Robert Fripp's Diary for Thursday, 26th January 2006

Robert Fripp's Diary

	Thursday, 26th January 2006

10.10

DGM HQ.

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, broad local accents have been drifting through the wall. David is in his office upstairs, adjoining the Art Department & close enough to the butcher’s block below Hugh’s floor to have his own office shake as animals are disassembled. Much of DGM West was shaking when I went up to say good morning. Alex is in SoundWorld I working on a KC 1981 German bootleg.

Here in Venal’s Chamber, I am listening to Tone Probing at the Keswick Theatre, near Philadelphia, on September 27th. 2005. Of relevance to this, a recent posting to the DGM Live Guestbook…

Sound Checks? posted by ScottM on January 20, 2006

You’re now selling sound checks?

I know you plan to give these away also, in pieces, but I hope you can see the dilemma inherent. Having established a way to market the commodity of unreleased music, the temptation must exist to create more and more of that commodity, "quality control" out the window. Before long what you’re selling may become as diffuse and apart from what your music was once about, as a Grateful Dead tape from 1991 is from that band’s original legacy.

I don’t see the dilemma, because I don’t operate in the world where music (released or otherwise) is a commodity.

Scott’s posting is a good example of how, when one applies the rules of one world to another, in the expectation that the other world is bound by the same rules, we often miss what is valuable and available; even when this what asks of us only that we open our hands and accept what is freely on offer. The governing world that Scott assumes is the world of commerce. In that world, music is a commodity; and in the world of commodities, Scott suggests, the temptation is to create more & more commodities. Almost. In a world of things, sufficient is enough. In a fallen world of things, more is better, or I’m stuffed: I’ll have some more to quote the Gaucho aphorism.

In the world of music, (it appears to us that) the musician creates the music. It is more accurate to say that music creates the musician. For a musician, it is not a “temptation” to be present & involved when music becomes available to enter the phenomenal world: it is a matter of being & doing who & what we are. A musician who undertakes the professional life enters a life of grief and pain: what has value is accorded a price. But when a musician believes that music is a commodity, music has just died in them.

On one level, the professional life is straightforward. A market place exists to enable us to find what we need within & among what is available, even music. But when creatures of the music industry discuss releasing product & promoting in different markets, the world of quantity begins to exert its restraining & limiting power; and those who dwell within it assume that a more subtle world is subject to the same constraints & controlling influences.

The aim of the musician is music; the aim of the music industry is to generate income & stockholder value by exploiting music, musicians & audients. This can be clean: business can be clean & straightforward. Characteristics of straightforward business are that one acts with goodwill, reliably & competently, free of like & dislike (at the higher end of this, with impartiality), and on agreed terms (cf. Business Aims & The Ethical Company). My long experience suggests it is rarely so. So, to this extent, I have some sympathy with Scott’s view.

But business is not DGM Live’s raison d’etre; business is not our aim: it is a way of serving our aim. The world of commerce constrains what we do, not who we are. We don’t aim to live in that world – we move into it, and then out of it. In the business world, hot tickles presented gratis cost DGM Live money for us to make available. There are also technical issues in presenting music without a nominal charge & the smallest charge we can make is $1. Given our costs, rough equivalency suggests that $1 to the innocent audient = free to DGM. And there is no overwhelming force at work to remove hard-earned pay from the tighty clasp of the underpaid & overworked. If $1 is already too much, then wait until a free hot tickle appears.

In the full version of a sound check, there are level-checks, programme tests & mods, instrument tuning, and purely technical concerns. These hold no listening-interest to me (and could only arouse the interest of a severe anorak in search of a life & specialist interest). These apart, on a sonic & musical level, I find many of the Tone Probes interesting. Some have a quality about them I find appealing, a quality different to that present in a performance: often gentler, almost unassuming, a speaking-out without concern for consequence (eg free of the constraints of good taste & musicality). From a player’s interest, I hear approaches being tested that appear later in performances proper, and are variation-undeveloped at sound check. I doubt this would hold interest for others – but we’ll take their money!

11.57 The Tone Probe for the Washington 9.30 club has some good moments (the show was a different matter – Despair! Terror! Suffering! Misery! Persistence!). You’re now selling sound checks? Yeah! As many as we can find! Bona wheeze – or what!

15.28 Alex & I are in SoundWorld II listening to All Saints’ Church (January 14th. 2006) in preparation for upload. At The End Of Time is my current Soundscapes fave. This will really turn the ratchet on income download!!!

