Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 19:38:55 -0400 From: Dave <ET02388 at elephant-talk dot com> Subject: ProjeKct Three Interview from 03/03/03 at the Birchmere
Hey look what I found online. Apparently made form a bootleg from the notes at the bottom, so source withheld. Find it yourself.
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Fripp: This is a rare opportunity where one can meet on a...a more human, person to person basis than at high powered rock concerts. So, for this rare opportunity, ProjeKct Three are here to invite any questions that you might like to ask...but may I ask to, yes, good, house lights please, so we can see you as well as you might see us. Trey, who would you like to invite the first question from?
[Laughter]
Trey: [looking at someone directly] She's not raising her hand so... That guy's so earnest in the back, I don't think we should call on him, but I will. Go on...
Audient: I would like to know how've you rigged up the two guitar synths for Robert Fripp to use?
R: Trey, how have I rigged up my two guitar synths, please?
T: Actually, nobody knows the answer to question except for John....right there...
[Applause and calls for John.]
R: Excuse me...Sir, if you'd like to go over here...John, would you'd raise your hand please...John will give you all the answers you need and pro bably a few more besides.
[Sounds of exaggerated hesitation/fear (from Trey?)]
A: How often do ya'll practice?
A: They just did.
R: How often do we all practice?
T: I think this is our third gig in the last year and a half, we practiced about...ten days for it.
A: And that's it? No more?
T: You coul..s.....by some people's standard we didn't even rehearse ten days.
Pat: It took us three days to get through the first chunk of tunes, about eight tunes, so we didn't even run a full show until we got to about the second to last day or so.
T: You realize this was mostly improvised.
[Applause]
T: If you haven't then you're hell-bound.
R: Before I move to that question, might I differentiate, please, between extemporization and improvisation?
A: Please.
R: Extemporization is like versed poetry. Extemporization is what you do. In other words, it doesn't take off. Improvisation is when it comes to you at least half way and something happens. And Richard Williams, very good music critic in England, once told me, because we were both free-music and improvising-music, spontaneous-composition characters, and we used to go along to many of the same performances...and he once said to me, If one performance...in one performance, if one piece happens, that's a successful evening. I'd just pass that along. And then, when was the last time we ProjeKcted? I think it was at...the beginning of Nineteen ninety..th...nine....
T: San Francisco. With Tony.
R: I think it was ProjeKct...The Roar of P Four. And that roared! (1)^
A: When we will ever hear Deception of the Thrush in the studio?
Drunk A: Robert, we love you....but...tonight [?]...
['Whews' from audients]
A: Will we ever hear Deception of the Thrush in the studio?
R: I'm sorry, I'm not listening over here quite yet, I'm straining to get to the gentlemen here.
A: When will we ever hear Deception of the Thrush in the studio? It's.... amazing...
R: Trey.
T: I don't think you ever will. I think it's a live piece. That's me.
Same A: Can we have a Guitar Craft in the DC area?
A: Ooo, two questions.
[Fripp glares?, Laughter]
R: A question about Guitar Craft, sir?
A: Yes, can we have one in the DC area?
R: There's a request for a Guitar Craft course in the DC area. The quick answer is none are planned at the moment...there are Introduction to Guitar Craft courses now, because the level of students was so low. We needed...mainly because they became a week of detoxing.
[Laughter]
And the, the last course where we had...where anyone had welcomed Guitar Craft Level One was at Sassoferrato [?] in Italy in a monastery in January Two thousand and two. And when two of the students went down the hill and came back drunk, so drunk that they drove off the cliffside in the fog, and the monks were looking at us thinking: Is this the level of student that Guitar Craft brings to us?, we had to go another route. But, if you would like to travel, sir, there are courses available just for you.
[Discussion @ next questioner]
T:...invite....
*A: Question for Pat...(FOH)
P: There's three right there...
same *A: Question for Pat...
P: He's got...I'll take the guy in the back.
A: (BOH) Yeah, Pat, are you...
*A: (FOH) Pat, Pat, what are you listening to right now?
P: Nothing....
[Laughter]*A: The new drum sounds, the drum sounds...are you listening to a lot of new, like, Aphex Twin, Audoker, Warp Records?
P: No....no......um...well I can't pronounce it properly, so I'll call it 'Soul-Nigger', but I think it's Sol Niger, and it's the kid from Mushuga's solo record.
*A: Right...
P: I don't know exactly how you pronounce that record...it's awesome...and the new Eno record, those were the only two CDs that I brought for this ...
*A: What new Eno record? There's a new one coming out?
P: It's called 'Draw the Line, Draw the Circle' and that's all I brought. Mostly I listen to rehearsal tapes and gig tapes and try to...
