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 #948 E L E P H A N T T A L K The Internet newsletter for Robert Fripp and King Crimson enthusiasts Number 948 Friday, 1 March 2002 Today's Topics: Pre/Post-wetton projects... King Crimson named after a Tree? Odd Connection _The Thunderthief_ Future Past Crim free cool personal streaming audio for CrimHeads Good Music In your opinion, What is the King Crimson weakest composition? I have a Crimso CD Question Fripp / Gurdjieff / Bennett Re: Tony Levin tour - 'discount' tickets to Coach House Adrian covers Robert; Robert's diaries Steve Vai; new JPJ beat Dr. Diamond Gunn Warrs Re: Japanese bonus tracks Tony Levin interview ------------------ 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 seven 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: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 12:12:10 -0500 From: "Nik Smith" Subject: Pre/Post-wetton projects... I'm all of a sudden really into the John Wetton era of KC, and I was wondering if he did anything as good or almost as good before King Crimson... Thx in advance. -Nik ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 14:57:40 -0400 (Atlantic Standard Time) From: "Eric Oliver" <046365o at acadiau dot ca> Subject: King Crimson named after a Tree? Hello all, I was listening to CBC radio here in Canada this morning and there was a call in show on about gardening. A man called in asking something about about why his red maple tree was dying and described the situation to the expert tree-man. Now here's was caught my attention, the tree-guy says "The tree you're talking about is most likely what is known as a Crimson King"!!! I immediately got this image of a garden with a big Crimson King tree in the centre (In the Court of the Crimson King). I was like, wow, is King Crimson named after a kind of red maple tree! I'd like to read some posts on what you guys think. Eric Oliver ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 12:59:08 EST From: Boobird at aol dot com Subject: Odd Connection Dear Folks -- Obviously too much time on my hands, but I noticed a strange and most likely coincidental connection whilst reading "The Toxic Tome:" Page 123: "Dubbed the 'Elfin' Sinfield by the band back in 1969, he cut an enigmatic, waif-like figure. This aspect of his personality and his penchant, according to Haskell, for tiptoeing about the studio or rehearsal room in moccasin sneakers was a source of irritation to the bemused rhythm section." "Easy Money" lyrics: "Your admirers in the street got to hoot and stamp their feet in the heat from your physique, as you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers..." You don't suppose ... ? Thanks for killing the latest thread, Toby :-) Back to personal reinvention. Cheers, all! Mark Newstrom RIP Chuck Jones, animator extraordinaire ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 11:36:38 -0800 (PST) From: rone at ennui dot org (tidal goose) Subject: _The Thunderthief_ > Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 22:06:56 -0800 (PST) > From: Jim Sheridan > Subject: New JPJ and other yap > > Has the new JPJ disc already been discussed? I was one > of the folks who was lucky enough to see him open for > KC, and having enjoyed his first disc, was very > excited for this new one. It IS very good! The song > "Hoediddle" kills me, and Fripp is on the first track, > in really burning form too. I hesitated to discuss it here since it's only tangentially KC-related, but here's the review i posted at DGM: _The Thunderthief_... I don't know how it is that i love this record and at the same time i find myself disappointed, at least because it feels so short even though it clocks in at 46:29. The first three tracks simply blister. Then comes "Ice Fishing at Night", which at first seems to me a bit stark, but then progresses into a beautiful lushness. "Daphne" ("Why are you talking to me? I'm a computer." "Dickhead.") and "Angry Angry" let Jonesy's sense of humor shine. "Angry Angry", in particular, sounds like a cross between Johnny Rotten and John Cleese. "Down to the River to Pray" is a good rendition of the song, but i already own the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack, so i could've done without it... The koto on "Shibuya Bop" works better than i would have imagined. The stuttering bass line seems impossible to repeat. And, finally, "Freedom Song", which was, for me, one of the highlights of his Nov. 14 concert at the Warfield. Utterly unexpected, an utter delight. The bass sound throughout the album is fat and rich. It is quite a tonic. rone ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 11:41:23 -0800 From: "H b" Subject: Future Past Crim Greetings It is interesting to me how much discussion concerning KC resides in the past. Sure, I like "Beat", like y'all, etc, but what concerns me, particularly, is the Crim In This Moment.. My last live absorption was from the TOOL tour and I provided a brief review of that show. With all due respect to the four Gents, I feel that Trey and perhaps, Adrian are the only member who are still "Pushing It".. When I listen to this music as a whole ( most