Two touring issues:
Firstly, our offer to tour South America was for 5 shows in 9 days, predicated on KC's acceptance of corporate sponsorships, which may include alcohol and/or products. The promoter also requires TV and radio rights in each market.
Sao Paulo (2 nights)
Rio De Janeiro
Chile
Argentina
This comes down to:
King Crimson travels to South America for tv & radio work, to promote booze, maybe cigarettes, and/or other contributions to the consumer culture. As a side issue, we play some shows. The venues may or may not be ideal; & cruel experience suggests that capacity is likely to take precedence over acoustic verity. Crimson is a legendary act in South America, has played nowhere other than Argentina & Mexico, and a large proportion of the audience will expect ITCOTCK and other classics of the early period. Doing business resembles doing business in Italy during the early 1970s, where "arrangements" are commonplace and necessary to "grease" the operation. We are in a vulnerable position, far from home, without support networks, and largely at the mercy of people we don't know. In addition, there are warnings from a pal who has just returned from similar work. The Argentinian proposition does not come from the business team established by Hernan Nunez to take KC to Argentina, so engages with business interests that have a very different agenda. The amount of money involved is not significant. It distracts from the KC Nuovo Metal writing/recording process. It distracts from repositioning the post-ProjeKcts KC in North America.Secondly, a good pal (who saved me from collapse during the period of Endless Grief) e-mailed me with this:
a very funny (& well written) piece on Eno by Paul Morley in the current issue of Uncut magazine, in which Eno describes his album as... .... wait for it...."Fripp Hop"....
tee hee
Perhaps the next series of Crim gigs could be collectively described as "Tool Bop"...
Eno was in touch recently to ask whether I would like to play some shows with the new group he's working with, in Portugal and Japan. Yes! of course, but Crimson were at 12th. & Porter & will be in Florida for both. So, last time home I called Brian and asked whether he would like to tour America with Crimson this autumn. I know that Brian is not primarily a touring player, but also knew how much fun he's having with this band. Brian thought this over and declined: he enjoys doing the occasional show, but doesn't want to tour; he'll be in Greece late October - would Fripp like to play with the band there?
So, Eno will not be touring with Crimson; I'm looking forward to playing with Brian again, & don't know where, don't know when.
DGM Diary related: Sid Smith (and John Smallwood it seems) have both commented on the trial of Lord Archer in London for perverting the course of justice. Today's main news on AOL UK news is that Lord Archer has been jailed for four years, this despite Sid Smith's expectation that a rich man would get away with it.
Jeffrey Archer is the second high-profile chancer who has been held accountable, at last, for contributing to the 1980s "culture of greed characterised by the abuse of trust" (to quote The Independent). The other was Jonathan Aitken. It had fallen to Mr. Aitken to "wield the sword of truth" against the lies of English journalism, but instead the sword of truth cut off his own head.
Peter Hill, editor of The Star (not a regular read for me) said of Lord Archer: "He is a proven liar, a cheat and a chancer, a man so arrogant that he thought he was above the law" (BBC online news). This might also have been said of Jonathan Aitken. It might also be said of an artist manager of my acquaintance who had also contributed to that culture of greed. I am unable to say whether this manager "got what he deserved" to quote Peter Hill once more. Within the industry he continues to "do good works" for charity and good causes; although his professional music life effectively closed down as his affairs became known within the private world of the music business.
But the manager, while in my view as much a chancer as Messrs. Archer & Aitken, was not as creative: he was not the first division chancers that they were. He was also not a politician who did battle with two national dailies. However, he did threaten the editor of a music industry magazine with libel, in response to an accurate and fair report; and the outcome of that threat was disastrous.
21.02
A good day's rehearsal.
My adopted stage positioning for this tour is looking into the stage: a keyboardist posture, if you like. This gives me strong visual contact with all the other members.
Joe Glaser's superb guitar work has greatly improved the playability of both my instruments, and fitted them with the Buzz Feiten tuning system. Hooray! No guitar is tunable, so the question is: does the instrument sound as if it were in tune? BF enables me to play the 6th. string up to the twelfth fret.
Then to dinner with Brad, editor of GW, Vic Garbarini (Nashville editor of GW) & Katie Dombroski.
"Any fool can play something difficult."
