Robert Fripp's Diary

Saturday Night Sunday Morning tonight

Today Chris began with "Neurotica", moved to "Talking Drum" and "Larks' II". These are all with the Double Trio in Mexico City.

14.54

Chris has completed his mixes of The Double Trio Crimsonising Mexico City. These are to be part of "Cirkus: A Young Persons' Guide To King Crimson - Live 1969 - 1996". This will be a double CD to be released through Virgin in January 1999 to celebrate the 30th. Anniversary of the group's birth. The first rehearsal, our formal birth date, was January 13th. 1969 in the basement of the Fulham Palace Cafe, on Fulham Palace Road, London. Greg and I caught the `bus there from Westbourne Grove, close to our pad / flat / apartment in Leinster Square.

"Talking Drum", "Larks II", "VROOOM VROOOM" and "THRAK" give a hint of why the "Double Trio" was formed and what it might become.

But let me cut back to Friday...

Lothar Trampert, Assistant Editor of Germany's "Guitar & Bass", caught an early flight to England and trained to Salisbury. Lother interviewed both David Singleton and myself. Alan Holdsworth, Lother told me, gave up playing guitar at one point because of his hustles with the industry. Alan's bass player reintroduced him to the power of music, which revibrated Alan into action again.

It is impossible to convey to a well-meaning general public, even an intelligent and moderately informed public, how disgusting and corrupt are the normative practices of this cesspit industry. It is not easy to honestly and continually answer the question "How are things?" when facing a slow and painful death in the family. "How are things?". "Well, actually they're appalling. The pain is chronic, rarely relieved, and everyone close is suffering terribly. Oh, and the moans of agony are quite distressing".

So, to ask "How are things?" of a professional musician is likely to invite an answer which few would want to take on board. "Oh, thanks - things are corrupt, avaricious, lying is common currency, but deceit by stealth is of greater concern. How are you?".

The disparity between the hope and power which is available within the act of music, and the professional institutions nominally responsible for that, is so wide as to prompt disbelief in a reasonable and enthusiastic audient; and to invite charges of exaggeration or bitterness. I do not exaggerate: rather I understate the case; and I am not bitter, because I choose not to be.

Updates and Corrections: the King Crimson mellotrons to be sold (FIVE of them, Robert Cervero, all of them steeped in Crimson historicities which have blasted your analogue hi-fi over many years) will be supplied in working order by Martin Smith of Streetley Electronics in the UK (not Mellotron Archives). Just imagine, all those mellotron parts from "Exiles" and "Starless" came from these creatures! (How you doing, Robert?). Put it like this, you can get a mortgage on any house you like, but these mellotrons are not going to be coming around again for a LONG time! (Robert - do you own property in a desirable location?).

15.57

Currently, my endeavours are on the draft intro to Young Persons for the sleevenotes of "Cirkus". An excerpt...

Overview

I

King Crimson began in ignominy in 1969, leapt to international success and acclaim in 8 months, and then broke up. It reformed twice before "ceasing to exist" in 1974. A fourth incarnation returned to active service between 1981-84, and disappeared until the fifth incarnation - the Double Trio - emerged in 1994. Currently King Crimson is reinventing and rediscovering itself through a process of fractalisation.

During the years 1969 - 1992 the name "King Crimson" was associated with "progressive rock" and, as such, was a group which dare not speak its name - at least within the aural or sonic range of hip cognoscenti.

In 1992 Clinton Heylin ("Bootleg") refers to KC (p.10n) as "this previously overlooked dinosaur of prog-rock". From the guitar stool I sit on, the opinion of anyone bold enough to offer this gem as an informed view is somewhat underdetermined, even Clueless and Slightly Slack.

Since 1992 DGM has been releasing archive live material which has contributed to a revision of the conventional wisdom and received opinion. Crimson now attracts referrals as the only band from the "progressive" era which continues to "progress", albeit with musical materials not much characterised as those of the "prog" genre.

King Crimson is, as always, more a way of doing things. When there is nothing to be done, nothing is done: Crimson disappears. When there is music to be played, Crimson reappears. If all of life were this simple.

II

King Crimson was described in a Boston Phoenix review of "VROOOM" (1994) as an indie rock group. It probably always has been.

As a primary source I have yet to find any secondary sources which are accurate factually and, more important to me, convey the spirit of the group and its music. It is probably fairly obvious that I see Crimson as something very much apart from, while within, the rock industry and its contemporaries.

One constant throughout Crim history is the intensity of polar response: respect facing off loathing, and little indifference or moderation. The most significant single factor in Crim's history, constantly repeated, is that decisions fly in the face of industry conventional wisdom and commercial advice generally.

I have noticed that when Crimson is about to become successful in a big way it breaks up, regularly. No-one has (I believe) recognised this as a failsafe mechanism: huge degrees of success and overwhelming acclaim turn an impulse into its opposite. If Crimson is to remain true to its aims, sufficient success is all that is possible. A massively "successful" group or artist runs the risk of becoming monstrous: I have been close on several occasions to these levels of "success", and I wonder exactly what has succeded.

Where a group favours business logic over musical decisions, the music has just died. Where a group attaches greater significance to its appearance than to its music, the group has just died. Where a group listens to the musical advice of its record company it has a one-in-seven chance of being hugely successful, and a six-in-seven chance of failing miserably. Either way, it loses its core audience. Hence the aphorism that the only thing worse than a record company which takes no interest in a group is a record company that takes an interest in a group.

Business logic and musical logic are utterly incompatible, A business demands consistency, guarantees, security, reliability. The creative act is reliably insecure and profoundly disruptive of the status quo. More than once I have been near managers who were nervous of, even hostile to, the creative development of its artists: the artists were less easy to control once the creative impulse began to transform perceptions and illuminate their choices.

So, the outcome of creative action is inevitably hazardous: significant, yet risky. One effective way for a group to shake off the pressure of managers and record companies is to disband whenever the group has completed its musical commitments and / or is beginning to generate a large income. This is also an effective test of the musical commitment among a group's members, whose primary aims may be more directed towards being a centre of attention, and / or attracting fame, riches, and helpless rutting.

*

One of my increasing number of e-letters, this from Neal M., writes "You seem to be very intelligent" (my opinion of this man's perceptive acuities dwindles immediately) "so it seems so odd that you talk about how much you like Steven Seagal films". My comment in response:

"Perhaps:

i) A sense of ironic distance;
ii) A sense of humour;
iii) A scanning of the by-ways of popular culture?".

Neal recommends the Hong Kong works of Jet Li, and my opinion of his perceptive acuities increases immediately. Martial arts have nothing to do with duffing over baddies, even when accompanied by loud explosions and things blowing up. Students who come to Guitar Craft from a martial arts background find less surprise in our approach, which seems to surprise students from a background of conventional "musical education". Both martial arts and music deal in the movement and transference of energies.