Robert Fripp's Diary

Tuesday 07 December 2010

Bredonborough It is very cold

10.20

Bredonborough.

It is very cold here, and in Scotland - 18C overnight. John the Gardener collected our Christmas tree, in very short supply locally because they can’t be driven down from Scotland. Time to pull out the thermal underwear from time spent in the eternal cold of Sherborne House.

10.38    On the Guestbook, a posting in the category of surely this isn’t what it purports to be?...

Stealing the moment ::
Posted by dstanton on November 24, 2010
As someone who has followed and admired Fripp since the ’70s, I am both bemused and appalled that he has now made a cottage industry out of selling recordings of every live show he and KC and LoG, etc., have done. His legal right to do so is not in question; but, given that he used to argue that recording and taking photos at concerts are somehow "stealing the moment" in a more karma-esque sense, I am not sure how the two beliefs or practices can coexist. If he knows, when going onstage, that what he is about to play is not just something he is sharing with that audience, but also something he will be selling in the near future, is that not a disruption of the musical moment?  (Answer: Yes.)

My first sight ever of Mr. Fripp was arriving at the top of the stairs at The Kitchen in the early 1980s for a Frippertronics show, and seeing Fripp himself standing nearby chewing out a patron who had obviously taped or photographed the previous day’s show; Fripp’s words to him were, as I clearly remember, "Don’t insult my intelligence."  On the topic at hand, I would have to say the same to Mr. Fripp. And, no, I do not wish to download any or all of the 1995 tour -- thank you anyway.
-- Dave Stanton

Well, full marks for nailing the hypocrisy & venality of the HRV&HL. Lower marks for reasoning & argument. A characteristic of sequential thinking is that 1+1+1 = 1. However many ones we add up, nothing is added.

How to account for developments in performance practice, dealing with repercussions-of-decisions-and-actions & maintaining an aim, over (say) a 43-year period? Some things change, some things do not change. So, what is changing, what is eternal & what has never been here before?

DS I am not sure how the two beliefs or practices can coexist.

This is strikingly honest, and probably most visitors to this site will know the question well enough for themselves.

A foundation principle of creative thinking & problem solving is this: unless we are able to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously, solutions will escape us.

Mr. Stanton & myself are probably likely to agree that everything within a performance has effect, whether intentional or not. The question is, what is the intention that informs & directs actions and behaviour within the performance event? For example, is the aim of photography / recording / viddying to support the performance? If so, how does photography do that? And recording by an audient: how does this provide support? A justification that used to be offered for bootlegging, even on the DGM Guestbook, was that it preserves the legacy! One of the reasons that KC / RF records mostly everything is to undermine this lie. If the legacy is already being “safeguarded”, then why bootlegging? A key principle: any act that is knowingly non-consensual offers violence on some level. This is the area where "stealing the moment" in a more karma-esque sense has the power to spoil, soil, upset & puncture the atmosphere of a creative undertaking, pinning to earth the joy that is flying by & inviting us to climb on and fly away.

DS:   If he knows, when going onstage, that what he is about to play is
not just something he is sharing with that audience…

And if not, then what? Is it possible to do both?

Mr. Stanton seems to assume that the aim of recording a performance effectively places the event outside its specific moment. And it may do so, as when recording a live album that will be released. This is a very different position to recording some / all of an entire tour, with no compulsion to release any of it; assessing the recorded music at a later date. One good example: The Great Deceiver. Multi-track recording, in that case, did not prejudice the limited moment of one particular performance of 75-90 minutes, or a series of performances, but extended their moment from minutes / weeks during 1973-74 as far as 1992; and, for anyone continuing to listen today with more than just a musicological / historical interest, that band’s Creative Moment is currently around 37 years on clock-time.

Live viddying does affect my playing in the specific moment, which is one reason why I decline to be filmed wherever possible. In that case, my own view is it represents loss, and the audience is short-changed. Against that, some audients like to be part of a filmed/ recorded live show (clearly, I am not one of them).

DS: … he has now made a cottage industry out of selling recordings of every live show he and KC and LoG, etc., have done.

May we acknowledge that the HRH&AVL is not the only person responsible for The DGM Cottage Industry, although all blame for the crime is rightly attributed to him alone. David Singleton, Mr. Stormy, Indeg the Office, Hugh the Fierce of the DGM Art Department, Declan the Distributor of Panegyric, Amy of DGM US, the Sidney Smith, Eric A. & Johnny P; and contributions from others at various times in various places; all are deserving of recognition & credit.

