Errors-To: admin at elephant-talk dot com Reply-To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Sender: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Precedence: bulk From: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com To: newsletter at elephant-talk dot com Subject: Elephant Talk Digest #469 E L E P H A N T T A L K The Internet newsletter for Robert Fripp and King Crimson enthusiasts Number 469 Monday, 2 March 1998 Today's Topics: Fripp and the blues/Night Watch catching up on some threads Proposal: Discography of KC-related solo releases? Re: Live Recordings &"The Nightwatch". ladies who rock Ophelia's Dream = SAOTW? Re: The Nightwatch: In praise of "LTiA, Part Two" Re:Posting #467 Peter Sinfield What might PPKC mean? Elephant Talk Digest #464 USA, FAQ ------------------ 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 ETWEB: http://www.elephant-talk.com/ You can read the most recent seven editions of ET at http://www.elephant-talk.com/cgi-bin/newslet.pl IRC: Regular get-togethers at #ElephantTalk on Undernet Sundays at Noon PST / 3pm EST / 8pm GMT Mondays at 6pm PST / 9pm EST / 2am GMT THE ET TEAM: Toby Howard (Moderator), Dan Kirkdorffer (Webmeister) 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 3.0 package. ------------------ A I V I R T S I N I M D A --------------------- Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 18:58:32 CST From: "Brown, Neal Patrick" Subject: Fripp and the blues/Night Watch Someone asked if Fripp had been influenced by the blues. Um....not much. =) On the early KC albums, the tracks that even resembled blues were things like "Ladies of the Road" (a joke), Easy Money (too rhythmically complex, and more of a vehicle for improvisation, like THRAK), and...well, that's it. Fripp's playing on both of those is only loosely blues-like, and even then it's more to be amusing than anything else. I've heard that in 74, when Bruford and Wetton were pissed off at Fripp about something or other, they'd play a blues figure for him, and it would drive him nuts because he hated playing along with it. (Not sure what Cross was doing then...) And now, we have Fripp going bonkers with this Soundscapes stuff, in which he's playing in a genre totally removed from rock, let alone blues. Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream has that bluesy riff to it (at the beginning, anyway!) but I'm pretty sure that's Belew or Gunn. Fripp doesn't have much to (very quiet arpeggiated minor chords, basically) until the freakout sections. Also...D. Singleton mentions in the liner notes to The Night Watch that the show may have opened with LTIA Uno, but that it's not on the masters . Wouldn't that be a tragedy....the rest of the show is so compelling (Cross' comments in the liner notes about the band being tired are misleading...the show is pure fire, and the fact that they could play the way they did when they were "four individuals" makes the times when they played as a group that much more astounding)...Hearing LTIA I from that performance would have been nice. (And it would have filled up some extra space for those bemoaning the 82-minute running time ;) ). C'est la vie. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:31:20 -0800 From: james dot dignan at stonebow dot otago dot ac dot nz (James Dignan) Subject: catching up on some threads Kathy Ottersten wrote: >Does this sound suspiciously similar to Rene Magritte's surrealist work >"La trahison des images", known for showing a pipe labelled "This is not a >pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe). I often think that being a crimhead is >surreal, so why not the head-crim himself. close. "...known for showing *a picture of* a pipe..." Magritte's point is that the picture wasn't the reality. You couldn't smoke the painting (unless you rolled it up and set fire to the end, I suppose... Then again, the original message referred to a *photograph* of RF, so perhaps the analogy still applies... >The discussion of the difference between a performer/artist's creations >and his/her personality is a very potent one. I would wager that the >majority of post-ers here are very intrigued by most of their musical >idols' personalities, or perceptions thereof. It's a real danger though; I >know that non-musical things like interviews, photos, and videos have >skewed my perception of artists and their work. This is partcularly true >with more modern artists; when I think of Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, >Pearl Jam, etc, I tend to think of visual images or non-musical statements >made by those individuals. not only modern musicians. I at times find it hard tallying my love for Wagner's music with what I know of his personality, for example. But yes, it is a particular problem with modern musicians: everyone from Oasis to Jaco Pastorius is best experienced without the insights into their personae, and even Fripp can be, erm, prickly at times (though largely, I believe through a combination of a dry-as-dust sense of humour and a dislike for suffering fools). Hmmm. perhaps that answers that vaguely inane Spice Girls question: Robert would be Prickly Spice. oh, and to (um... deleted the name, sorry - Brian?) who was mentioning the sixth interval that was banned in medieval music, there has been a lot of talk about this interval in the past on the list, in particular