-74. These, and the life that accompanied them, left scars that may not bleed anymore; but little is needed to scratch up the memories. This is from the period when Crimson players were not paid for live performance - they received per diems, nothing more - while EG Management paid themselves 25% of gross. The band, after all, were promoting their albums and would be paid record & publishing royalties. No mention was made that EG were also paid 25% of publishing & records. But, at the time, there didn't seem to be another way. Today, for beginning artists, there doesn't seem to be another way.

As a footnote, the assumption that record & publishing royalties will be paid is run through & through with optimism. In case it need be repeated, as if a mantra, the music industry is fundamentally exploitative. This is the basis on which the industry operates. As an inevitable consequence of this, the music industry is fundamentally corrupt.

11.41

Pulling into Washington DC.

A call to Sistery Sister. She is well & about to leave to SF airport for Atlanta (which we have just left), Denver (that we will soon enter) and Edmonton (for now, only a memory).

12.12

We seem to be lost.

13.34

The Team are in their hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, and I have opted to stay close to the Crimbus & Fripp Mobile HQ in the back. In post-Event Washington, buses are not allowed to be parked on the streets, so the Crimbus will be parked at the crew hotel in Alexandria.

We are now lost looking for Alexandria.

Although the drive on-the-way-to-be-about-to-be-becoming lost took us past the White House, the Capitol Building & the Holocaust Memorial. There is a large amount of new & ongoing construction work in this strange city.

19.30

On the bus in the parking lot of Hotel Acceptable, 8 blocks from King Street in the Old Town, computing.