Hotel Mostly Quite Acceptable But Not At Breakfast.
The two loudly, carelessly shouting young waiter-persons shouted loudly & carelessly at each other, in the service area off the restaurant, once again this morning. Fortunately a third, and much more useful waiter-person, replaced them half an hour into my breakfasting.
Today, a long walk with Love's Lips Heart's Ease & Bliss Arising, my dear Little Wife. We set off down Avenue Victor Hugo towards the Arc de Triomphe, along the Champs Elysee where we lightly lunched, across to the Trocadero & glaced while looking towards the Eiffel Tower, then back to the hotel. A three hour walk in a brisk but dry day.
17.38 Friday's posting from Sebastian (July 27th.) returned my thinking to an area I had given myself permission not to approach too closely for a while: the desperate, numbing vacuity of conventional rock touring mediated by commerce; and the personally damaging effects of last year's KC Summer tour of Europe.
This leads associationally & inevitably towards a matter addressed some months ago but lost on a collapsed hard drive: Mr. Clueless of Budapest, his review of King Crimson's Budapest performance, and my comments on that review.
To take myself back to that time & place is unpleasant & makes me unhappy. But, now stirred by a well-intentioned attempt to return Crimson to conventional touring, perhaps time to revisit several unsettled issues from then --
From this diary --
Monday 14th. July, 2003; 13.26
Hotel Most Acceptable Of The Kempinski Kind, Budapest;
Terrace Restaurant.
When life is hard, eat the best meal you can afford. This is very good advice. I am not actually in search of a best meal, neither the best I can afford. But I am very much in need of an overall view of my current professional life; how to approach the sad fact that the cornerstone of this life, for 42 years semi & fully pro, has been live performance; and live performance is now threatened by a premature demise --
For all the difficulties of this tour, and the dread that preceded it, I have nevertheless gone on stage mostly in good cheer, once or twice in self-protecting good cheer, but nevertheless persisting in good faith. Now, I have to accept: no more like this.
I find myself in a comparable position to 30 years ago, when I was unable to see any external solution to the future: personally, professionally, politically, economically, nationally, globally. Then the butterfly's wings flapped & the collapse of the status quo in the West moved further east: the USSR, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia & down a bit to Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq. This is all part of a massive change, the short present moment of which is 200 years. The details are unpredictable, the overall view more so.
One person, with a camera or a gun, can cause disruption far beyond the quantitative scale. Small mobile units, of varying degrees of intelligence, are able to do damage to larger, unwieldy units that are inevitably vulnerable. A small act can cause repercussions that spread far beyond its original target and, where this act is violent, has a knack of turning round and inflicting all manner of damage to those parties nominally represented/defended by that act of violence. One act of violence is a reaction to another, and generates another in turn. This is gravity working. We all lose, although the ways of loss are different.
So, the only solution I am able to see, now as thirty years ago, is an internal action --
When something real, authentic, genuine takes place, it takes place for a while. A specific aim is served. The, the spirit moves on to another external situation, where another action is initiated. Sometimes there are records left of particular pieces of work, or schools in action. Sometimes these are pieces of architecture, such as those that give me hope when touring Europe. Sometimes pieces of literature have an echo of something more distant. Yet all these external pieces of work, however real, however "objective", are only fingers pointing to the moon. It is not enough to take photos of these buildings, put them on the wall or use them as screen-savers, and marvel at the wonders of an earlier age. The architecture is internal, the building external.
And here/there I am again: the only future I see is the construction of an interior architecture.
00.14 The Crims, crew & management are having dinner with the promoter. I have been mainly practising.
As I returned at 19.50 from doing the block, the management & production team were winding up a meeting: they had been discussing various options for future KC touring. At last! interesting alternatives to the brain-dead, unimaginative, stultifying thinking that conventionally sets up tours.
Tuesday 15th. July, 2003;
14.38 Room Most Acceptable, Hotel Most Acceptable, Budapest.
More words beginning with d this time - dread, despondency, despair, dispirited, disheartened. But not depressed. I am not a depressive person, although I became depressed while touring Europe with the Double Trio in 1996. There was then a sense of this is how a tour is. Not this is madness: what shall we do?
00.04 Our Budapest promoter was one of the two or three keenest promoters on this tour. He worked very hard to make this visit & show work for the band, even though he probably won't make money from it.