One the main musical aims of DGM is to bring the living past of KC into its larger moment. The pre-DGM release in 1992 of The Great Deceiver (with David Singleton doing much of the engineering) presented documentary ear-evidence to impartial audients, that they might make their own judgments of a band and its music, widely condemned by the conventional witlessness as prog rock pondscum set to bum you out. The consensus of commentary on The GD, at the time and continuing, tends to the favourable. Probably the main surprises, to anyone formerly accepting of dopey commentary, were the band’s muscular power & improvisational strength. A Beast of Terror - set to bum out nearly all women within auditory range (and when Johnny W hit the pedal, that was a long way).

Received-opinion-of-the-dopey-kind persists. A recent manifestation (in an Irish newspaper): Progressive – the most reviled music since blackface. Except blackface is more easily forgivable, and you can tap your feet to it.

Will this satisfy the venal instincts of the HRHL, that awful man formerly followed & admired by the less discriminating? Well, most likely it will keep me in the style to which I am accustomed; eg a sleeping bag on the office floor at the crumbling DGM HQ. Professional success is mostly, continuing to do what you do (so may we choose our professional lives wisely). The modest income-flows squeezed from the hard-earned pay of those innocents lured into DGM Live & the Shop, well, it keeps us doing what we do – bemusing & appalling sensitive souls who find holding contradictions a challenge too far.

The DGM Business Aims present, with simplicity & brevity, a challenge to commercial undertakings that few approach. DGM also presents one possible & evolving model for an industry-in-transition: eg David’s ideas have been adopted, without acknowledgement, by two major artists in their own equivalent-undertakings.

Returning to Mr. Stanton…

DS:    … is that not a disruption of the musical moment (Answer: Yes.)

Very few people are brave enough to speak on my behalf; and of those that do, even fewer succeed. A better question is: how to neutralize disruptions of the musical moment? One answer & approach: Four Quarters Maintainers.

Critical comments, on the perceived failings of another, often follows when an object-of-our-revulsion doesn’t give us what we want; the things we need require our active involvement. For someone in public life, in the front line, it is better to be disliked than followed and admired: less expectations & demands are imposed upon us, to weigh down decision-making & creative leaping. A creative leap always goes into unexpected territory (alternatively expressed, brings unexpected territory into the existing terrain) to disturb & upset happy homesteaders. Two criteria we apply to aesthetic judgments are: firstly, surprise: how could that have happened?; secondly, a sense of inevitability: how could it have been otherwise?

To Mr. Stanton: what is he doing to reconcile the two beliefs or practices? Three practical examples, please.

16.27    Frostiness…

Seasonal shopping. The street I…

II...

On the subject of live performance, considered above & currently part of recapitulation-reflecting on the WFC, two DGM Guestbook-posters have also been actively-engaging with the contradictions of live musikcing…

Re: WFC ::
Posted by Otohiko on December 07, 2010

NYC WFC soundscape ::
Posted by davidfsnyder on December 06, 2010
They will be made available at www.wnyc.org/newsounds before the holidays begin (the announcer said)…  

16.38 Celebrity ::
Posted by Annellsson on December 06, 2010
From RF diary."Returning to watch I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out Of Here! live from Australia. Toyah was on this in 2003 and only now, 7 years later, can she enjoy the programme. And it is very well set up."

New aphorism: Avoid celebrity, but don’t hesitate to marry one.

Mr. Annellsson’s good-humoured recommendation inclines towards the arbitrary: not a good way forward in any venture, especially one that may involve the rest of our life.

In return, this: When you recognize your Wife, propose marriage as swiftly as you may.

I proposed to Toyah in a week, on the first occasion possible and three days after I realized – this is my Wife! while sitting & looking out of a window with an Easterly view in Fernhill House, Witchampton. On a practical note, I poured champagne before popping the question. Fortunately for me, this wonderful little Love of my life accepted.

On celebrity: I have known some very famous characters. Occasionally, Fripp has even been fashionable himself for short moments, even a-little-bit celebrious, before people came to their senses. The effects have been, mostly, personally unfortunate (cf Mr. Stanton’s post above as one small example). Good not to seek celebrity for oneself, nor the company of those that have it, and better still to avoid getting even-closer-than-that: unless the particular celebrity is your Side-Sown Partner in this life. In which case, move quickly to marry your Side-Sown and then deal with stuff & repercussions.

Mr. Annelson is no doubt jesting. If he shared my experiences, it might be otherwise.

19.29 The Minx arrived home with Barbara c. 16.40. Barbara is a Christmas-tree decoration-hanger of many years practice. We have engaged her expertise to deck our recently-arrived tree I…