Robert Fripp's Diary

Bredonborough Rising at nine timezone

10.07

Bredonborough.

Rising at nine, time-zone lag continuing, and looking out of the bathroom window: a squirrel came along the wall from the garden, up the pear tree to a high & slender branch, climbed along, picked a pear by taking out a chunk, held this huge-relative-to-body-mass object in its teeth, carried it back down-along & into the garden.

12.42 The Guestbook has comments …

Plumbers, &c.:: Posted by tariqat on November 18, 2007

… John Mayer might well feel that a silently attentive audience would spoil his performance. But my guess - just a guess, as I don’t know either of these people - is that his and RF’s aims for performance might be different.

There is no single ideal-audience-response that suits all performance situations. The principle is: act rightly. How might that be? Naturally, spontaneously, generously, positively, lovingly & in-the-moment. In the moment precludes photography & recording, which seeks to bend to itself the joy available within live musicking.

For rock music, in rock zones, whooping & hollering is often ideal. In Churchscapes performances, mostly not. In KC performances, both loud & quiet work well, assuming an audient’s capacity to differentiate & discriminate. Leg & knee-jerk reactions to favourite player-styles & modes (cf Eric Anderson’s highly informative blog review) is not in-the-moment; more an automatic reaction to past highs-of-experiencing. It belongs in The Basement.

Where performers fail to honour their responsibilities, basking in audience-attention & adulation, lost in self-importance, then booing may be appropriate. I have myself booed a trio of jazz superstars in NYC: their guitarist was lost in his bag of hot, audience-incentivising licks. The hot licks appealed to those audients who knew & loved his licks; they salivated when a bone was thrown; I was angered, and responded accordingly. The bass player looked embarrassed, to my eyes. Maybe projection, but I felt he saw & heard what I saw & heard. And onstage, we are revealed.

staying in the basement:: Posted by basementdweller on November 18, 2007

Regarding Mr. Fripp’s diary entry of 8 November 2007: My advice to aspirant professional players remains the same: become a plumber. In other words, stay in the basement.

Not quite. The Basement is a fixed-way of seeing the world; actually, a fixed-way of not-seeing the world.

The novice plumber fixes a washer; a good professional plumber fixes the water supply of any house in town; a master plumber understands the water-needs of regions & communities, water sources, pumping; the genius plumber provides irrigation systems & waters supplies for nations.

The concern of the musician is music;

The concern of the professional musician is business.

Before & after professional life, business is not a primary concern; more limitation & restriction. In the beginning-process of establishing a professional life, business is preponderant. Following the collapse of EG, and my escape from EG control & exploitation, business was 95% & music 5% of my concern, during the 1990s. This was a balance I accepted, part-payment for the privilege of playing music in the frontline. When, at the end of the Nineties & beginning of the Noughties, the music-proportion fell to 1%, something changed (to head off any possible discussion – debate – dissension & other words beginning with D this time, I do not exaggerate). Better, at that point, to accept our professional life is business, with music as an occasional joy, than continue in the deception that the life is otherwise.

Starbacks:: Posted by njegos on November 18, 2007

What is so different with the world, as seen from any Starbacks?

I have noted, in mucho touring of the past 15 years, that in an upscale location, Starbucks is mostly downscale; and in a downscale location, such as filling stations & service areas, and industrial wastelands, Starbucks is upscale.

14.34 A crap licensing request has come in, from Belgium. This one is for Sleepless.

We receive, on a regular basis, requests to include single KC tracks on compilation CDs; CDs I would not myself want to own. Progressive is a word that features in many of the titles, accompanied by a list of pieces many of which I would not distinguish nor characterise by the term. Enjoy the music, not enjoy the music, indifference to satin trousers or otherwise, some music I recognise as authentic progressive. This is not a label: it is a quality of aspiration moving outwards into music; and, as with most genres & conventions, reflecting a particular period. Sleepless is not of that period.

The advance is €200. The packaging deduction is 25%. The pro rata royalty is 18% & falls to 9% on club releases, exports, mid-price & sell-off sales. How many records sell in Belgium? As in, for example, Germany? Or the UK? Or the EU? That’s right, attentive DGM visitor! Most of the sales are going to be export. So, the royalty will mostly be 9%; or rather, 75% of 9% = 6.75%. Bright wheeze or what?

