23.24
DGM HQ.
A morning gentling in Milton Keynes with the Slinky Minx before walking her to the theatre. MK is a shopping opportunity par excellence, fun for a couple of days engaging directly the West’s triumph in the supply of material objects.
I continue to be astonished by the degree to which smoking is entrenched behaviour in the UK. I found it impossible in the public space, around Starbucks for example, to escape exhaled smoke blowing over me; even after trying half a dozen different places to sit. Only in the US is anti-smoking legislation effective.
Then from MK to near Wantage & tea with Work Wrinkley Mary P. This is always a treat, and richly informative. From Berkshire en route to DGM HQ I popped in to visit another old friend in Wilton, six miles from DGM, who gave me a copy of the Daily Telegraph interview with Robert Sandall (December 8th. 2005). And at DGM, online for the first time in over a week (athough without courage sufficient to open the e-inbox) the Sidney Smith has this link on DGMlive.com…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/12/08/bmfripp08.xml.
These remind me why I don’t do interviews, particularly in England. Robert Sandall is a good man, and I trust his instincts. The interview is broadly sympathetic & accurate, but doesn’t quite convey the feel of who & what I am, and what I do. For example… he has almost abandoned live work in Britain and has not been looking forward to his first solo dates in many years to promote his latest album. This is as fundamentally inaccurate a statement of my performing life as it can get. I do not play dates to promote albums. This is insulting to the audience, who would then hand over their hard-earned pay to get a promotional pitch; it undermines the intrinsic merits of the performance, reducing it to advertising; and demeans the intent of the player who (as the article does make very clear) rejects the connection between music and the music industry. The tour is coincidental to the release of LCB.
It all started to go wrong, he believes, when Crimson got lumped in mistakenly with prog rock’s show-off tendency after their bass player Greg Lake left to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer. A writer has a difficult job in précis but my view, of how Crimson was lumped into the folder of progressive criminals, is rather broader than this.
The online pic is recent, the print pic is by Chris Stein (uncredited) and taken in the Bronx in 1980, although mistakenly credited as being pictured in the 1960s.
Until the beginning of Elephant Talk c. 1994 and the growth of the net, it was almost impossible to speak to an interested public in one’s own voice, other than via an interview in (primarily) the music press. That was, mostly, an unpleasant experience; rather like pleading innocence to the executioner on the steps to the block (the role of business advisers & industry pressure is worthy of commentary). Whatever medium is used, the message is coloured, edited & sometimes tainted, but to correct even factual inaccuracies (both on & offline) would be a lifetime’s work. An applicable Latinate name for increasing direct communication with the public & distancing from media: disintermediation. I’m sure there are Anglo Saxon words that would convey the feel of this much better, which is likely why the Latinate form is used. So, here we are, disintermediated at DGMlive, with a further example…
Classic Rock magazine for December has interviews with Ian MacDonald & Peter Sinfield. The interviewer asks Peter whether The Great Deceiver (1973) was written about Peter; that is, whether the song is a commentary on the breakdown of our working relationship (1971). Firstly, the question would be better directed towards the lyricist, Richard Palmer-James, and the prime writer, John Wetton. I doubt whether either had Peter in mind and, if they had, I’m sure they would have mentioned it to me. Secondly, I am unaware of how such an impressively dopey notion might acquire enough currency that the question even be asked.
It doesn’t matter very much that Peter & I don’t like each other; it doesn’t matter very much that our views on Peter’s relationship to/with KC are fundamentally incompatible, and probably irreconcilable: the world is a much better place for Peter being in it than were he never to have drawn breath; and my life is better by far for knowing him. The song-writing partnership of Peter & Ian was remarkable, far more successful than mine with Peter, and the wonderful Let There Be Light (1999) continued the magic beyond KC. The suggestion that The Great Believer is a diss on Peter? Well, it’s just a load of bollocks.
Disintermediation sufficient for tonight. The floor is waiting.
"Remember to play."