*A: Lucky...lucky...
P: ...Yeah...well....it's not...it's...I'm looking for mistakes to make corrections.
*A: Thanks.
P: Should I take two?
R: Yeah.
P: The guy I actually meant was this guy here....yeah.
A: Ummm, The only ProjeKct Three release so far has been one that had considerable, I'm guessing, studio enhancements in the mixing...will there be, perhaps as a Collector's Club an unextricated ProjeKct Three, one that's just a show as was.
P: Yeah, I...I don't know for sure, but...
T: Not if he has anything to do with it.
P: No, no, I don't mind. I don't mind. Some of that stuff was chopped and some wasn't...and some of it actually...because it was on multi-track, we could take...and because we did some stuff with fixed tempo by using loops we could take two, three nights that were sort of similar and make an "A" and a "B" section. That's the chopping that was done on it. There weren't really overdubs on it, it was more...there were times when I could let Trey's bass continue and find another phrase where Trey had done some soloing in there and just ah, it's sort of like convincing, you know like [?lookin-just-saw-hear-about-it?] then to chop down it to the best five minutes of what we want. It's great fun.
R: These are the questions and answers that really test a lady's devotion to her man.
[Laughter]
What I will, if I may...is to get to...Bootleg Television was an attempt that came from David Singleton and DGM to make exactly this kind of situation available through download or CD order, by mail order. And at the moment Discipline is looking to recreate it's website along the model that we presented to Bootleg Television, but which got translated along the way and then finally closed in the high tech downturn. But hopefully within a year you can dial up the P Three or King Crimson performance or rehearsal or Club Release along this kind, of your choice, and get it downloaded...this is what currently DGM is working towards. There's a gentlemen right in the back there...yes, sir?
A: Yes, after you learned that Mr. Belew would not be joining you tonight, how long did it take you to decide what you would play tonight?...five minutes, six minutes?
T: What we decided isn't what we played tonight.
[Laughter, Applause]
R: If I might just...the first ProjeKct was ProjeKct...well the first live ProjeKct was ProjeKct One, the first actual ProjeKct was ProjeKct Two, but it was in the studio. But ProjeKct One met on a Sunday to see if the equipment worked. It didn't. So we went away and met and the first time we played together was on the Monday night, December the first, Ninety ninety-seven at the ProjeKct Cafe [sic] (2)^ in Camdentown, London. ProjeKct One was Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, Trey and myself. So then they're all pretty....loose...is that the word I'm looking for? Loose?
A: You're all very nice to take our questions, I hope I'm not being too f orward, but I was wondering if I...
T: We don't have to answer it, do we?
A: I was wondering if I could make a request, if you would play FraKctured or another tune before you took off this evening.
R: The gentlemen's asked us to play particularly an appallingly difficult piece.
[Laughter]
It's indeed one of the most difficult pieces I've ever played live which was written for that reason, actually, that I could never fall asleep on a show. But the quick answer is, for me, and I'd love to come out into the audients and listen to these two guys.
T: I'd like to hear you play FraKctured.
[Laughter]
A: It doesn't have to be FraKctured, it could be anything you like.
[Oooos....Cheering]
R: Don't get your hopes up.
[Laughter]
[Robert begins playing]
FraKctured with a "D"?
A: Whichever you like.
[continued playing]
R: No, that's actually, I'm combining two pieces...I've combined Fracture and FraKctured. That was the changes of Fracture but with the notes of FraKctured.
[Starts playing FraKctured]
A: There we go....
[Pat slaps legs during playing...Trey joins in doing their changes/timing breaks............................]
R: [breaks] Trey's solo....
[Cheers]
...abbreviated.
[Continues to play...into lead break...more leg slapping]
R: I want more money for more.
[Crowd goes nutz!] (3)^
R: Patty [?] has suggested that's quite enough. So is there a burning question?...preferably from a woman.
T: There's one! There's one!
R: Yes?
A: You guys are opening for King Crim...I mean you're opening for String Cheese Incident at the end of the month in Denver.
R: Yes.
A: So, number one, I have a hard time believing you're opening for anybody...
[Whews....oooos!]
A: But I just wanted you guys to be ready, because it's going to be great, the fans are going to get off. That's all.
R: King Crimson, yes, we're opening for String Cheese Incident and are ve ry happy to be opening for them, very happy we were to open for Tool.
