From toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Thu Jun 18 09:16:29 1992 Return-Path: Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:33:14 BST Subject: discipline #6 Reply-To: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Sender: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Precedence: bulk From: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk Subject: discipline #6 discipline, Number 6 Friday, 4 October 1991 Today's Topics: Torn/Karn/Bruford/Levin "Islands" LoCG "Show of Hands" Review Robert Fripp/ King Crimson Videos [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 13:46:19 PDT From: malcolm%yuba at wrs dot uucp (Malcolm Humes) Subject: Torn/Karn/Bruford/Levin Not totally Fripp or KC related, but following a strand... if you want to include this in the next "Discipline" please feel free to do so; if you feel it doesn't fit, or wish to edit... that's fine too. I emailed the Torn part as a reply to the original author anyway. Brian Patrick Arnold said: >on David Torn's "Cloud About Mercury". I've been told David Torn >originally wanted Mick Karn, who later played Tony's bass parts when >Torn toured after this release, with Bill and another trumpet player >whose name I forget (BTW that was some amazing live music). I'm pretty sure I read a Karn interview or possibly Torn interview where they stated that Mick was on tour during the recording of Cloud About Mercury but was originally Torn's choice for the project, and thus joined them for the tour. I was a little bored at the live Torn show in San Francisco, but have heard a live tape of it that blows away the lp versions of the material. Plus it was fun to see Mick Karn live, and to hear an encore of one of his pieces from Dali's Car with Torn on guitar and NO VOCALS. With Bruford on drums instead of some drum machine. The problem this show live for me was mostly that it was just boring to watch, and the music was pretty droney so it was sort of a sleeper visually. Torn and Karn toured some months later with Mark Isham, and that was an interesting show, but again a little visually boring. But they did the Karn piece again as an encore, and this time really punched up the piece with some stinging horns. That was the best moment of that show for me. Terry Bozzio was on drums on that one. > Mick later collaborated with David in other projects Are you familiar with any of these "other projects"? I think a few are listed for sale in the Wayside mailorder catalogs. on CMP? One listed in a CMP catalog is Lonely Universe with Torn, Karn, Michael White on trumpet and Michael Lambert on drums. I'd like to hear some of this. There's a number of other Torn projects listed in that catalog too. I I was pretty disappointed with Torn's voacla on his follow up to Cloud About Mercury. I'm still pretty amused to recall seeing Tony Levin listed in the credits of a Paul Simon lp, I think the one with "50 ways to leave your lover". I think he did a lot of session work for years before hooking up with Gabriel and Fripp. From what I recall Tony listens mostly to classical music, which I thought was a little curious given the kinds of things he plays. Does anyone recall Tony playing anything other than the Chapman Stick with Crimson? I seem to recall that in concert he also played a little bit of synth or something... seems like I recall him at something like a keyboard with some footpedals. - Malcolm malcolm at wrs dot com [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Mon, 30 Sep 91 13:35 CDT From: e343mh at tamuts dot tamu dot edu (Michael Hand) Subject: "Islands" For years -- more than I like to think about -- I've been surprised at how people hate "Islands". Even die-hard KC fans (like me) usually hate that album. In a recent poll of KC album favorites, it came in dead last, with a single first-place vote: mine. (I tied it with "Larks' Tongues" and "Poseidon", I think.) Don't y'all hear the motifs occurring early in "Formentera Lady," then getting worked out in a hard-core way later (between guitar and sax)? Ain't Fripp's choppy chord-work late in "Sailor's Tale" great? I admit that side 2 leaves a bit to be desired, and that "Ladies" is out of place, mood-wise, and that the orchestral thing is kind of pretentious, but "Islands" is compelling (isn't it?) I recall reading that Fripp himself thinks little of "Lizard" and "Islands". (The stupid editor let the reference to "Islands and Lizards" sneak [sic] by!) So what's the word? B-o} Michael [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1991 16:32:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Patrick Arnold Subject: LoCG "Show of Hands" Review I originally posted this on rec.music.gaffa and subsequently on rec.music.reviews in June '91. I've never heard of the Guitar Craft Services CD "Live II" or of any bootlegged tapes, but I'd be very interested in finding out how to obtain the "Live II" CD if it is at all available. ----- Robert Fripp & The League of Crafty Guitarists: "Show of Hands" (c), (p) 1991 Editions E.G., E.G. Records, Caroline Records (US) If you've never heard the League of Crafty Guitarists before or haven't heard them in concert, this new CD release of acoustic guitar ensemble music might blow your mind. Taking from where King Crimson's "Discipline" of guitar tapestries left off, the League of Crafty Guitarists catapult the listener into highly intricate "guitar orchestra" music. This is the third and most mature all-ensemble recording since the LP/CD/Tape "Live!" in '86, and a tape-only release "Get Crafty I" in '88. It contains 19 varied pieces performed in the studio in June of last year. There are five "Voice Craft" pieces by Patricia Leavitt, whose humorous, introspective lyrics are sung exceptionally well. They help much to break up the seriousness of the guitar pieces so that the listener isn't overwhelmed. Only two of the guitar pieces are by Fripp, and all of the rest are original compositions by the contributing guitarists. Of the guitar pieces, "Circulation" and "Eye of the Needle" are re-recordings from "Live!" However both are remarkably different and played with greater precision than