The performance: flashes in ProzaKc, the second piece. Ade made an announcement afterwards, right before TCOL, and I saw no more flashes. But I was off-balance & discovered some remarkable new clunkers in Facts & Elektrik, recovering by CirKcle. That was when The Bright Idea For The Last Show Of The Tour appeared: two belly dancers. I saw the first come onstage, knew this was TBIFTLSOTT, and kept my focus close. Then, the second. I continued to keep my focus close. A good wheeze, presented & accepted in good humour.
For the final acknowledgements, Ade & Pat beckoned me forward into the spotlight to take a bow. But trust was gone. Hope & experience had met, negotiated the space, and both held their own. I stayed at the back.
The (playing part) of this King Crimson Eurotour of 2003 finished around 22.50.
The ending of that tour was without completion, without conclusion. It finished. Something was lost.
On July 17th. 2003 Brian Mafi sent to KNews, and re-sent on October 14th. 2003, a posting made by a reader of The Bottom Line (a bass guitar related e-digest) who copied, in turn, a third party's review of KC's Budapest show. I am not aware of the name of the original, third-party reviewer, but know him well as Mr. Clueless of Budapest.
It's not possible to tell a clueless person that they're clueless: if they knew they were clueless, they wouldn't be clueless. More accurately, we are all clueless; but the depth to which we experience our cluelessness is the degree to which we are relatively less clueless.
For the fortunate, a sense of personal cluelessness may arise from recognising contradictions in ourselves & our behaviour. This stimulates an innate capacity for enquiry & questioning. And which part of us recognises these contradictions? This distance, between who is seeing and what is seen, is a beginning-light shining into the Basement.
For others, beginning-awareness of the depth of our cluelessness may follow personal tragedy: death in the family; loss of familiar structures in personal and/or professional life; disappointment at how life rewards us; and the arising suspicion that we may be partly responsible for the cruel vicissitudes of an ungenerous Fate.
During the 1990s I responded in some detail, to the witless postings of the Clueless family of kinship & affinity, on both Elephant Talk and the DGM Guestbook.Whether this served any purpose other than better clarifying & articulating the mechanics of life in the Basement for myself, I don't know. But, as a brief & non-comprehensive list, these features are common to Basement commentaries --
claims that the expenditure of hard-earned pay brings attendant consumer rights; personal opinions assumed to be universally held; imaginary perceptions of what has happened in an event; a thralldom to like & dislike; unquestioned deserving of attention & acknowledgement; imprisonment by expectation; resentment of demands/expectations/wants that are not met.
Now, some six months later and in his own words, Mr. Clueless of Budapest --
Sunday night I went to see King Crimson play the last gig in their European tour, here at the Millenaris Park in Budapest. It was a beautiful warm summer night, with stars overhead and thick grass below our feet.
I was with several friends, all who make a living playing music here in Budapest. We were excited to see King Crimson play, although I was disappointed to see that Tony Levin was not with them on this tour.
RF: This is a clue to & harbinger of what follows.
Mr. Clueless: Lou Reed was playing the same night and there was some debate about which show to go see, but with little thought we all decided to see Crimson.
CAVEATS: I used to play in a band with a guy who was in the League of Crafty Guitarists and played in Fripp's New Standard Tuning.
RF: I'm not sure why Mr. Clueless mentions this. Working with someone who played with/in The LCG is no guarantee of anything much at all. Some members of the team were carried, and for some time, in the hope that the penny would eventually drop. For some it didn't.
Mr. Clueless: I also think that Three of a Perfect Pair and Discipline are Crimson's best albums. And I love the way TLev plays. So now you know where my head is at.
RF: Where sunshine never falls? At another show?
Mr. Clueless: There was no opening band, so at 8:00, Robert Fripp, dressed all in black, came on stage and sat on a stool in front of his wall of electronics and strapped on his guitar. He began the show by using his guitar as a MIDI trigger to play some very airy, blooming, space-y stuff that, in the end, sounded like someone just opened the box of a Roland DX7 keyboard and was fiddling with all the knobs and switches.
RF: Mr. C has missed something of importance.
Mr. Clueless: The crowd became bored after about 5 minutes.
RF:
i) More accurately, Mr. Clueless became bored after about 5 minutes.
ii) A crowd is not an audience, it is a crowd: a non-unified aggregate of individuals that form a dispersed, unstable & potentially dangerous mass. An audience is a unified whole, while comprised of individuals, which shares the capacity for group llistening.
iii) Assuming that Mr. C's experience was representative of the crowd this illustrates the difficulties of presenting Soundscapes in a conventional performance context mediated by commerce.
