Robert Fripp's Diary

DGM SoundWorld I On this

DGM SoundWorld I.

On this day, 19 years ago, I was in West Virginia.

Today, David & I are listening through to KC studio albums from 1972 onwards: LTIA Part One is currently werning away. We are preparing Volume Two of Frame By Frame: Second Edition.

Before beginning on FxFII, David played me a taster from Live At The Zoom Club (1971) that he has recently mastered - an astonishing duet of Mel Collins & Ian Wallace over a riff that became part of The Sailor's Tale. The guitarist, hopelessly outclassed by the saxophone player, has the foolhardiness to solo immediately afterwards when Prudence would have encouraged him to remain silent. The guitar solo bears no comparison whatsoever to the energy & invention of the saxophonist. And the drummer also astonishes.

Now the intro to Exiles - these boys weren't afraid of trying stuff.

12.23 LTIA II: the band's sound is very limp. It muscled up on the roads of two continents over the next 16 months.

12.33 The Great Deceiver: there was not a piece like this before, and probably not after.

12.41 The Night Watch: the degree of longing in the guitar solo take me back 30 years to that time & place.

13.13Fracture squeals into non-existence. Contemporary CDs allow more playing time than in 1991 so Fracture & Starless will be included in their full, non-abridged form on the Second Edition.

15.28 Volume Three - the 1980s - underway. Classics of 1981 Crim are squerning their Beastliness, demanding inclusion in this must-have compilation.

18.07 Through the 1990s and now in 1999.

Against the wall on one side of DGM Soundworld I are several piles of J.G. Bennett tapes, of talks and meetings, that date back to the 1950s.They are being moved into the digital domain.

On the opposite side of Soundworld I is a Revox, modified for tape editing c. 1976, when the first editing of the JGB tapes was done by myself, wielding a razor blade. Very likely, this Revox was also used for Frippertronicising & is now being used for the JGB transfers.