Errors-To: admin at elephant-talk dot com Reply-To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Sender: moderator at elephant-talk dot com Precedence: bulk From: moderator at elephant-talk dot com To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Subject: Elephant Talk #1081 E L E P H A N T T A L K The Internet newsletter for Robert Fripp and King Crimson enthusiasts Number 1081 Tuesday, 21 January 2003 Today's Topics: projeKcts alec sugar music transcription? Adrian Belew on BBC Radio 2 KC-relatives in avantgarde-music Setting the record straight(er) about 'The power to believe' ------------------ A D M I N I S T R I V I A --------------------- POSTS: Please send all posts to newsletter at elephant-talk dot com To UNSUBSCRIBE, or to CHANGE ADDRESS: Send a message with a body of HELP to admin at elephant-talk dot com or use the DIY list machine at http://www.elephant-talk.com/list/ To ASK FOR HELP about your ET subscription: Send a message to: help at elephant-talk dot com ET Web: http://www.elephant-talk.com/ Read the ET FAQ before you post a question at http://www.elephant-talk.com/faq.htm Current TOUR DATES info can always be found at http://www.elephant-talk.com/gigs/tourdates.shtml You can read the most recent ten editions of ET at http://www.elephant-talk.com/newsletter.htm THE ET TEAM: Toby Howard (Moderator), Dan Kirkdorffer (Webmaster) Mike Dickson (List Admin), and a cast of thousands. The views expressed herein are those of the individual authors. ET is produced using John Relph's Digest system v3.7b (relph at sgi dot com). ------------------ A I V I R T S I N I M D A --------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 17:15:11 -0800 From: stgor at apricorn dot com (Steven Gordon) Subject: projeKcts How much of The ProjeKcts was preplanned? ProjeKct One is entirely improv, right? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 01:21:57 +0000 From: "bored stiff" Subject: alec sugar regarding the canada us border situation.......... i've done mail trades with a couple of people, and the stuff seems to take FOREVER to come in. i've figured i was getting ripped off, but our postal system seems to be a mess right now! just trying to get in contact with a guy i correspnded with regarding trades. if you read this alec, send me a line. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 04:39:52 -0500 From: Richard Jay Baruch Subject: music transcription? What is Robert Fripp's postition on disemination of his work in tab over the a newsgroup? I transcribed a solo of Larks Toungues in Aspic a long time ago and I would like to ask Robert before sharing this. The newsgroup uses tab. I'm wary of anyone who communicates in tablature anyway. If Robert gave it his blessing to post I would rather do that in standard notation which is what I have transcribed it into. The question is really should a transcription of his guitar work of any type of medium of all be posted in a Yahoo group - by anyone? What is Robert's position on this? Given I know his postion on bootlegs already, I thought I'd ask about musical transcription as well. I Just thought to make this request of Robert prior to honoring the one that asked for other people to share similar guitar material of some guy who originally posted some stuff to increase guitar dexteriy that reminded me of Robert's guitar work. PS Met Robert in an autograph singing once. A Real guy. Rick ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 17:53:38 +0000 From: Paul Timms Subject: Adrian Belew on BBC Radio 2 Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but Adrian Belew has been interviewed by Radio 2's album chart show, and it will be broadcast tomorrow (Monday) evening. The show is from 7-8pm GMT. If you can't get Radio 2, then the interview can be listened to at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/album_show/, probably from Tuesday. I believe you can also listen to the show live at this site. Paul ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 22:47:26 +0100 From: "lichtafee" Subject: KC-relatives in avantgarde-music For about 17 years I'm a KC-fan, and I just recently discovered ET. The more I read it, the more I begin to wonder about the musical context I put that band in - not in the sense of "influence" but "spiritual coincidence" (as I'm from Mainz/Germany, some formulations might sound strange). Well, there are some things that made me a KC fan: the group's energy and warmth, the musician's sensibilities for sounds, the complexity and intelligence of some compositional ideas, Fripp's ability to create melodies full of intervallic tension (just listen to the beautiful "Schizoid"-guitarsolos on the "Ladies of the road"-CD!) - that all adds up to a music sometimes full of breathtaking intensity. KC opened up my ears, my heart, my mind, my teeny-emotions (and eventually led me to a "career" as a professional free jazz drummer & drum teacher). And last but not least KC made me very curious to get to know related music - not related in the sense of "what did these musicians play in other groups", but in the sense of the aforementioned attributes (energy, complexity, "sound research" etc.). So I listened to a lot of music in different stylistic fields and I got the impression that some of KC's music is not so much related to Genesis, Yes, ELP & Van der Graaf Generator (whose early 70's music I nevertheless like) or Peter Gabriel & David Sylvian, but to many artists in the following fields (sorry for the name-listing, but it might provoke one or another "hello again"): of course avantgarde/noise-rock (the likes of Arto Lindsay - when not singing bossa nova, Elliott Sharp or Fred Frith - aren't Henry Cow the best 70's companion to KC?), free jazz and improvised music (e.g. Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy) and contemporary classical music (e.g. Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono, Edgar Varese, Giacinto Scelsi, Gyorgy Ligeti, Galina Ustvolskaya - Ian Wallace also mentioned Karlheinz Stockhausen in the "Ladies of the road"-liner notes, so why shouldn't this namedropping also include his french and american counterparts, Pierre Boulez and Milton Babbitt?). Of course most of the aforementioned have nothing to do with, or even decidedly dislike rock music (they probably never listened to KC). But I think that (on a certain level) they all sometimes aim at similar targets. To put it in another way: KC's idiom, their language of course is more related to the aforementioned rock acts, but the (psychological/emotional?) "contents", the semantics (hope this term works in this context) sometimes seem to be more close to their contemporaries in classical avantgarde & free jazz/improvisation - had Xenakis had to lead a rock band, he'd probably produced pieces like "Thrak", "Requiem" or the last noisy minutes of "Groon" ("Earthbound"-version) - maybe a stupid idea, but it might work as a metaphor. As a teeny I was so much impressed by some of KC's music, that I got a little sick for a short while (and happy afterwards, but also a little frightened - unknown dark forces getting on my teenage soul, hooaar.!). Nevertheless: what a wake-up call! But a little later I also experienced this when listening to Brotzmann's disturbing "Machine Gun" (even darker forces.) and more recently: Charles Ives' 4th Symphony (the Allegretto is completely unbelieveable, and when the choir comes into action at the end, it all sounds so beautifully fucked up!), Varese's "Ameriques" (it's finale made me seriously think about giving up jazz drumming - what for should I play "ding-dinga-ding." after THIS?) and Scelsi's very disturbing string quartets nos. 4 & 5 - - - - (words fail me). And there's also a nonet improvisation of Derek Bailey's Company of 1983 that includes - hooray, hooray, hooray: Jamie Muir! - and which belongs to the most powerful music I ever heard! (And also the mid70's Yamashita Trio comes to mind - whoopee!) I named all these examples, because I see them in one line with KC, as they touched the same places of my heart/brain/belly over the last 15 years. So I asked myself: what do all these players/composers have in common? It's hard to talk about the "contents" of music, but I found myself a possible explanation (sorry if it all gets more detailed than some of you might tolerate, but these are some of my thoughts about KC's and other musicians' characteristics): All this music deals with sound and ensemble-texture. The musical parameters melody, rhythm and harmony (or even pitch) are handled in a more or less complex way, so that the attention can hardly focus on a singable melody, a groove or chord changes, but on the overall sound of the music. In a way, music like that doesn't follow the listener's expactations and experiences (very often "trained" by mainstream-radio and TV), as does very successfully e.g. any chart hit. Instead the listener can be taken by the hand and brought into new and fascinating places - didn't KC find some of these for us (and for themselves)? Or didn't some of these places find KC (as RF probably would say)? And when avoiding the usual rules about classical harmony, straight rhythms and intonation, the music can't fall back upon stylistic clichees so easily, and to a certain degree, you have to create your own musical rules and clichees to create authentic music. "What do I want to hear/need to play?" instead of "How do I have to serve this style properly?" - when the music becomes more subjective that way, it can get a lot of freedom to be laden with individual "psycho-musical contents" (altough the composers of the 50's/60's New York-school would say, this is just the opposite of freedom in music - or music's freedom...) Of course, from the musician's perspective, you can see this just the other way round: You feel the need to create your own "soundtrack" for your emotional/philosophical (or what ever) way of seeing the world, find out that common clichees of a given style don't match with the needed expression, and change the musical elements till they feel fine for you. By this, many