A dismal, struggling, account of four players taking leaps and falling (mostly) flat. Richard Williams once told me (at the ICA, while Frippertronicising on a double bill with Keith Tippett) that one good piece in an improvised set is worthwhile.
Right now, the musicians continue to struggle on into the second set. If I had been supping a beerless beer, and pumping down a tasty dessert from the gallery, I would have been entertained, instructed and amused to see this team continuing to present themselves to the muse - and being turned away. Today, back from Germany and slightly slack, with only the sonic record of the event, not fuelled by cake or being in the presence of endeavour, I must judge this performance exceptionally feeble.
Hooray! Another piece has ended.
My current listening space is the area where the EG battle was fought from my end. A converted Coach House where for extended hours, day after day for several months, I sat at a small, underpowered computer and wrote the series of letters known collectively as "Dear Andrew". These were extensively bootlegged and circulated within the music industry, and developed a reputation for the frankness of their tone. But I have not yet cleared this space of the debris accumulated over the seven years of war - I am surrounded by a mess of boxes, papers, leads, files.
At last ProjeKct One have ended their attempts to spontaneously compose music. Go home, guys. You've done enough for one evening. But the triple bass playing was fun.
21.22
The Coach House is a little cleaner and tidier. ProjeKct One have been revealing to me their second night. And now the Late Shift is underway in the DGM Music Room.
***
We have discovered that different Web servers deliver our updates at different speeds. Bert Lams in Broad Chalke wasn't able to find my posstings; Hernan in Germany couldn't find the latest releases posted. Our most recent update via Abbey Road, our Webmaster, was done by an unsupervised student and contains spelling mistakes and other errors. This is to be the subject of a formal complaint.
We are taking this Website into our own control, and will soon be fully responsible for it. I am well aware of the site's former shortcomings. Very little of our mail order business in Europe is conducted via the net / web. Mostly the business operates via post and fax. America is several years ahead of Europe in cyberspace generally.
***
Ted White has written to point out that my entries contain redundancies and repetitions - apologies to all! In the spirit of typing out loud and quickly, snapshots of life at DGM, the postings aren't as considered as sleeve notes, for example. Consequently the dribblings of the Fripp brain gently splatter onto the IBM Thinkpad keys and ooze out into cyberspace.
***
Report on Germany: live on Bremen Radio yesterday morning 10 - 11.00. Then Hernan and I trained to Berlin for two interviews and taped an interview with my friend Thomas Fehlmann for his radio show.
We are trying to find ways of playing live in Europe, particularly Germany and Spain, but the witholding tax on foreign performers of 31% and 23% is crippling. If a tour is successful (and not all tours are) the players get around 30% of gross. Holland 8% (Japan has 10%). Although there are supposedly ways of claiming the tax back, the actuality is that you / I / we write it off as lost. Snaffled.
Hernan and I plan strategies to un-fix notions of promoting shows. King Crimson in Buenos Aires set a standard, although the leading Argentinian promoter forecast its inevitable failure. We are considering how some ProjeKcting might go to Buenos Aires next April.
Doing business in Argentina is reminscent of doing business in Italy in 1973. That is, terrifying. The standard operating codes are not those that could function in North America or Western Europe.
***
23.03
We are trying new juxtapositions of DGM artists. Change the positioning of one track and everything changes.
"Playing fast is easier than playing slow."