recently, TCOL), my sense is KC as plateaued. I enjoy TCOL, but it seems to be more of a rehash of Discipline-era material mixed with the endless revamping of RED, LTIA, Fracture, etc.. My point here is out of concern because I love this music as much as any of you, but In This Moment, I'm coming up rather empty... And Level 5 just verifies my concerns. Rather than discuss who's the "Best whatever", I'd like to see some thoughts about This Moment and perhaps the Near Future of the Crim and similar music, and what we, as listeners, as musicians, as artists, as Humans can do to maintain the Push in 'Progressive' music. Thanks for your attention. (BTW, I feel Trey's solo material is quite excellent and engaging. Perhaps the Crim can cue from him! And, yes, sadly, I do miss Mr Bruford or perhaps the sound of a real snare and kick..) Keep Pushing, Dr. Howard n.p. ...silence... "It's ridiculous: people sleep all their lives away. A big snooze while all these wars are going on without stopping..." --Don van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 11:45:35 -0800 From: Steve Arnold Subject: free cool personal streaming audio for CrimHeads Okay, it's slightly OT, but my mp3 library does have more KC than anything else, and the related works make it by far the largest section (just the KC is about half a gig out of 5.5 gigs total). I figure enough ET readers are also techno-geeks that this is a worthwhile post. If you don't have a problem listening to CD audio, then mp3 should be okay too. I've found the quality of mp3 playback (using the standard 128 kbps encoding) is mostly a function of the quality of the original audio as well as your digital playback hardware (sblive or better with good speakers seems to sound damn good). So my library is only about 1200 songs, but I didn't steal any; they represent about 2/3's of my CD collection, with a teeny bit of old tapes (of my own stuff) and a few free downloads thrown in. Back to the point - there's a cool little bit of python code called edna that runs as it's own http server and scans a directory tree of mp3s (on the fly), letting you stream audio through a web browser (using an external player like xmms or winamp). The links are actually dynamically generated .m3u playlist files (it also reads m3u files and graphics besides mp3s). It's a fairly lite process load, and only about 17k of bandwidth for each stream. It's not supposed to replace icecast or anything like that, but it's a great little workgroup or home network resource. And it's a piece of cake to setup (I run it on an old P-100 machine running RedHat 6.2). If you download python for windoze, I think it'll run there as well. See: http://edna.sourceforge.net/ You don't actually have to be on a network, since you could point your browser to http://localhost and have it stream off your hard disk or read a CD full of mp3 files, etc. Depending on how you organize the directory structure, you can play random shuffles of anything from a single disc, a particular artist, or the whole library. I kind of like the random shuffle of 1200 or so songs... Next I need to get a car deck that plays mp3 CD-ROMs - All I want is my entire KC collection on one disc. Is that too much to ask? Sorry if it seems too geeky or off-topic, but I don't even mess with CDs any more, except to rip-and-encode them for the library. Then I put them on the shelf where they gather dust, except when I take a few to work; since we can't possibly have any cool network resources there :-/. If anyone has questions, feel free to mail me off the list. Steve -- ********************************************************** Steve Arnold http://arnolds.dhs.org:8080 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 15:30:12 -0500 From: "Barbara" Subject: Good Music Hi folks ... Fans of prog-rock (which I am not) generally tend to judge their music in terms of technical proficiency. They judge their music by the standards of classical music and jazz; how theoretical is it, how fast is it, what's the time signature, oh-gee-it's-modal-isn't-that-impressive, ad nauseum. Yet, even a slight probing into the history of rock'n'roll (which is the urban heir to the ethic, if not the technique, of ethnic trance-music) will reveal that it has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatory standards of quality. Who among you could possibly deny that the live version of Paul Simon's _The Coast_ ("We are standing in the sunlight/In the early morning sunlight/In the little harbor church of St. Cecilia/To praise a soul who is returning to the earth/To the Rose of Jericho and the bougainvillea") on his second Central Park record is at least as valid a tune as anything containing mind-warping theoretical abstractions or arthritis-defying guitar shreddery? I'm not a punk fan any more than I am a prog-rock fan (I like my music honest and humble as opposed to pretentious and self-glorifying, therefore prog sucks, and I like my music idealistic as opposed to nihilistic, and therefore punk sucks), but as a reflection of a time and a people (for rock is folk music for the disaffected urban youth), The Clash are certainly far purer than