In a conversation that took place at The City Winery, New York City on the 23rd of September 2022, Robert Fripp & David Singleton discuss ideas of music performance, the music industry, and the founding principles of Discipline Global Mobile, the independent record label created in 1993 as a reaction against the greed and exploitation of the marketplace.  

David Singleton 

While Robert plugs himself in, let me extend a welcome to an evening with that awful man and his manager. You will quickly discover that you have been brought here under false pretenses because he is not that awful man. And I do not really want to be the manager, but we are in the roles in which we are cast. At the Sound Check yesterday Robert asked me what I thought of the venue that we were in. And I said, it's a lovely venue, I wish more people were coming. Robert replied, "I don't mind how many people come, so long as they are the right people.” And in that one sentence, I thought, there is the difference between a manager and an artist. 

Robert Fripp 

It's true. And in fact, my response to David was a little more strongly expressed than that. So here we are. This is our sacred space. The outside world is outside. It has no hold on us. In here, between the outside and the inside, there is a liminal zone, an in between space which is neither one nor the other. It is not outside, it is not inside, it is in between. And it has a particular characteristic. Berlin in 1976 and 77, for example, was a liminal zone. The liminal zone is a space which is of particular appeal to artists, particularly artists in transition. Within our space here this evening, the liminal zone is characterized by the soundscapes sonically marking this in between space. The soundscapes this evening were an elegy from Paris, created as a liminal zone for King Crimson in Paris in 2015. Question: how many of us, please, are aware of the six principles of the performance event? I can see at least one man who must be, but he is not identifying himself. So, is anyone familiar, please, with the six principles of the performance event?  

Robert Fripp 

The first principle; when people get together with music, something happens which would not otherwise happen. Now, part of this would seem to be simplistic and straightforward. Of course, if they don't get together, something isn't quite going to happen. But when we introduce music, the second principle of the performance event is that when people come together with music, things can go much better than we could possibly anticipate. The third principle of the performance event is that each performance is unique. This performance has never happened before, it will never happen again. The fourth principle of the performance event is that each unique performance is a multiplicity of performances. Each one of us here tonight will have our own experience of this performance, which is ours. No two people here tonight will have the same experience. The fifth principle of the performance event is that the possible is possible. And touring post COVID, the realm of possibility has become contingent and restrained. For example, this tour with that awful man, whichever of the two people here this might be referring to, I was diagnosed with COVID on Monday. I am technically no longer infectious, so please fear not. But one contingencies of touring now is you cannot insure yourself for losses due to COVID infections. So any touring outfit, any touring band whatsoever, on whatever scale, cannot insure themselves against this particular limitation on possibility. Anyway, that is the fifth principle. The 6th principle of the performance event is that the impossible is possible. And without this, I could not get out of bed on bus dismal every morning and come into an exceptionally fine professional establishment like this and know this was reason enough to breathe the air. Because the impossible is possible this evening, whatever we make of it. And this is not up to us or in terms of the performing musician, we have the music, the musician, and the audience. And conventionally, we think the musician makes the music. 

Robert Fripp 

This is horseshit, first of all. Any musician of quality is played by the music, not the musician playing the music. However, the musician is father to the music, the audience is mother. And without musician and audience, music cannot be born in the world. So, I'm saying to you this evening how far we go into the impossible is also governed by you. What's on your mind, David? 

David Singleton 

At each of the events thus far, we have been discussing how does music come into the world? How do we drag a slice of heaven down and bring it into our imperfect world? And what is needed to do that? And I realized that the one thing that we have not discussed in that process is DGM Limited, which is the company that Robert and I began in 1993 as a solution to the inequities of the music industry. And assuming the room is full of King Crimson fans, most of what you have purchased, certainly in the last 20 years, even back to 90, 93, could not have come into the world without DGM. Robert, do you have thoughts on the necessity behind DGM’s role? 

Robert Fripp 

Yes, I do. It was two years into 21 years of endless grief as a result of control, exploitation, theft and lies. Since there was no longer a vehicle for King Crimson or much else in our part of the world to take place, we founded a company as a vehicle for bringing music into the world. And this costs us a lot of money. How many years was it before we made a profit date? 

David Singleton 

The early part of the problem with forming a company that is a reaction against something, is that you overreact. So, you have the inequities of the music industry here. Whilst we were seeking to establish a model of ethical practice. So, for at least the first ten years, we were running DGM, the charity where the artists did well, and the record label did not do well financially. It was not until the early two thousands, I would think, before we managed to find a way of balancing the two and realizing that we have to value our work as well. We are the staff of DGM and need to be valued too. So, we rebalance it. But yes, at least ten years.  