In the inbox, a comment from a Japanese audient who was present at All Saint’s & at Sutton Church…

Your Soundscapes performances becomes a ’Cold Art’ - a (kind of) theory mentioned by 14th century’s Japanese actor and performing art theorist Zeami who is my spiritual mentor about performing art as in general.

I haven’t read his works in English so this is ’my’ translation. ’Cold’ means a highest state of performance of total objectivity, no intension of trying to express something personal after an endless discipline. In other words, ’It is Just there’ I suppose.

This feeling has been haunting around me since I listened to ’Equatorial Stars’ and struck by it. Now, it turns into certainty.

Soundscapes are an interesting area. How they work, when they work, I have no idea. And when music comes to life, it has little to do with the musician.

16.40 Broad Chalke vibrated.

17.43 In the latest wodge of Durrants’ Press Clippings that arrive at DGM, are
various comments criticising That Awful Venal Hypocrite Who Took Microsoft’s Dollar!

Actually, as an example of clean, straightforward business for the professional player, Soundscapes at Redmond last November is worth consideration…

Steve Ball of MS approached me several months ago to produce a series of exploratory splashes that might be used as part of the new MS Vista OS, currently under development. David & I recorded several at DGM & sent them off to Steve for listening. As is well known, the other half of Fripp & Eno produced the opening splash for Windows 95. There is, therefore, a logic in approaching the Venal One, quite apart from the personal connection. And, in business, personal connections are not everything; just, nearly everything.

The personal connection: Steve Ball is a good friend of mine, a Crafty from the early period of Guitar Craft, a resident at the Red Lion House, and a guitarist with whom I have shared many stages, modest accomodations & van drives with The League of Crafty Guitarists.

Steve left MS in 1999 to be a part of the BootlegTV project which raised $4 million in venture capital, spent it, and closed the doors when IT went into downturn during 2001. Should anyone have reservations regarding players in the music industry, please know that venture capitalists provide an entirely new dimension in liberal education.

David Singleton’s creative insight gave rise to BootlegTV, the major DGM project of 1999-2001, which has now been translated into www.dgmllive.com. In the meantime, Steve Ball has returned to Redmond. A significant gain for MS, in my view.

Last November I was visiting Seattle with Slow Music. Steve, knowing this, suggested that I extend my stay by two days & visit Redmond; work in the MS studio with him; and look at developing several splashes as discussion-documents for Vista. The fee, for one day of my time in a city I was visiting, was less than that for Eno’s for Windows 95 splash; and represented more net worth for this working player than the previous two weeks of Soundscaping on the road (which nevertheless helped pay for the Solar Voyager). As an aside, Slow Music was Collaborators’ Rate (ie nothing plus expenses).

A basic principle of my professional life is this: work with people, not companies. So, in Redmond I was working primarily with my pal Steve, who works for MS, and who was the producer on the job.

Q. Would RF have worked for a MS without Steve?

A. Probably, subject to various details.

Q. Would RF have worked for MS gratis?

A. No. This was a clean, straightforward, professional transaction & involved That Awful Man’s venal impulses being addressed sufficiently.

Q. Would RF work on a Steve Ball project at Collaborators’ Rate?

A. Yes.

Q. Would RF work for a tobacco company?

A. No.

Q. Would RF work for a liquor company?

A. If he drunk the liquor in his personal life, yes. So bring on the champagne & offer endorsement deals.

Q. Would he work for Apple?

A. Yes, subject to various details, including being asked to do so. MS were ahead of Mac on this, so full credit to them (ie to one of their employees).

Q. What was RF’s musical interest?

A. To present Soundscapes to a wider world than would otherwise hear the music.

Q. What did RF do with Microsoft’s money?

A. Pay bills & buy a new-generation i-Pod.

Vista is a great leap forward for 89% of computer users. I found the Vista team motivated, committed, positive, friendly & supportive. And if working with a motivated, committed, positive, friendly & supportive team held a governing imperative for much of my professional life, then most of the early years of KC would never have happened.

Innovation – what’s innovation? One practical example, here in Venal’s Chamber…

This Great Leap Forward of the slumbering variety was implemented last night around 01.45 – a tired mattress that probably began its user-friendly existence at the Red Lion House. Hey - maybe Steve Ball slept on it!

19.20 A little Tone Probing in SoundWorld I. Now, listening to Tone Probing from the Rex Theatre, Pittsburgh. Joy! I can smell the money.

21.33 Computing computing.

00.07 Well…

http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/features/robert-fripp-exposure

http://www.guitarnoise.com/review.php?id=410

http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&BandId=4927

http://www.redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=7135

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/1/7/2386

E-frenzy. Quite enough. The (technologically enhanced) floor is beckoning.