some neo-classical conservatory guitar hack who grows his hair long and declares himself a rocker. That's bullshit, and their pseudoWagnerian sonic masturbation is going to go down in history amongst the people who matter as sheer vomit. There CAN be classical music without pretention. Guitarist John Williams, for example - ever hear (and I'm probably spelling this wrong) Kayun Baba? That's ONE GUITAR! Or (and this, too is probably misspelled) Leinda? Leinda (or maybe Lelenda) is one of the first pieces a classical guitarist learns as a young music student. In the classical world, unlike the rock world, the technically gifted are noted not for their artistic greatness, but for their sonic dexterity, their craft. Those who actually create things that reflect people and life and emotion (Sibelius's 5th Symphony, for Chrissakes - BEAUTIFUL! Or, John Cage's pieces for prepared piano, which are more moving than you may expect) are respected as being the ones who keep the intent of music alive. Prog rock fans don't think that way, and neither do the musicians (Crimson, at their best, are not prog-rock - they're more like off-beat progressive pop, along the lines of _Smile_ era Beach Boys or Of Montreal or some other Elephant Six band). Jon Anderson and all those Yes assholes actually believe that if you don't sit back and play with a song's arrangement until it's complex enough to impress the gullible, you're not creating great art. This makes him wrong - it's not even a matter of opinion. He's wrong, and history bears out this idea. Prog fans, man, they look down their noses at the Velvet Underground (I hate em', too, but they were great nevertheless), at Bowie, at The New York Dolls or Patty Smith or Elvis Costello or Sonic Youth. That, my friends, is fuckery of the highest order. Anyone who sees Malmsteen's "Flamenco Diablo" as more valuable to earth's musical canon than Costello's "Beyond Belief" is probably into music for the wrong reasons. Ask your local rock scholar, and he'll agree. In the words of Robert Christgau, music is meant to simultaneously reflect and alter a culture. If you spend too much time in your bedroom practicing (or in a studio trying to prove to me, the discriminating listener, how much time you've spent in your bedroom practicing), you're probably missing all the shit happening right outside your door that you should be immortalizing as pop songs. Get out! Breathe the air! Do something that will mean something to someone in a hundred years time! WRITE A FUCKING POP SONG! Or, go to a conservatory and learn how to play your instrument better. Steve Howe, a classical guitarist? I guffaw! Manual Barrueco, THAT'S a classical guitarist. Music, and especially rock, has nothing to do with footnotes out of _Autobiography of a Yogi_ or musty academia or anything antiseptic whatsoever. It's visceral, the communication not of heads, but of hearts. In the soulless canned emotion of the Malmsteems of the world, there is no muse. It is mere technicianship, and there's no compelling reasons for it to exist, ever. I don't want to hear technicianship - give me music. Later, Brandon Thorp Florida Southern College ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 16:36:26 EST From: LTheDwarf at aol dot com Subject: In your opinion, What is the King Crimson weakest composition? Hi Et'ers I have to confess I thought during several years it'd be impossible to find on earth another people than myself who love KC as much as I did ;-) fortunately for Fripp & his boys carreers, such people do exist. As I own all the (official) releases from ITCOTKC to L5, I recently decide to elect myself the weakest composition of King Crimson (excluding improvs and Projekcts). I thought it would be easier than to choose the best one (I never choosed). I have not firmly decided yet but for the moment after a recent playback of my collection I choose: The Prelude (song of the gulls) in ISLANDS: My reasons: Even if it have been composed 2 hundred years before, this piece would not have been other thing than a primitive/naive study of a young and certainly untalented composer.It adds nothing to this wonderful album. I consider now (it was not my opinion 25 years ago as I was an unconditional admirer and I didn't have enough knowledge of music) it was an error to insert it . Anyway, what is for you the worst KC composition? I'm mainly interested in objective reasons. You will see, you know better why you love when you know what you don't love. friendly yours fabrice vaillant - france- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 13:50:22 -0800 (PST) From: prognaut at hotmail dot com (Ron) Subject: I have a Crimso CD Question anyone outside of the USA get something called "The Guide to Larks' Tongue In Aspic (part 1-4)"? it's on the DGM label listed as "International King Crimson's Fan Club, Special Edition". I got this on ebay and I am wondering where the live recordings were taken from. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 13:56:30 -0800 From: "Mark Tucker" Subject: Fripp / Gurdjieff / Bennett Laverne Munari made a cogent query, amongst several interesting observations, that I thought I'd address for a moment: that of the magic of the Guitar Craft school. Knowing several musicians who've attended, the reaction is universal: there's something about Fripp's running of them that runs heavily counter to the educational norm. I've never attended one but, to anyone familiar with alternative educational modes (having been on-staff at a foundation in Oregon, I've been privy to various modes and theories), there's a secret to such things: humanism and intimacy. In the highly controlled, agenda'ed, compulsory-education world, the grueling 12-year sentence most of us suffered through, you have mostly external data (external from the teacher's mindset), highly refined and regimented, frequently reflecting the intent of the outfit (in public education, the intent is to NOT educate and thus fit people for factory jobs; the already-intelligent will then just slog through high school and, if he or she is very lucky, blossom in the upper levels, should he or she have the cash to afford a good school [there aren't many]). The alternative is either home schooling, a VERY icey circumstance, or tutoring. What Fripp is doing is akin to tutoring. In the tutorial experience, one pays for specialized transmission of data or skills. Fripp possesses both and conducts himself out from the theories of J.G.Bennett, a disciple of G.I.Gurdjieff. Both Gurdjieff, still an enigmatic figure in world religions, and Bennett were unusual humans, the former a strange mystic who enthralled the spiritually hungry for many years (and was frequently called a charlatan, with some justice...perhaps more than was healthy) and the latter a far more human theorist with a special affinity for problems in education transmission. In some ways, he was like Buckminster Fuller, with well-grounded *revolutionary* ideas (often, as Fuller himself was wont to say, all it takes to see the *revolutionary* is an ability to stop going along with one's propagandization and just see what's really there). He formed the School For Continuous Education, which, if I'm correctly informed, Fripp attended and took ideas from, resulting in the Guitar Craft phenomenon. What you get with Fripp's *school*, then, is knowledge from the heart, hand, and hard-won experience filtered through a phenomenal brain. The result is human, not cold text, and the experience is intimate: the one teacher and a much more one-on-one rapport with the class. The teacher can conduct the class in his own fashion, rather than a crushing disciplinarian format authorized by a bureacracy, and allow things to proceed in a natural fashion, having a background that will be transmitted but allowing events to arise and form as they will, bending the lessons to the necessities or luxuries of the moment. But what you also get is a renegade intelligence and, often, a maverick intent to form up students as quickly as possible through their own framework by means of revelations of *secrets* not normally given in standard schools. I, for instance, tutor in creative writing, for intelligent students who are already intelligent and well looked after by their parents, very hands-on about their children's educations. The schools are failing them, and the more intelligent the student, the worse the betrayal by the school. What I do, and I suspect what Fripp does, is bring them up to their own speed (remember: the *golden mean* is the target of the school: the less able get left behind, the intelligent get bored) by a rapid assessment of their intellect and progress. Then I apply what are actually quite easy methods (which I won't bore people with here) that most writers and teachers have no clue about, but which they could somewhat easily access if they'd only stop their own incoming indoctrinations and look at reality for a moment, reflecting on what their art REALLY is actually constituted of, from the ground up. It's a crucial difference and the one that determines, to my mind, what forms as an avidity for knowledge. But to return to Fripps case, the Guitar Craft student is not unlike a monk acolyte of a zen master: what the monk is really looking for (and gets, if he's chosen his master well) is a short-cut, and undercut, to the truth of things. Fripp is excellent at what he does because he doesn't waste time with most norms (just those that are essential), cuts to the chase, forms up an encodation of what is REALLY going on in the creative process and transmits it. More to the pont, it's from his hard-won experience. It's naturally unorthodox, but that's precisely the point: the orthodox can't, won't, and doesn't work very well. At it best, it wastes a LOT of time. Every one I know who's gone through GuitarCraft has come back with greatly heightened musical ability in very short order. So, to end, what's so unusual about it is the HUMAN element and the obviously sincere desire of the teacher (Fripp) to see people advance - it's a desire that comes from his heart, not merely the necessity of doing a job day-in and day-out, with little attention to anything but the humdrummery, as we see in 98% of all teachers. Most anyone who's gone through the school system has experienced this in, hopefully, one or two instructors and, upon reflection, will be able to start understanding what the phenomenon really is. It's not that it's all that momentous, but it'll only be found amongst people who have their hearts and minds in a highly unusual, almost non-human (and I say this as against the sordid social norm of what it means to be human), place. I suspect this is why Robbert didn't apply for residency in the Berklee schools or any of that. My apologies if this comes off more vaguely than is practicably useful, but to explicate it fully would take far too much space for many here, as evidenced by the petulant *only short inane posts please!