with reference to the track "The Devil's Triangle", which is based around this interval and around augmented 5ths, IIRC. It might be worth having a hunt through the glorious archives of this list. Also, ISTR there is quite a bit about this subject in Eric Tamm's more-than-useful-even-if-Fripp-didn't-want-it book "Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft" (although for the life of me I can't find out *where* in that book it is...). James PS: good to see that there are women who like prog in their own right, and that they are finally making some noise on this list! I guessed that there should be, but have always been at a loss as to why there are so few of them, proportionally speaking. PPS: less good to see are some of the fairly gross and crude generalisations (take that comment how you will) about why men and women might like/dislike crimso. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 17:46:10 -0800 From: "Henry H. Andrews" Subject: Proposal: Discography of KC-related solo releases? Over the course of the (approximately) three years that I've been listening to King Crimson and reading ET, I've encountered many references to work done by KC members outside of KC. In some cases I've been able to track down the albums mentioned, and in some cases I haven't, but one thing has become clear- there's a lot of good stuff out there (and, most likeley, some not-so-good stuff), and there's no resource (that I know of, *please* correct me if I'm wrong) that brings information about all of these releases together. So, unless there is a single resource out there of which I am unaware, I propose to begin compling some sort of discography of solo releases, which, depending on the interest of the ET community (and the size of the discography), could be kept either on the ET web page or on my (currently down, but not for long) page. (And if the ET Web and Discog folks are already planning on such a discography, or would prefer to manage it themselves, I'd be happy to simply contribute, but I'm volunteering as I know they do lots of stuff as it is). Anyway, a few words on what I think this discography should and should not include: John Relph and Robert Steinberger have wonderfully documented the career of Robert Fripp and King Crimson- there's nothing further that needs to be done there. Also, many related bands (Yes, ELP, etc) and some solo artists (Adrian Belew) are equally well-documented on the net. So there isn't much need for a new discography in these areas either. Even some of the relatively obscure releases are documented elsewhere. For instance, there are home pages, featuring discographies, for Trey Gunn, Gordon Haskell, John Wetton, and others. However, many of these discographies don't provide all of the information about each album the way the RF&KC discog does. So it seems to me that assembling all of the information in one place with much info, and keeping a link to the source discographies would be nice. Opinions on this are welcome. But the real reason to do this is for the truly obscure or just difficult to find stuff. For instance, Giles/Muir/Cunningham, David Cross' recent solo albums (four to date, I think), Peter Sinfield's solo album (recently being discussed yet again on ET), and many other releases that have been repeatedly brought up, discussed, and then forgotten, only to be brought up again, throughout the history of ET. This would be the high-priority stuff- releases that various people know about, but no one else will discover except by chance mention. As one final content note, it would be good to collect reviews/opinions as well. Anyway, I've gone on long enough (sorry Toby :). If this proposal stirs the interest/approval of the general ET community, then I can start collecting information, and maybe putting it up in some preliminary form on my web site (www.concentric.net/~handrews/ but there's nothing there right now- server crash [not concentric's], long story), and we'll see if it ever becomes useful/interesting. Looking forward to your comments (perhaps private email would be best, and I'll post again asking for contributions if there seems to be interest in the project)... Henry Andrews hha1 at cornell dot edu ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 21:30:59 -0500 From: Ken Lacouture Subject: Re: Live Recordings &"The Nightwatch". Regarding some of David Suman's comments about reconciling the release of "The Nightwatch" with Fripp's philosophy regarding recording live events (partially quoted below): > Given Robert Fripp's overall ambivalence towards concert performance > recordings and their effect upon the artist/audience relationship, once > would assume that this must have been a pretty special event for RF to > countenance this release. > > So far as RF's diffidence about live recordings is concerned, his qualms > about the effect of imposed permanence on the act of performance is as > accurate as it is idealistic in a world so addicted documenting everything > for the information glut. (edit) The knowledge of > being taped is certainly going to effect the musician's attitude towards > the act of performance as well as the specific performance. When discussing this release we should not forget that the Amsterdam concert was significantly different from most other KC concerts in that taping was a major and deliberate part of it's