Mr. Clueless: After 20 minutes of Fripp's synth-guitar extravaganza, he wove three synth loops together and walked off stage. The computers continued to morph and twist the three individual loops for approximately 10 minutes.
At this point, some people sat down on the grass. The level of conversation in the crowd increased noticibly, and a long line formed at the beer stand.
RF: Description.
Mr. Clueless: Nobody was exactly sure what was going on --
RF: Opinion, assumed to be of universal validity. More accurately, Mr. Clueless was not sure of what was going on.
Mr. Clueless: -- but it was clear they didn't really like whatever it was.
RF: More accurately, it is clear that Mr. Clueless didn't really like whatever it was, whatever it was, and wasn't sure of what it was anyway.
I'm unable to determine whether Mr.C's view was shared by others and, if so, by how many others. But I accept that anyone who came to hear Discipline and Three Of A Perfect Pair, and were presented with lots of bleeping & droning, might not have been a happy bunny. Some of those in Europe who came to hear ITCOTCK & LTIA performed live in 1981, and were served up Discipline, weren't happy bunnies either.
There are many stories that might be told, covering many years of presenting unexpected music, and not only KC & RF: Fripp & Eno were booed off in France on their short tour of 1975. There are no guarantees in improvisation, especially where an audient prefers composed repertoire from 20 years' earlier.
Mr. Clueless: Finally, over 30 minutes into the "show", Trey Gunn, Adrian Belew, Pat Mastelotto, and Robert Fripp walked on stage, to roaring applause. THIS is what people came to see!
RF: This is what Mr.C came to see. Soundscapes were not a formal part of the bill, nor advertised, after all.
Mr. Clueless: Adrian Belew was in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and looked like he was having a great time for the whole show. Smiling, moving around the stage, making eye contact with Pat and Trey, and just enjoying himself immensely. He played a blonde Fender Stratocaster all night, and did some light keyboard work as well.
Trey Gunn was dressed entirely in white linen, and looked like an off-duty monk. He played two Warr guitars, one in the traditional touch-style guitar position and the other laying flat on a stand like a slide guitar. He was intensely focused on his playing, but did manage to move around a bit and look like he wasn't *totally* scared stiff.
Pat Mastelotto was incredibly fun to watch. Two of the people I was at the show with are professional drummers as well, and we all admired the ease and delicacy that Pat seemed to play with. It looked like his playing was completely effortless.
RF: Working with players of this caliber is a privilege, and humbling.
Mr. Clueless: Robert Fripp sat on his stool in front of his electronics with his back to the crowd for the entire show. His every move and gesture seemed to say that he held the audience in extreme contempt.
RF: I hold contempt for no one. But I do reserve the right to defend myself from photography; and the unseeing gaze of anyone as clueless as Mr. Clueless.
Mr. Clueless: All of the material that they played in the show was extremely intricate and really showed that each of these four men had mastered their instruments to an almost superhuman level. The drummers and I had fun trying to keep track of the time changes in one or two of the songs, and the sheer quantity of notes coming out of the PA system was astounding.
RF: So far so good.
Mr. C: Unfortunately, they played nothing I was really familiar with other than Elephant Talk. The songs they played were all from later Crimson albums, and were incredibly composed and structured, but they didn't have the pure listenability of the Three of a Perfect Pair and Discipline era material.
RF: Fancy that.
Mr. Clueless: The band was also, unfortunately, very loose too.
RF: After a tour as exhausting as this, I'm impressed that the band managed to get on stage; let alone really show that each of us had mastered our instruments to an almost superhuman level.
Mr. Clueless: There was obvious friction between Belew and Fripp.
RF: This is news to me.
Mr. C: At one point Belew had to remind the audience to not smoke (remember, this is an outdoor gig) because this "grumpy old man over here" didn't like it.
RF: The smoking comment followed an announcement from Ade requesting that photography stop; and Ade made that announcement at my request. Since this was an outdoor gig, might the smoking comment have been a joke?
Mr. Clueless: He also completely failed to introduce Fripp during the band introduction part of the show.
RF: No failure on Ade's part: I prefer not to be announced. And wasn't Fripp Eno this evening?
Mr. Clueless: And the funniest thing is that Belew hit a wrong note during a solo. I saw Fripp's shoulders go tight and he scowled at Belew.
RF: Once again, this is news to me.
Mr. Clueless: So Belew hit the same wrong note again and smiled back at Fripp. Touche.
RF: Clearly, something strange was going on; but maybe the strangeness wasn't onstage.