* ET crowd. It should, hopefuly, provide an introductory glimpse into what Munari was intrigued by. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 08:16:04 -0800 From: "Jason R. Thornton" Subject: Re: Tony Levin tour - 'discount' tickets to Coach House I said: "One of the opening bands for the Friday April 12 Tony Levin show in San Juan Capistrano is selling discounted tickets ($5 cheaper). Here are the details, from their website (www.thossound.com):" That should actually be http://www.thossounds.com. Forgot an S, silly me. Jaon ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 09:34:53 -0800 From: "Scott Steele" Subject: Adrian covers Robert; Robert's diaries >When has Adrian covered a song that Robert performed the original guitar part? The studio version of Dave from The Bears' new record has a solo by Fripp - Belew has been playing it in the live versions. >Why did Fripp stop posting his diary on-line? I SO miss them... Me too! - S. np: Hansson & Carlsson, "Richard Lionheart" scottst at ohsu dot edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 12:52:53 -0800 From: "Scott Steele" Subject: Steve Vai; new JPJ >IMO, Vai can & DOES play with more or as much soul as many other incredible guitarists that have been mentioned in ET. I agree with the poster, Vai is a very spiritual guy and that comes through in his music. >Has the new JPJ disc already been discussed? I was one of the folks who was lucky enough to see him open for KC, and having enjoyed his first disc, was very excited for this new one. It IS very good! The song "Hoediddle" kills me, and Fripp is on the first track, in really burning form too. Thanks for the heads up Jim - I need to get this one. What a great opening set he played for KC, in Las Vegas at the House of Blues. - S. np: Jungle Funk scottst at ohsu dot edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 16:26:24 -0500 From: Steve Rewa Subject: beat I just wanted to add a couple of lines of text to the Beat discussion. I didn't like it at all when I first heard it, or even the first few times I heard it. However, I like it a lot now. I can't even tell you why. My only suggestion for those who don't, is to play it every once in a while. You may find that it's a lot better than you first thought. Here's another thought. I like to believe that those of us who listen to progressive rock do so because we have an ear for what's good and for what we like. On the other hand, I often find myself liking songs or even whole albums that deep down I know I wouldn't listen to if it weren't done by one of "my bands." Anyone else want to admit to this? Anon, -Steve ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 18:16:43 EST From: NotoriousAWOL at aol dot com Subject: Dr. Diamond Fellow Crimheads, Anybody know the lyrics or a reasonable facsimile to "Dr. Diamond"? Just Curious. Yours, Tom ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 02:56:18 +0100 From: ClausJ dot Lienau at t-online dot de (Claus J. Lienau) Subject: Gunn Warrs Hi out there, I just browsed through warrguitars.com (no promo) and there (in the gallery) I came across two Quicktime movies (with sound of course) featuring the impressing Trey Gunn Band which I highly recommend to everybody out there - they even might be of some interest for Miss Josette. The pieces are Rune Song: the origin of water (excerpt) and Kuma. Recorded September 15th, 2000, at Dangerous Music Studios NYC in front of invited audience. Besides this I recommend all the other Trey-Gunn-et-al-listening-stuff, too--B_3097536979_128364-- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 03:19:46 -0800 (PST) From: Akilles Juntunen Subject: Re: Japanese bonus tracks There is a simple explanation to bonus tracks on Japanese CD releases. This is due to record companies' attempts to get Japanese punters to buy their product instead of cheaper European/American imports. This is also the reason why many albums are released earlier in Japan than elsewhere. Aki B ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 14:57:09 -0000 From: David McAllister Subject: Tony Levin interview ET subscribers may be interested to read an interview with Tony Levin by Mike Visceglia long-term bass player for Suzanne Vega. You can find the interview at www.mikevisceglia.com/interview.htm Amongst other things, he talks about working relationships with Bill Bruford and Robert Fripp. Dave ------------------------------ End of Elephant Talk Digest #948 ********************************