musicians moved (RF probably would say: "had been moved" - isn't it romantic?) beyond certain musical borders and avoided certain rules about classical harmony & straight rhythms (very early and very good example: Arnold Schoenberg). And by this, music often became some sort of "energy source" (or a place to put and accumulate energy in?) and can. how do you say: "kick ass" in a very special way (or how's about "kick mind"?). A lot of free jazz is primarily concerned with energy. Most improvised music and classical avantgarde are both in their own ways also specialized in creating similar psychological (emotional/atmospheric) effects. And, in my opinion, KC is one of the widely known rock bands closest to that spirit. Or how's about this approach: for example the respective outputs of three outstanding composers, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Helmut Lachenmann, have (each to his own degree) many spiritual-emotional-philosophical-intelectual-political potentials to change one's perspective of life completely. I don't say that this should be music's purpose. But nevertheless, it would be interesting to see, how many rock musicians have the capacity to achieve equally strong results in their respective field (without emphazising the emotional aspect and without the possibly resulting socialization of the fan to a one-dimensional "scene" - as e.g. punk or hip hop can be). Only a few come to my mind, among them KC/RF (and probably Zappa? .and weren't Fred Frith and John Zorn only in the past "part-time rockers"?) Hey, there's another way to put it: KC just found ways of developing new vocabulary. Not in the sense of "how can I individually change the way of playing some rock/pop-clichees" or "how's this stilystic clichee to be combined with clichees of that style", but "what can I play instead of all this?". To me, that attitude seems to be one significant thing, KC in some cases have in common with the aforementioned (and even more unmentioned) composers and improvisors - and unfortunately with only very few in rock music ("Trout Mask"-Beefheart, early Sonic Youth - who else? Zappa? Can? Velvet Underground? I surely missed many interesting rock bands - but which?). With this in mind, I meanwhile tend to relate them to those composers and improvisors who create individual "sound worlds" bursting with energy (often even more intense than KC) - or with sometimes similarly moving "coloured silence" (like e.g. Morton Feldman or John Cage. Sigh. and speaking of Cage, some of Fripp's aphorisms remind me of him). Sorry if that sounds like a lecture (my girlfriend commented "it sounds typical german"), but I get easily enthusiastic when thinking about (and listening to) all those wonderful musicians. As I'm very interested in music with avantgarde-leanings, I'd be happy about complementary remarks. And can somebody please tell me about some ethnic music, that deals with interesting textures and belongs in this context? (There MUST be some!) Many greetings, Joerg P.S. I just had the idea to check out Zappa's list of persons, who contributed "in many ways" to the Mother's music (listed on the "Freak out"-sleeve). He mentions Cecil Taylor, Schoenberg, Ives, Varese, Stockhausen, Nono and Boulez. Also Webern, Kagel, Ornstein and Haba. sigh - lets see if there's a Zappa-fansite to do some more (unbearable?) avantgarde-babble. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 19:32:52 -0600 From: "John Spannaus" Subject: Setting the record straight(er) about 'The power to believe' This is a response to "dude"'s rather scathing response to my original TPTB review: I'm sorry if you were offended by my review, I certainly wasn't intending to alienate anyone. But I don't think everyone interpreted it in the same way that you did. One thing that you didn't seem to keep in mind while reading my review was that it written immediately after listening to the album ONCE. Not much time to work out the details, I was simply just trying to get some thoughts out on the album for the benefit of those interested. "I also got a copy of the new album, and I'm sure many people have. Why do you feel the urge to shout it out proudly just like you did ? Surely you've obtain your copy illegally, just like I did, so why don't you just be quiet and discreet about it." I don't see any reason to be "discreet" about it.. All of us are eagerly anticipating this new album, and a lot of us are interested to read all that we can about it as we are waiting. I'm sure an actual review of the album itself is welcome as well. Sure I was "proud" to get to listen to the new Crimson album so early, why shouldn't I be? Weren't you happy to hear it?? Nothing in the content of my message hinted at "gloating" or anything of the sort.. I used the term "suckers" in my subject line as a joke, perhaps you are looking a little too far into that.. Lighten up! By the way, I will be PAYING for the new album when it comes out, as well.. Though I didn't feel the need to grovel and explain myself to "KC representatives" in