purpose. It could be considered as a recording session with audience in attendance just as easilly as being viewed as a concert. The biggest aspect has to do with precicely what you said about > "The knowledge of > being taped is certainly going to effect the musician's attitude towards > the act of performance as well as the specific performance." KC knew they were doing double duty that night: making a record and giving a concert at the same time. This is vastly different from surreptitious taping by audience members, or even causual documentation by band staff. Perhaps the imprtant distinction is allowing the musicians to choose which conditions they wish to present their art under. In Amsterdam, KC chose to do it with tape recorders present. I don't think it it would be a stretch to guess that Fripp's dislike of certain kinds of taping has more than a little to do with the kind that leaves him out of the decision making process. Likewise, maybe the message he's trying to convey is that it's not about bootlegging, or money or property rights -- it's about openess and trust. Ken Lacouture ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 21:54:01 -0500 (EST) From: Jonathan F Benfield Subject: ladies who rock Hey, There have been many posts that discuss whether or not women like crimso. Anyone who doubts that females can rock, be grungy/distorted should listen to RASPUTINA...I think that there is a good bit here that may appeal to crimheads male and female.... jb ps...I consider myself a true kc fanatic...I wear a hat with the thrak symbol, I have a kc sticker on my car...I own a UK bootleg with Brufe and Holdsworth... but some of you slackers are really obsessed!!!! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 01:56:41 -0500 From: Steve Smith Subject: Ophelia's Dream = SAOTW? > Thus spake Justin Weinberg > Subject: Ophelia's Shadow > > A few folks asked for details on Toyah's _Ophelia's Shadow_, which I > mentioned in a recent post. > [snip] > Most of the > songs were written by Geballe and Wilcox, or by them and Gunn and Beavis. > Fripp co-wrote two tracks, but as far as I know does not play on the album. Mark Perry of the former Possible Productions once told me that the two tracks Fripp co-composed were essentially Sunday All Over the World tracks; i.e., that Fripp *did* in fact play on them. And to my ears, "Brilliant Day" and *especially* "Lords of the Never Known" do sound as if they might be Fripp - a preference for certain kinds of chords, progressions and phrasings common to his work, especially recent work. I could be completely wrong, of course, but these are the only cuts on which this seems like it could be the case IMHO (and no slight intended towards the excellent Tony Geballe... indeed, to his credit he does not merely sound like a Fripp imitator). One other thing - on the evidence of this, Sunday All Over the World and Gordon Haskell's "Hambledon Hill," I'd label Paul Beavis one of the most creative and interesting British drummers of the post-Stewart Copeland generation. Anyone know what he's up to lately? Mark also mentioned the possibility of a second SAOTW disc, a live disc which would cover both released and unreleased material. I, for one, would really love to see this. Fripp, Gunn and Beavis were a well-oiled machine. ProjeKCt 2.5, anyone? Steve Smith ssmith362sprynet.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 02:56:03 -0500 From: Steve Smith Subject: Re: The Nightwatch: In praise of "LTiA, Part Two" > From: Bob VanDyne > Subject: The Nightwatch: In praise of "LTiA, Part Two" > > I echo > other posts in that a lot of this seems superfluous, considering how much > has already been released (the S&BB material of course, but I somehow > missed the fact that much of "Fright Watch/Talking Drum" is the same > recording featured on "Frame by Frame"; so we've already heard most of the > improv). That may be true. But let me state for the record, as someone way too familiar with the Concertgebouw highlights through bootlegs, that the "Fright Watch/Talking Drum" material included on "Frame by Frame" was PAINFUL!!! in that it did not include the excellent version of "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part 2" as its denouement. Having heard the entire progression from improv to "Talking Drum" to "LTIA2" so many time on "Un Reve Sans Consequences Especiales," to hear it on "Frame by Frame" sans climax made it seem a lot like coitus interruptus, IMHO. Thus, the real point of "The Night Watch" - "The Great Deceiver" is an irreplaceable collection of live material from that particular era. In it we had the brillance of live Crimson circa '73-'74 preserved forever in a pretty box. But many of us wanted *more* from DGM: we wanted the brilliance to be put into context. We wanted one single show, from beginnning to end, so as to glimpse into the very process by which that magic was created. And given that the Concertgebouw show had been so widely bootlegged thanks to the BBC and King Biscuit, it seemed the proper show to reclaim as property of the band. How were we to know that the band members themselves considered this to be a low energy day? Or that they went onstage tired? That the mellotron melted down during the title track was just another thing to get the band down and make this a gig to forget. But yet, the opposite happened. Fripp