Then why, an innocent audient & music enthusiast visiting this site & Diary might ask, would any artist want their track included in a pitiful compilation that paid el zilcho? The answer: most artists wouldn’t, but most artists don’t control their own catalogue. But Mr. Apparatchnick of Major Label Records, seeking to recover their $100s of million invested in preparing for a takeover / merger with another major label that the EU Commission has turned down, is happy to flood the market with cut-price deals on faves, classics & recent chartbusters to generate immediate funds, and a dud compilation or two might bring in some more petty cash along the way.

Mr. Apparatchnick will inform the enquiring artist, calling in to gruntle their diss & quote the straightforward & relevant clause in their contract, the one which  prohibs compilations without express artist consent, that Major Label’s contract (which the ML in-house lawyers confirm) expressly grants ML rights to schtupp the artist in all possible positions yet discovered, any which may in the future be discovered, enacted on this & any conceivable world in the universe, and/or transport-system in between.

When pitiful royalties accrue, most likely (if not inevitably) there will be mistakes in accounting; and this often under-payment rather than over. Unless ML is convinced that the artist is prepared to fight, will fight, will resort to litigation, the artist is turned over for a different position for ML attention to be applied.

Have I mentioned this before? - major labels are short-termist, privilege their own narrowly-defined interests, (mostly) distrust & dislike their artists, and stupid. Their accounting is also wilfully deficient on royalty rates that are not-quite-what-they-seem-to-be.

A generalisation? Of course. Cynical? No. Accurate? Yes.

Now, a point re: Mr. Apparatchnick (this is mostly a male field, although there are significant exceptions). If we understand the workings of our employing-company, learnt & discovered on the inside, we have a pretty good idea of the driving aims & intent of the management / directors / owners. When these are not in accordance with The Ethical Company, what kind of person makes sure the trains run on time? This is an interesting question for me & partly reflects an interest in C20th. history, partly seeking to understand the animal we inhabit; and partly EG microcosmic. I knew the people who were part of the Grief at 63a, King’s Road & Blenheim House. Why did they co-operate with it, why did they enable it to happen, and why did they support its machinery of control?

Not a question to address today, particularly.

Moving from a failure to honour our common humanity to a failure to honour our common humanity: a bootleg of the recent RF & The LCG performance in Philly has surfaced on a blog. The blogger has this:

Support Fripp and The League of Crafty Guitarists and buy their stuff.

Please do not sell this recording, trade only in lossless format.

I’m not sure how the bootlegger aims to support our work when he was asked not to, in seven languages, (as he notes on his blog). Bootlegging is not support of our work. Mr. Blogger’s bootlegging, in this specific context, is theft. At the time, in Philly, he was one element undermining the performance; this fell to us & bona fide audients to address, to fill a void he created.

Mr. Blogger seeks to present himself as a provider of music, a supporter of music & of particular musicians, unconstrained & unmotivated by commerce. This is a lie. He does not have the authority to give away our work. He attracts attention to himself, not for & from his own work & efforts, but by taking & using the work of others, not only without consent but with knowledge of their disapproval. Mr. Blogger is using our work as currency in a scheme of trading & attention-gaining, commerce of a different guise. He demonstrates an example of dishonesty dressed up in fine clothes, and presents himself for public commendation.

Repercussions will follow, inevitably, reflecting the quality of action & undertaking; it might take time for these to be apparent, perhaps even decades.

And as with some examples of the mainstream music industry, and Good Guys renowned for their probity & sound business practices, this is hypocrisy a little too rich for me.

15.11  Another interesting licensing request: from the BBC, for a F&E track used on The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy. The Beeb has been paying a (small) royalty to Polydor since 1989 for this, although  Polydor lost rights on the material in mid-1986. Yep! read that again.

15.42  Ongoing discussion re: Google-ads on the free / hot tickle parts of the DGM site is ongoing. We have removed the do you want to get to know a hot boiler in your area? notices.

19.36  Practising. Now e-flurrying.

Early-evening views I…

II…

21.55  More practising, now done.