my original post.. "But your 'review' is so full of errors that I feel I must react. First of all you don't seem to have the 'real' album (that's why I assume your source is not an authorized one). What you describe as 'Facts of life' is in fact 'The power to believe II'; what you call 'Power to believe II' is in fact 'Facts of life (intro)', and it seems that your 'Facts of life (intro)' is in fact 'Facts of life' itself !" That's very possible.. I actually did question the "intro" title to one of the songs, as it did not seem to fit into the album as an intro to anything.. You're probably right with your track corrections.. However, I was trusting the track listing that I had. My mistake, I apologize. "Secondly, I strongly disagree when you say: "Eyes wide open plays exactly like the Happy version." and "Level five is pretty similar to the live track.". Are you sure you're listening to the 'real' Power to believe album? Although they are the same songs, on my "copy" they appear to be really different in arrangement and feelings." I stick to what I said about Eyes Wide Open.. Mostly, I was basing those comments on the assumption I made that the "electric" version of this song would be a "rocked out" version of the Happy version. I think most people made the same assumption after seeing the "acoustic" label on the EP version. As for Level Five, it DOES play differently, but it is still the same song, nonetheless. Again, keep in mind, my review was written after ONE listen. (A fact that you seem quick to overlook) "And finally, a last quote from you: "And while you're anxiously waiting for it, try to remember that you've already heard about half of it (assuming you own Nashville) and, most likely, the other half isn't going to totally rock your socks off.." What are you talking about ?" I also stand by those comments as well. Most people HAVE heard (at least) half of it, and the other half consists of The Facts of Life songs, which I wasn't particularly "blown away" by, and the rest (The Power to Believe title tracks) is rather light-weight compared to the other half of the album. This is all my personal opinion, I don't really see what you are trying to argue here. "Who are you to make such subjective comments on an album that you got the chance to listen to before many of us? I hate the 'patronized' tone of your remarks here. I might be wrong, but it seems to me like you're saying: 'Allright suckers, I heard the new album and you didn't, but don't make a big deal out of it, it's not that good anyway !'. I, for one, am particulary impressed and fulfilled with 'the other half' of the new album as you call it. My opinion is that 'Power to believe' is an incredibly good and successful album (artistically speaking), and that it's way way better than TCOL was (and I like TCOL). But that's MY opinion, and I would have liked to keep it to myself until the official release of the album. But your post unfortunately obliged me to do so early, just to tell the readers of ET that they don't have to take your 'review' for granted." I am a fan with an opinion.. I was writing a review.. Most reviews ARE subjective. I think you misread my entire post, maybe you were having a bad day and you assumed my intentions were something that they were not. I don't appreciate you misquoting me so terribly either. THIS was my summation: "So, all in all, it's a good album.. But it's not perfect.." If you disagree with that, fine, but it's my opinion. My post was obviously a review of an advanced copy of the album; those who did not want to read it, just skipped over it, I'm sure. Those who WERE interested, went ahead and read it, I'm sure. But either way, I'm willing to bet that my words and opinions weren't enough to change someone's mind to buy (or not to buy) the new album. Nor was that my intention, I just thought some people were interested, and some people were. On more of a side note, what I said about most of us having already heard much of the album, is simply a fact. I'm not complaining. I wouldn't trade Nashville or the Happy EP just so I could be SURPRISED by the new album. I think it's great that we get so much Crimson every year! But I did feel it necessary to mention it so that people wouldn't be let-down by the lack of "never before heard" material. So, anyways, I apologize for this LONG post, especially to those who don't even care about this little dispute. But "dude" took the time to criticize me and my initial review, so I wanted to take the time to defend myself. Maybe "dude" just had some bad eggs for breakfast, and he didn't mean to sound as angry as he did. On a tangent, I'm listening to a John Wetton interview on British radio right now. He responded to my e-mailed question about 21st Century Schizoid Band. He said that he would be very interested in collaborating with them. (Big news imo!! I just wish they'd tour the states!) --Sir Nicholas James Spannaus III (not John, btw) ------------------------------ End of Elephant Talk Digest #1081 *********************************