spontaneously created a solution to the "Night Watch" problem while carrying the music through to its resolution, where many other bands, like Tonya Harding, might have stopped and wept over the equipment failure. And it was incredibly brave and honest of Fripp to include this incident in "The Night Watch," especially since he has never been shy about revisionist releases in the past. And not only that, but the band rose from such a bummed-out beginning to create, in short order, the magnificent "Trio," the version of "Fracture" against which I'm sure we measure all others, and the best-ever... let me repeat as a rabid bootleg collector... best-*ever* "Fright Watch / Talking Drum / LTIA2" climax, followed by the version of "Schizoid Man" so admired by the masses. That, in a nutshell, is what makes "The Night Watch" so valuable - that the band could create magic on any given night, and that on nights when the most seemed stacked against them, the more resoundingly they triumphed. And, aside from a possible lost "LTIA1," it's *all* here for us to "witness" nearly 25 years later. Of what other band on this level of success and fame (aside, perhaps, from the Grateful Dead, of whom I'm not a follower) could that level of candor be claimed? Personally I couldn't be more pleased. Steve Smith ssmith36 at sprynet dot com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 10:19:01 +0100 From: Thierry Wyss Subject: Re:Posting #467 Peter Sinfield > From: Robin & Rob Hults > Many years ago, 1976 I think, Peter Sinfield released a solo album TO Rob, I had also a few numbers back a similar post. I got many answer. The original LP was issued under Pete Sinfield "Still" in 1973 by Manticore. It has been reissued in 1993 under Peter Sinfield "Stillusion" by Voiceprint BP152CD. It has added 2 more titles on it "1.Can you forgive a fool" & "4.Hanging Fire". Contact Gary Davis at Voiceprint who has a very interesting WEB site at http://www.artist-shop.com or contact him at the artshop at artist-shop dot com Best Regards Thierry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Mar 98 10:22:00 EST From: "Ursic, Caesar" Subject: What might PPKC mean? A question prefaced by a story: Back in the late 70's I had the opportunity to attend one of Fripp's solo performances in a Cactus Records store in Houston. This was in support of his then- recently released Exposure album. I was just an ignorant high-schooler who had heard a few of the album cuts on the local college radio station (KTRU -Rice University) and showed up to the record store on a whim. Fripp's performance (solo guitar with "fripperboard" and "devices") blew me and the other 30 or so people away. Afterwards, he answered questions and signed copies of the new album. I decided I had to meet him. Since all of the copies of Exposure had by then vanished from the bins, I grabbed the nearest KC album I could find (USA) and stood in line. When he saw the album I was presenting him to autograph, he appeared to smile wrily and shook his head as if saying " how predictable of you." We never exchanged words. His inscription on the back of the jacket reads: "Robert Fripp - p.p.k.c. - r.i.p." To this day I'm not sure what the "p.p.k.c." means. Any thoughts? C.M. Ursic Boston caesar dot ursic at bmc dot org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:17:58 -0600 From: Fernandez Jose Subject: Elephant Talk Digest #464 - >From: "DJM" > >...it seems to this one that in >a repertoire as that of KING CRIMSON, when it comes to digesting (or as can >be said "digging") an album, the notion of "skipping tracks" seems >absolutely blasphemous. My personal point of view is that in the case of any CD released by a well respected artist, the intention is to release a package of songs that would follow a thread, sometimes very obvious, sometimes just in the back of the mind of the artist. In any case I think that a proper appreciation of any CD can only be achieved by listening it as a whole. -o- From: Mikewyz at aol dot com Just to add something in this thread: Once a friend of mine mentioned that he stopped liking Metallica, just because the Kirk Hammet, the lead guitarist, all of a sudden looked gay to him... I know, this sounds excessive, but the idea of enjoying more or less music based on the attitudes of the human being that created it, seems just as ridicule to me. Finally, I had the chance to see in MTV latino a clip by Sylvian/Fripp and I could see Trey in there, but I did not catch the name of the song, does anyone know what I'm talking about, any hints? Thanks JF ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 02:15:26 EST From: SMcmil6360 Subject: USA, FAQ I also noticed what may be a discrepancy in the FAQ that says Where was USA recorded? In the Eric Tamm book, page 74, he states that the single song Asbury Park was recorded in Asbury Park, and that the rest of the LP was recorded at Providence. This is the opposite of what is said in your FAQ. Here's the complete quote from page 74: "The live album USA, released around April 1975, was recorded toward the end of this final U.S. tour: the song "Asbury Park" at the Asbury Park (New Jersey) Casino on June 28, and the rest two days later at the Palace Theater in Providence, Rhode Island." Thought you'd want to know... ------------------------------ End of Elephant-Talk Digest #469 ********************************