Mr. Clueless: They wound up playing 4 encores, and after the last one Adrian, Trey and Pat stepped to the front of the stage to take a bow, but Fripp refused to join them. They pleaded with him for almost two minutes to come up and take a bow, but he refused and simply stood off stage and watched.
RF: While I would have preferred to join the band at the end of the tour, I declined to be part of the photo session. For the final acknowledgements, Ade & Pat beckoned me forward into the spotlight to take a bow. But trust was gone. Hope & experience had met, negotiated the space, and both held their own. I stayed at the back.
Mr. Clueless: All in all, it was a disappointing show.
RF: If it was disappointing for Mr. C, perhaps imagine how disappointing it was for me. Not only the end of a damaged performance, at the end of damaged & damaging tour, but to see the approaching-end of what had been the primary focus of my musical life over a period of 44 years: a quiet heartbreak.
Mr. Clueless: The sound was amazingly good, and not high volume. Adrian and Pat looked like they were having a great time.
But if the key personality in the band cannot (on the last day of their European tour) be bothered to step up and thank the audience for their money --
RF:
i) this was not for me a commercial event, and I do not view the audience as consumers;
ii) I decline to accept the assumption/demand that a ticket-buyer has consumer entitlements to me.
Mr. Clueless: -- or even face the audience a single time during the entire show,
RF: I would enjoy being able to see an audience, but I decline to face cameras. Photography began early in the Budapest show. And Mr. Clueless might forgive me if I declined to look into his eyes.
Mr. Clueless: I do not need to support them any more.
RF: I don't believe you ever did.
Mr. Clueless: We all felt bad after the show.
RF: But not as bad as me.
Mr. Clueless: We felt like we had paid for someone to abuse us.
RF: Strangely, I felt I had been underpaid to be abused.
Mr. Clueless: For me and my foreigner friends, 6,000 Forints ($25) was not a lot of money. But for the young Hungarians I saw everywhere in the crowd, that can represent up to 10% of their monthly wages.
RF: This is part of the heartbreak of being a touring musician in much of Eastern Europe. But what hope to explain to Mr. C that his attitude makes authentic performance almost impossible?
Mr. Clueless: I will seek out Tony Levin, Bill Bruford and Adrian Belew any time they come to my part of the world, whether they are with King Crimson or not. But I have no interest in seeing this lineup of King Crimson ever again.
RF: This has my support, but comes too late to be of much use to me.
Mr. Clueless: Over a few beers after the show we all figured it would have been better to go see Lou Reed instead.
RF: On this, at least, we agree.
Now, another view of the Budapest performance --
From: Juro Olejnik
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 17:25:48 +0200
Subject: Prague and Budapest shows
I had the luck to find some money to afford to attend two shows on the TPOTB tour and it turned to be the best decision that I could make :-) The Prague gig was an academic one -- we had to sit on chairs in a Congress Centre and whole performance was not very "close" to the audience. It seemed more like a classic music concerto. The performance was naturally without errors and the playlist was (at least I think) identical to the one in Moscow (as somebody posted here). The only think that I didn't like was the fact, that the closer you were to the stage (I was in the 8th row), the louder was the sound -- and it was just too loud. Well, for the first moment I didn't enjoy the show as much as I expected, it took a longer time to appreciate the whole experience. And one more funny thing: Adriand Belew introduced himself as Brian Eno -- as it turned out in Hungary, it has to be same sort of "inside-band" type of humor. One more thing that I didn't like was the poor quality (despite really high prices) of the T-shirts and other merchandise. Actually all tour T-shirts had the US tour dates printed, no Europe, I wonder why.... And the tour box disappointed me -- just some interviews and 2-3 songs, I'm happy that I didn't invest more money.... ...because I could spare it for the Budapestian (and the last!) show.
RF: One of the elements of touring that I feel responsibility towards is merchandise. Usually, it's far too expensive and, regrettably, mistakes are made with the quality of some items. Nearly all of this is outside the band's control. I rely on the intelligence of audience members to make the right choices for themselves.