[Cheers]
For me, I prefer opening. I far prefer opening, particularly to audiences for other groups that don't come with the expectations of what Crimson is. The other thing that being in the pocket, you never have to satisfy an audients expectations, it's not your job to make them happy. Ticket prices are forty dollars, and I mean, come on, they're astronomical. When the re's two of you going there and then you're going to eat food or drink or something, it really is far too much. So, if I pay forty dollars to see someone, I would really, really expect them to give me a good time, and because of that I would not be able to have a good time. So when you open for someone else you don't have to deal with that expectation. You can just get on and be who you are and get on and have fun.
A: I had a good time.
R: You might be very, very strange.
[Laughter]
A: That covers a lot of us.
A: This is about Trey's guitar, I want to know more about it, it's like a bass and a guitar.
T: It's a...it's a...she's asking about the guitars I play. They're...it is a ba..
A: No, that one.
T: That one.
A: The 6...12 strings.
T: It has 10 strings. There's 5 bass strings and 5 guitar strings. That's what it is, it's a guitar and a bass combined.
A: And it goes in different directions?
T: It goes in different directions.
A: Isn't it a Stick, or...?
A: No, it's a Warr.
R: Shouldn't we find questions from women? Yes, madam.
A: The outfits intrigue me, you know, looking at you guys, I'm like getting a...[?]...all the black...[?]...
R: We spent months planning that.
[Laughter]
This is a question to do with our stage outfits. And the designers we called in. To make sure they were all perfectly balanced, and that was even about Adrian's new silk tee shirts that he has to wash by hand.
[Laughter]
A: How different was it working with a producer on this album?
A: Machine.
P: It was great. There was somebody to keep me company. Some of these guys left early. We would be there tweaking. It's good. He, by the way, he.. .Machine had never heard Crimson, he never knew there was a Crimson bef.. .well, he had heard Crimson, heard of it, but he never knew there was any thing previous to Elephant Talk. So we got to bring those records in to him to give a little history...[?].
R: Machine has very, very good ears. Some of the best ears of anyone I've worked with. His father is a clarinet player with the New York Symphony Orchestra and...
P: His mother's a music teacher and his grandfather's a drummer. From the first drum school in New York, Manhattan School of Music? Something to do with that? A New Jersey kid.
T: Go on...
**A: What is a rubber bass?
T: It's an Ashbury Fretless Bass with rubber...silicon strings. I don't have one here.
**A: What songs is it featured on?
T: It's on Eyes Wide Open on the EP.
**A: Hey Pat, Shoganai, is that just you?
R: This gentleman has lots of questions, doesn't he? To those at this end of the hall who can't hear, the question was what's a rubber bass. This is where it began. Tony Levin brought one...can I tell the story?
T: Please.
R: Tony Levin brought a rubber bass into a King Crimson rehearsal at Studio Belew in Nashville.
A: Is it really rubber?
T: The strings are made of silicon.
P: You know what's interesting? You know where he got that bass? Because I know the story of where he got that bass. It was a gift from David Gilmour. He did some gigs with Pink Floyd and walked in and David was playing it and he admired it, he handed it to him. It burned up in his fire.
R: Yes, Tony had a fire in his garage.
P: Yeah, it burnt up all his memorabilia, all his old instruments, and so he put out the word to get another one of those rubber basses, the Ashbury which were like, two hundred dollars?
T: Maybe five.
P: It quickly drove the price up.
T: Yeah, because he was asking for it, they went up to about a grand. But I bought mine for two hundred and forty dollars at Musician's Friend. It's a copy, it's a remake.
R: And Adrian has one on the wall of his guitar room, now, in Nashville, too. But the story I was about to tell...Tony was coming up with these intriguing sounds from his little rubber bass and I turned and looked and it was upside down with the headstock on the floor. So the bottom of the guitar was here and the top of the guitar was there and Tony was playing it something like this. I only mention that because, Tony has a sense of play.
A: I really enjoyed the song where, the first time you laid the one of your guitars flat and you were setting up a bunch of loops and then you went into a really groove, a really nice groove, I wonder if you have a name for that song at all.
[Giggles]
T: You might be surprised to know I have no idea what you're talking about.
[Laughter]
I mean, sitting here trying to talk about what we did is absolutely impossible.
P: I would agree.
T: I can't even...[gesture]
[Laughter]
R: I remember Trey doing it, but I don't know when.
A: About mid-way through.
R: See, performance isn't rational. It's not rational, it's not sub-rational either, it's not quite irrational, but when it works, it's kind of trans-rational. Rationality must be involved somewhere, but if that's the level at which you're operating from, it really won't be musical. It might be interesting, it might be professional, but it won't be..it won't be the stuff I'm paying thirty dollars [something?]. (4)^
T: Ah....ah.....It's getting out of hand. How 'bout this guy all the way in the back. You!
***A (drunk from before): Hi. I'm a musician. You changed my life forever.
T: I wasn't even born when you were a kid.
