DGM HQ.
In our time and culture, we approach music variously as an entertainment, ambient background to tune our environment, aesthetic and intellectual delight, sensual pleasure, remembrance of past and happy times, perhaps a cultural event. But music as medicine, instruction manual, prompter of conscience: these are less common views of Music.
Also relatively uncommon is the notion that the state of the listener significantly determines the degree to which music may enter our world. Simply, music is only present in our lives to the extent that we are present to ourselves. This implies that the discipline of the listener is as rigorous as that of the musician, if honorably undertaken.
Music is a benevolent presence constantly and readily available to all, so wishing to be heard that it calls on some to give it voice and some to give it ears. May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
09.33 The office is shaking as animals are being forcefully dismembered below.
11.34 Disc III: Studio 1973-74 of The Guide is werning forwards.
12.03 On this particular morning, I hear in the music a deep longing.
12.26 Starless: longing continues. Red: this is not what I understand as longing.
John Wetton overdubbed piano on the bridge of Exiles and an electric keyboard on Easy Money. Inexplicably, John wasn't credited for this on the album cover of LTIA. We are taking this opportunity to repair the omission.
13.01 An impressive listen.
16.02 Stuff. Stuff. Lots of stuff. This what happens to small fims. They get buried with stuff, regulations spawned by a proliferating bureaucracy & documents that follow inevitably in its wake.
One of the service industries that "help" the small firm/artist is that of the collection agencies. In the 1980s directors of the PRS received interest-free loans, and then lost millions on a much-vaunted computer system that failed to work. In this week's Music Week: a Big Cheese at Aura is alleged to have snaffled lotsa cash, and is selling a house to replace "missing" funds. Tim Gardner, the hero who audited Virgin & BMG on our behalf, has been asked to audit Aura.
If a small venture like King Crimson (professionally respectable but not huge volume) is under-accounted for large sums, what on earth might be under-accounted for mega-groups? Many stories are told within the industry and it comes back to this: the music industry is based on exploitation and is fundamentally corrupt.
22.05 Bredonborough.
This afternoon was coloured by The Contract and its implications. Then, as I was leaving the office, arisings with the masters we are using for The Guide.
The first generation master of ITCOTCK runs slightly slower, therefore affecting tempi & pitch of well-known pieces: there were no crystal locking systems in 1969 so there may well be slight discrepancies on all manner of classic masters & copy masters from the period. This affects our edits & cross fades on Disc I, just as we were putting The Guide to bed. David will go to Chagford on Tuesday to sort this out. All this at the last moment.
"Just below the surface of our everyday world lie riches."