before. In fact, "Circulation," a structured improvisation involving the whole group taking turns playing a random note and looking at the person who is to play the next note (12 of the 17 guitarists), comes across as a striking, powerfully coherent yet delicate piece, reflecting the maturity and togetherness of the ensemble. Seven of the pieces are re-recordings from "Get Crafty." For whatever reasons, they didn't choose to play what I consider the two best pieces >from the tape (namely, "The Breathing Field" and "Intergalactic Boogie Express"), but what they did re-record is much better than on "Get Crafty." Fripp's "The Moving Force" is played by Fripp alone with a viola, the only non-guitar contribution on the CD. "Spasm for Juanita" has both guitarists in the duet playing even more adeptly than on "Get Crafty," if such a thing could be imagined. In this piece, one guitarist sounds like he is really having a musical spasm--their style of playing indicates that the LoCG are not all mere student "nazi guitar" robots of Fripp and that many are indeed virtuosos in their own right, some with exceptional character and style. "Bicycling to Afghanistan", "An Easy Way", "Scaling the Whales" and "Chiara" sound better, but not noticably different than the tape, except "An Easy Way" has impressively crisp strums, and "Chiara" ends with the 4-note phrase all by its lonesome again just like the beginning, to make it more symmetric and "lonely" sounding. The worst I can say of these re-recorded pieces is that "Askesis" is still annoying to listen to. They opened with "Askesis" during their last two tours. My best guess is that it's designed to snap the listener out of the casual, half-asleep, non-listening state we often find ourselves in, especially at concerts, I'm left jumpy and hyper. Fripp has an aphorism "Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence," but this cup is holding potent coffee, so watch out. All five of the new pieces, which they played live during their last tour, make this CD worth buying regardless of whether you already you own the tape, the "Live!" CD, and/or have seen them live. "A Connecticut Yankee in The Court of King Arthur" is a bouncy piece with a classical "renaissance" feel to it that opens up with some of the most original acoustic guitar sounds I've ever heard, similar to clanking pots and pans (I distinctly remember being awed by this live, so I know it's not pots and pans). It quickly turns raucous with its stops and starts, spurts of notes, clashing and then suddenly forming deep harmonic juxtaposition--it is quite fun and funny to listen to. It also shows off the virtuosity of some more of the guitarists, especially the lead part (BTW, few of the pieces on this CD have Fripp contributing a major role, if any role at all). "Are you Abel (Ready and Able to Rock 'n' Roll)?", "Hard Times", and "Burning Siesta" are all exellent new "stereo guitar" pieces. The former two have several guitar parts "travel" from the leftmost guitarist to the rightmost guitarist, reversing direction and jumping all around. A way cool use of a bunch of guitars in stereo--this is intended by the way they sit live in a semi-circle, merely captured well in the studio. The guitar pieces end with "Asturias," which will leave you numb. "Asturias" alone could be well worth whatever it costs you to buy this CD. It begins as a gracefully paced 6:6:4:4 minor key pattern with several guitars adding to the sound largely from the center until it changes structure, like that of a gathering storm in a dream and it has begun to rain. Then, with guitarists first from the right and then from the left sides in the ensemble playing notes in a 6/8 middle section, you can hear some amazing full-bodied harmonics coming from nobody in the middle, until the lead part quietly makes its comeback and reasserts the original timing and pattern. The song, in its clever use of patterns and harmonics, reminds me of fractals, in the way a pattern within a bar can be exactly the same as a pattern of occasional notes spread over several bars, out of synch with the time signature, and how the chaos of the middle section eventually forms the original patterns out of itself. Okay this basically describes the structure of half the LoCG pieces, but this one stands out as remarkably overwhelming. It has a high "weep" factor. It reminds me of a couple of lines from Patricia Leavitt's voice craft piece that ends the CD: "Are there any other choices" "Than numbness for pain?" ... "And I wonder" "Are we really really here" "To ease God's sorrow?" - Brian [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] From: wayne at inmet dot camb dot inmet dot com Subject: Robert Fripp/ King Crimson Date: 28 Sep 91 01:41:00 GMT Here's what I know about the Robert Fripp situation: In a Downbeat interview a couple of months ago the following statements were made either by Fripp or the author of the article: 1) A new Crimson box set has been (is being) remastered and produced by Fripp which will contain previously unreleased material, outtakes, etc. 2) Sunday All Over the World was referred to by Fripp in terms that made it sound like a VERY part time committment, to me. 3) At the end of the article, the author stated that there are strong rumours that Fripp is about to form, and I THINK he used these words, 'a new version of King Crimson'. Now you know what I know. If anyone can add any factual (or seemingly factual) info to this, I'm sure we would all be interested. Not Wayne [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] Date: Fri, 4 Oct 91 15:26:13 BST From: Toby Howard Subject: Videos Can anyone help me obtain either of the 2 KC Videos -- they don't seem to be available here in the UK. I need VHS PAL. But anyway, would someone like to post a list of tracks on them, with a review? Thanks Toby [][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][] To join this group or have your thoughts in the next issue, please send electronic mail to Toby Howard at the following address: toby at cs dot man dot ac dot uk The views expressed in discipline are those of the individual authors only.