Robert Fripp's Diary

Rehearsals one run through then

My night was sleepless, as it were. Playing London is not, for me, quite as fondly anticipated as a hot coffee enema. This is an e-letter sent off early this afternoon:

Dear Team,

King Crimson is playing in London on 3rd. July. There is a business rationale which I accept, but only just.

There is a point here which needs to be understood & accepted: this is a musical performance. It is NOT a promotional event. Most of my professional life is experientially unpleasant and has little to do with music. If the small amount of my life which nominally has a direct connection to music gets undermined as well, things really are as desperate as I see them to be. So, I will respond in the strongest terms to any attempt to encourage the attendance of "guests" on the basis of promotion for the album.

Neither is this musical event, in a personal sense, a social event. My own list of guests will be very small. But, very shortly, a constant stream of life-suckers, freeloaders & professional friends - all of whom believe they have the right to free attendance & the backstage bar - will be approaching Opium, DGM & myself personally with persistent & pressing demands for access.

Anyone who contacts DGM should be told that DGM is not responsible for tickets. This is not DGM business: please don't get involved. If there are any messages on my personal line asking for free tickets, delete them, do not act on them, please do not mention them to me. Anyone who contacts me directly on e-mail will activate the "delete" button.

I hope that Virgin do not pump up the occasion of this musical performance, in the mistaken belief that this is supporting King Crimson: allowing the group to play is the best support we can get.

There are a small number of genuine friends, professional & personal, & we know who they are. Otherwise, if people want to come they can buy tickets. If they don't want to buy a ticket, that this is too much for them to undertake, then this is not an event which holds any necessity for them. I deeply resent having to hide, at a King Crimson show, in backstage areas to avoid almost every "guest" in the backstage area.

If anyone feels they are unable to support this request, please notify me. I will then take corresponding action from my own initiative.

Sincerely, Robert.>

Now, a different take on the life of a professional musician:

---EXCERPT---

<The controversial "work-for-hire" copyright bill that will take away songs and master recordings from the artists who make them is a "done deal" in the House of Representatives, says Don Henley - and he blames his fellow artists for letting it slide through.

"They're so self-centered ... they're so naive," Henley fumes. "The irony of this is the rock and roll community has been able to organize itself for any number of other causes having to do with the welfare of the planet. But we can't get it together to help ourselves."

An amendment to the 1976 Copyright Act was quietly introduced late last year on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America. Instead of the rights to recordings reverting to the artists after 35 years, as current law states, recordings would be reclassified as "works for hire," with the record labels keeping the rights to them forever.

The amendment was attached to an unrelated bill about satellites that was signed into law in November. The House Intellectual Subcommittee, however, agreed to hold hearings on the bill after artists, including Henley, raised a fuss.The bill was originally intended to clarify copyright law as it applied to films, which are more a collaborative effort, Henley says. The RIAA pushed to have it extended to music as well, despite the fact that many rock albums are a more singular vision by a particular artist. "That's the lame-ass argument they're using," Henley says.

Despite an outcry from Henley, Sheryl Crow, and a few others, the bill is moving along.

"The RIAA has it all locked up," Henley says. "We're going to lose this.

"This is our legacy for our children and grandchildren - our endowment, our trust fund," Henley says. "We're going to get screwed. We're going to get railroaded right out of this. And I cannot get people to respond to me. We've gotten responses from Billy Joel and Bonnie Raitt and the usual people who give a s--t. Everyone else, there's been a deafening silence. Streisand, of course, is her usual aloof self. Her manager said, 'Well, we'll send you a check for a thousand bucks.' So here's Sheryl and I out here alone, basically trying to save everybody's ass. And we're not getting any help."

After passing the House, the bill would go to the Senate.

"I don't know whether to just say 'F--k it' and let it go or try to wait and get some relief in the Senate," Henley says. "We've heard rumblings that this House subcommittee may very well, with prodding from the record companies, interpret that recordings have always been works for hire. It would be retroactive. Me and everybody else would be screwed.

"I don't know what to do. I've sent out letters and packets. I've made phone calls, and everybody's too busy being a f--king artist. And they're all going to be sorry one of these days. It makes me angry at all my peers in the business...>

Now, a musical matter. In Andrew Keeling's diary for Wednesday 10th. May, 2000 he has this:

Erno Lendvai, a Hungarian analyst, in his "Workshop Of Bartok And Kodaly" presents a detailed analysis of many Bartok works. Formally, the works are closely defined according to the Golden Section. However, a recent Western analysis dismisses this claim: Bartok fastidiously kept notes on scraps of paper, but nowhere in his records is there the arithmetic which one would associate with the deliberate construction of works according to geometric progression. This would imply that Bartok composed "geometrically" by instinct. The Western writer dismissed this as a possibility. Cf also in this regard Stravinsky's comments on the composition of "The Rite Of Spring": almost all he had to guide him was his ear.

With my own "composition" (the term is too grand), beginning with the emerging of my personal voice in 1971, developing through into 1973/4, almost all I had was a moderate facility on guitar, my ear and my body - which gave the sense of pulse against which the metrics sat. So, what emerged instinctively was a growing awareness of the octotonic scale (aka the double symmetrical) with its opportunities for ambiguity melodically & harmonically, and the rhythmic effects of odd meters. Both of these feature strongly in folk music (in the ethnographic sense). My hunch is that this is a feature of essence-derived musics. Alternatively expressed, music which emerges instinctively - or "unconsciously", with attention in the body to a greater extent that the cerebellum. Although once one learns that this is so, then one applies the techniques of reflection & rationality. There are two quick approaches to form: natural & arbitrary. Natural form also has two quick approaches: arithmetic & geometric. The Western tonal harmonic tradition is derived from arithmetic procedures; the effect is one of stability. Geometric progression is more "Eastern", and its effect is one of vitality. Bartok was an in-between genius: geographically in between the East & the West; between the conservatory & the countryside; between the concert platform executant & the composer. The six string quartets continue to be my favourite Bartok, and are one of the reasons I became a professional musician.