It was a completely different type of experience -- an outdoor happening, with me and my friends in the very first row. What really did *impress* me was the communication of Adrian and Pat with the audience -- they looked at the people, smiled, it was very pleasant... KC seemed to enjoy the last show, they even invited a pair of "dangerously curved" belly-dancing girls during "Dangerous Curves" :-) Even thought the playlist was (with the addition of some improv and substraction od Three Of A Perfect Pair) the same, I enjoyed it much more. In addition I have Pat's drumstick (as well as both of my friends :-), so there's nothing that could be better, even the sound turned to be perfect. Now I know why KC is one of the best band ever.... not only at home from CDs, but mainly live. Oh,
I would forget -- it was Robert Fripp who was introduced as Brian Eno this time ;-) And the last thing -- Adrian Belew is the most charismatic frontman I have ever seen -- I was literally impressed... I hope KC will keep going, because I had the impression that Robert Fripp was a little bit bothered by every bit of attention paid to his person...
It's the quality of attention that is of concern. And a third/fourth view of the same performance --
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 05:02:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gabor Rudolf
Subject: -- Budapest gig
On an unrelated topic, hats off to the promoters of the Budapest gig (july 15); it was great to see every inch of my home city covered in KC posters. There was a huge audience, a lot of people (mostly Hungarians) came from the neighboring countries too. The atmosphere was great, which came as a pleasant surprise to me after having seen the second NYC, Town Hall show earlier this year which was somewhat problematic.
RF: My onstage sound at this NYC II was so bad it was impossible for me to hear what was happening. This depressing evening directly led me to using headphones.
The band clearly had a good time and watching Ade & Trey react to the belly dancers was amusing to the extreme. I won't go into musical details since a review & track list has already been posted; the band was amazingly tight & overall this was the best KC show i've seen or heard; hope a live release (KCCC or otherwise) from the European tour is coming soon.
And, from around the same time, July 2003, two posts to KNews from Christopher Stewart. I don't have the date of the first posting, but it's probably close to the second...
I Christopher Stewart
Location: Sainte-Foy, Qc
Posted: ?
Fripp wrote:
"this is The King Crimson Farewell Tour Of Europe (2003)."
Fripp wrote:
"I cannot foresee any conditions under which I can be part of a King Crimson that tours Europe in the future."
Like and dislike are cheap.
Expectation is the prediction that history will repeat itself, exactly, precisely.
Suffering is our experience of the distance between what we are and who we wish to become.
May we have the courage to fail.
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it--but all that had gone before. (Jacob Riis)
Take care, Christopher Stewart
"Self expression is a function of responsibility." [Werner Erhard]
II
Christopher Stewart
Location: Sainte-Foy, Qc
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2003 7:06 am Post subject: Many-Bobs Interpretation...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Many-Bobs Interpretation.
There's one clear-minded, luminous, aphorism-writing, uppest-in-worlds Robert.
There's one weary, about-to-be-becoming-completed-tour-of-Europe, "bump bump fucking bump"-writing, downer-in-worlds Robert.
Contrast.
Maybe what the second Robert says shouldn't be given the same value as what the first Robert says.
Connect.
Maybe the second Robert needs to get in touch with the first Robert again.
Transference.
Robert has fought the good fight by, among others, playing in Europe, being in Europe, perceiving Europe and writing about Europe. Europe has also worked upon Robert.
Love.
Europe has been changed. Robert has been changed.
A good day to all. _________________
Take care,
Christopher Stewart _________________
"Self expression is a function of responsibility." [Werner Erhard]
Now, Christopher's two posts, with comments --
I
Fripp wrote:
"this is The King Crimson Farewell Tour Of Europe (2003)."
Fripp wrote:
"I cannot foresee any conditions under which I can be part of a King Crimson that tours Europe in the future."
Like and dislike are cheap.
RF: If I were governed by dislike, I would not have gone to Europe. If I were governed by like, I would have stayed at home.
Like & dislike are cheap; constant & ongoing violation carries a price.
Expectation is the prediction that history will repeat itself, exactly, precisely.
In Europe my expectations were, in the main, justified. In the US & Canada my expectations were, in the main, justified. In Mexico City, my expectations were wildly & wonderfully dispelled.
Suffering is our experience of the distance between what we are and who we wish to become.
No disagreement here: I lacked the necessary being to counter the violation, harassment & discomfort of the Eurotour.
May we have the courage to fail.
Well, I failed. Does that make me courageous?
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it--but all that had gone before. (Jacob Riis)
Agreed: this tour was the 101st blow, although fractures had appeared long before.
Take care, Christopher Stewart
Clearly, not enough care.
"Self expression is a function of responsibility." [Werner Erhard]
Which self?
In Guitar Craft Christopher's helpful words would be recognised as Level Two commentary: enough is known to comment, not enough is seen to comment
"We have the right to choose our form of suffering."