[Crowd erupts in laughter]
R: [? I don't think anyone was.] So I'm telling a story, my: how I came to be a professional musician, very briefly.
***A: Well, wait a second.
R: All right, all right then he has a question, what is it, yes sir? T: You had your chance. ***A: I have always wondered, I have listened to all your albums, Robert, and you are...I listen to [Mauler? and] Stravinsky and I put you above them. This is how much I admire you.
R: All right, I'll tell my story.
[Laughter]
Unless you have a question, sir. I thank you for your kind words.
***A: Ah.....Adrian has laryngitis?
R: Or worse, he sounds terrible. He really is sick.
***A: Can he play the guitar?
R: Oh, no! I mean, he probably would if we said you're turning up and sent the van, he'd be on there now, sniffling away and looking wretched. He wouldn't be singing, he would only be playing guitar, but then he'd infect us.
T: And we'd lose a lot more of the tour than just tonight.
R: Then we'd be ProjeKct One point Five.
As: Tell your story....tell your story...
R: So now may I tell you my story....
As: Yeah!!!!
R: I began...thank you guys...tell me when you're bored...I began playing guitar December the twenty-fourth Nineteen fifty-seven. My mother and I spent the day combing guitar shops in the Bournemouthe area to buy me a guitar for Christmas. It was awful. Six years later when I was seventeen I came back from a holiday in Jersey visiting my sister who was working on the island as a hairdresser and I came back, I'd so loved practicing for hours and hours and hours and I said to my mother, I'm going to be a professional musician. My mother said nothing, she simply burst into tears. In later life, many years later my mother said to me that she never actually burst into tears. So, I can't honestly say that my mother did or didn't burst into tears; I know that I registered my mother bursting into tears. So I waited, four years later as a dutiful son, before finally I became a professional musician. My mother....my mother was afraid that when I got to be forty I would be bitter...and.....regret....my choice. Yes, I should've listened to my mother. Hey, I could have stayed as a real estate agent. [? So, you see I had] become a professional musician. It was worse.
A: Who are you guys favorite musicians?
T: You know I...I don't even know how to answer that question, but my new favorite record is the Willie Nelson's Demos from 1961.
[Mixed reactions from crowd]
P: Well, my list is too long, I couldn't even start.
A: Just name one.
P: John Lennon.
A: Any chance we might ever see a ProjeKct X tour?
R: ProjeKct X? That would probably be called ProjeKct Crim, if we ever did that. And right now, we're too busy with Crimson.
R: Make your choice.
T: There's a lady in [?] glasses
A: Why are you so shy?
R: Why are you so shy Trey?
[Laughter]
T: That's not a question for me.
R: Pat, you're a shy kind of guy.
P: I know, I know...it's something for a shrink. I always sat in the back ...I'm used to that sort of thing, which is great.
A: That was for Fripp.
R: Well, firstly, this is not quite a question, it's a statement...the st atement is "You are shy".
A: No, it's "why?".
R: If you say to someone, "Why are you shy?", you are not saying, "Are you shy?", yes or no or in between, Joan Bull will back me up. If you say to someone, "Are you shy?", you are saying, "You are shy, why?" This is a very different kind of question. Yes? Yes, all right, well with that out of the way we can move forward.
[Laughter]
The main concern, shall we say, of the artist, but really if we are all artists in how we live our life, is to be true, and we can only be true to who and what we are. And if you say to me, "Can I adopt a professional role and go out into the world and function, well, obviously, I've been now climbing into the back of bandwagons and setting off for gigs for 41 years and 9 months. So, if I'm shy, then obviously I'm not cripplingly shy.
[Laughter]
If you say to me, [nearly yelling in jest] "Why are you a private person with an increasing sense of your interiorization?:, I would say to you that this is not a question, it is a statement!!!!
[Laughter]
And I would take the first part of it "You are a private person, why?" I would say because it is fundamentally in my nature. Am I cripplingly private, no! I can go out in the world and function, I can get into the back of the busses with my buddies and set off to meet the public. But am I private? Yes. So, then I would move to the second half of that statement masquerading as a question "You are developing interiorization, why?!" I would say, well, at the moment I'm going through a change in my........ personal...process in which I am becoming increasingly private and interior. Does that mean being increasingly cripplingly private or, no! It's just that my self of sense [sic?] is deepening and it is private and interior. Why? Because that's who or what I am.
[Applause]
R: And....
T: We're done.
R: Thank you very much and good evening.
[Applause]
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Sorry there were spaces of this that just weren't audible. Please forgive spelling errors for equipment, towns, manufacturer's, etc. Thanks. This took long enough without try to research all that, too.