Robert Fripp  

We had DGM, the charity. With DGM now, when physical sales are falling, except vinyl CD sales, for example, DGM, physical sales are increasing. We are an astonishingly successful niche record company. We are very, very fortunate to have a distributor called Panagyric, which is run by Declan Colgan, who came from Virgin Records. Declan was sacked by Virgin Records because Declan was too artist friendly, in other words, Declan could not easily look an artist in the eyes and lie to them. So, Declan had no place in Virgin, especially when it was acquired by EMI, even before it was acquired by UMG. So, we are relatively independent. We pick our project, which in any conventional way of looking at it, is wildly uncommercial. It took us 20 years of sifting through the archives before we knew what we had, and now we can put together our box sets which have established the standard in the field. And we are now suffering from that because there are other box sets being produced by major players which do not meet the standard that we set, which is wildly uncommercial. So, box sets are being discounted and there is pressure on DGM to discount its box sets, which cost so much to produce. Anyway, we are a runaway success. And we are a runaway success because we define ourselves in terms which render us outside the conventional marketplace. 

David Singleton 

Yes, in fact, the second aim of DGM is to operate in the marketplace while being free of the values of the marketplace. And those box sets are a perfect example of that. Because if you exist in the marketplace and you want to make a lot of money out of a box set, you put in the smallest amount you can for the largest price that you can sell it for. That is how you make a very profitable box set. Whereas every time we look at a period; and we have just done an Exposures box set. We simply look at it and think, what have we got? We will put everything we can find relating to this period into this box set. And so, you have the League of Gentlemen, and all the Fripppatronics, and all the versions of Exposure, and we begin to think this is what the box set is. And all the box sets follow the same trajectory. Then at some point or other we discover a whole lot more than we knew that we had. We think, hold on, we could have another four CDs here, and we can add another Blu-ray, and that makes absolutely no difference to the selling price of the box set. There is a point at which this is the right price for a box set. So, we add another £5 or £6 to the manufacturing cost for a box set that will sell for the same amount. And it is a winning formula. Bizarrely or wonderfully, because the fans realize that we try to do these things with love and attention, and therefore people buy them. My favorite quote about the box sets was from someone moaning online, saying, "I don't like King Crimson. I wish I liked King Crimson, because the band that I like doesn't put out box sets half as good as the ones that King Crimson puts out.” 

Robert Fripp 

I would like to interject here. Declan Colgan, the head of Panagyric, is a punter. He has punters instincts. So, what Declan does in terms of organizing the contents of a box set is choose what he, Declan, really wants himself in a box set, which is a wonderful standard. If you can conceive of the best that you could possibly have, what will it be? And then Declan gets on to us, and that is what we seek to put together. 

David Singleton 

And we are in an almost unique position for a band of the size of King Crimson, in that we now have complete control of all the archives. When we began DGM, we only had the live material. So, anyone who followed our course for the first ten years, mostly we released live material, and the studio albums were licensed to Virgin, which became EMI. In 2003, they naturally assumed that we would renew their license and they would continue having the music. They came to see us with their lawyer. This was in the early days of digital. I recall their lawyer saying, well, there is this new thing, digital online, and we need you to give us online rights, and we will not pay you any money for the income we get from online while we experiment to work out if we can make money. And when we finish doing this experimental period, we will renegotiate and maybe we will pay you. And we said, well, hold on, that means that you are experimenting on the artist's money. You are off doing this and you are simply not paying the artist. We have a better plan, which is that you can experiment, you can pay us a full royalty, and if when you finish doing that, if you discover that you paid us too much, we will renegotiate. Surprisingly, they did not accept that offer and the catalog reverted to us. And there is an interesting aside to that, because I am assume that some of you know that King Crimson was sampled by Kanye West and there is a current lawsuit going. It is almost the same period when we argued that is how a contract should be constructed. Kanye West's contract says that if you wish to stream my tracks, you will pay me the same price as you would pay for a sale, a download. And if you realize that there have been several hundred million streams of power, that would be $40 million or something. And surprisingly, they did not look at that clause and they did not honor that clause. And we are creeping towards a lawsuit because Kanye had the foresight to put in the same clause we argued we would like to put in in 2003. 

Robert Fripp 

So here we are, post COVID, our current situation after 21 years of litigation and dispute, the virtue of which is the copyrights, came back to us. And we are now in another major lawsuit with the largest music company, and so on. However, shall we move sideways to another piece of product, David? 

David Singleton 

While we have been discussing box sets, there is another one coming that is related to the documentary, In the Court of The Crimson King. I assume most people know that three and a half years ago we set in motion a movie which we have finally completed and will be out, I think, on the 19th of October. But in the making of that movie, there are a lot of things that appear only fleetingly. One of which was that the band did a unique performance in Tring. They set up a circle with the drummers facing the backline and no audience, simply to camera, and they played a complete set list which was filmed. So, we have a unique concert to camera, which will be in a box set of that movie. We have Fracture from tring to play to you now.