Sunday 21st. July 2024, marked the 26th anniversary of DGM going online for the first time.

Tuesday 21^st. July, 1998
A Personal Greeting From Robert

Dear Team,

This, my first direct posting to our Website, represents a new stage in the continuing recreation and ongoing discovery of Discipline Global Mobile, what is and needs to become, from the inside.

Please be kind, perhaps generous and, if possible, even patient in this process. The difficulties which any small company such as ours has in meeting its aims are hard to exaggerate. To exist is in itself a triumph, but existence is not a sufficient reason for DGM to continue.

There are three primary constructs of my professional life which, although in all cases involving the energies and contributions of others, nevertheless have been prime and determining in my own life. These constructs are King Crimson, Guitar Craft and Discipline Global Mobile.

Whereas formerly my responsibility was to one main construct, currently all three feed upon me and exert their own ongoing demands.

There are three main primary structures of my personal life: my marriage to my wonderful little wife, Toyah; my Sister, family and friends; and the restoration and renewal of our (formerly crumbling) marital house which, as a home, is a symbol of deepening and maturing love within a committed marriage.

The life of a working, touring, guitarist carries a high personal price for the privilege and opportunity of following the promptings of the muse.

All of these constructs are none of them constructs: they are all facets of an ongoing process of recreation, rediscovery and reinvention.

II

If you ask me to give an example of a single DGM business practice which reveals and describes the essence of DGM, simply and directly, this is it:

Artists have the right to own the copyright in their own recorded work.

Within the music industry, authors' interest in their work is generally acknowledged as a moral right but staggeringly, unbelievably, inexplicably, indefensibly, it is NOT a legal or contractual right.

My personal view, and the formal view of DGM, is that ownership by record companies of the phonographic copyright in albums made by artists who have themselves financed the recording of that work (whether by advance or otherwise) is an act of theft and, as such, is criminal.

Standard recording contracts (for those young artists "hungry to get signed") represent a legal framework within which theft may conveniently proceed. Conventionally, the artist constructs the work to be stolen, pays for its construction, agrees to it being stolen, and then meets the costs involved in the theft.

Innocent audient, lover of music, this is common practice in the industry within which I serve my vocation.

If you, visitor to this Website, are an executive of any record company which supports or engages in this practice, may your eyes pucker in your forehead. I spit upon your foot.

III

This is Discipline Global Mobile's challenge to the music industry:

Acknowledge the copyright interest of your artists, and grant to them what is already theirs. Acknowledge their legal and equitable rights in what is already accepted to be a moral right.

Abolition of the slave trade acknowledged, and conferred upon its participants, a present and proceding personal and human freedom denied them through the operations of overwhelming power. Actually, the slave trade was not abolished: it turned its interests from sugar to music, sacked the overseers and set up legal departments.

Robert Fripp
Tuesday 21^st. July, 1998;
Discipline Global Mobile,
PO Box 1533,
SALISBURY,
Wiltshire, SP5 5ER.

. . .

News From World Central

Tuesday 21st. July, 1998;          22.55

Dear Team,

Today was a pivotal and determining day at DGM.

1. We revibrated the office structure, efficiency following from our recent hard-won definition and clarity.
2. We met with a young man who might become our Website on-site vibrator.
3. Bill Bruford and I spoke over the telephone and discussed radical plans for the next stage of King Crimson.
4. Mr. McFall visited from Edinburgh to entertain the possiblity of Mr. McFall's Chamber (a small chamber ensemble of varietal and outward-reaching musical interests) becoming a DGM artist.
5. David Singleton and I are spending our late evening session compiling the second DGM sampler "Sometimes God Smiles". It's a beast. I am hitting computer keys as the next little sucker slips gently into its place within the sonic stream.

David and I are now (23.07) running into the SADiE digital editing computer two tracks from "Radical Dance" - Pat Mastelotto, David and myself - for inclusion on the Sampler. This comes from Pat's visit to the DGM Music Room at the end of April. I am next working with Pat (Tony Levin and Trey Gunn) in ProjeKct Four during October this year.

Little Horse Willcox, currently on the BBC2 Learning Zone every morning this week between 02.00 - 04.00 introducing a series on "Greats - Artists" filmed in our home, flew to Sicily to film a BBC1 Holiday programme slot. I miss her terribly, and so does Beaton the Wonder Bun (himself a star of BBC television, having recently stole the show on Rolf Harris's top rated animal programme). Bunny is prepared to staunch his grief on a cabbage leaf, carrot and dried apricot, an option not quite so potent for myself.