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Shepards Bush Empire July 3, 2000
Written by Bob Walker
While I was on vacation (we live in Cleveland, Ohio) it was coincidence that KC was playing precisely when we visited Europe. I took my (then) 16 year-old son Matt with me, both of us jet-lagged to the max, to my first KC show. Learned, quickly, to use the tube in wonderful London. The show was unforgettable; both of us blown away - a fantastic father/son experience. Even my jaded boy was saying, "wow," during LTIA IV.
He wondered why the one guy in the band sat for the entire show. I said, "I don't know."
On the way out, a British fellow, I think on the downward trajectory of a few too many magic mushrooms, says to Matt & me, "eh, that last number sounded a bit like Ritual, don't you think?" He was referring to the chilling version of Thrush near the end of the show. He believed -- I'm sure of this -- that I didn't have any idea what he was talking about; he was trying to make a joke at my expense. He didn't know that Tales of Topographic Oceans was the most anticipated album of my entire life (superseded many years. later by TPTB). Anyhow, I just smiled and didn't engage. The night was too sweet to be tainted.
Bob Walker
July 3, 2003
Written by Robert Fripp
11.20 Entrance Lobby, Hotel Moderately Grande, Barcelona. The view from the desk of this room, of a dark air-well, is not sufficiently alluring to set me down to compute. I have relocated to the lobby, where the business center section has two computers & both are out of order. The lobby is where people gather to blow smoke over each other, as is conventional in much of Eastern & Southern Europe. But the sun shines and there are windows and there is light streaming through the windows. 16.42 Brave or what? I took the Metro alone to the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi's cathedral is currently is a building site thronged with tourists. The level of construction work demonstrates a degree of political will absent 30 years ago. But that was a different Iberia, one where Franco still had power. The feel here then was something like Chile with The Old Man. The Spanish police had the same kind of confidence that I felt in Chilean police not very long ago. It was already different when Crimson returned to Spain in 1974. It was different again when Fripp & Eno visited in 1975. Back in the hotel & listening to a JGB talk from Sherborne House on i-Tunes. Remarkable. He was trying to download as much as he could to a load of young people who had no almost no idea at all of what he was trying to give them. Then a limp around the block in search of cafÈ con leche. I was joined at my table by a wandering Belew. As is the case in this band, where accidents & coincidental meetings take place, a simple exchange of views over coffee have more substance than formal meetings. Formal group meetings are negative, destructive, people speak from ingrained positions & vent long-held resentments. There is no resolution. So, over coffee with Ade, an exchange of views on present & future Crimson arisings. Now, to prepare for a 17.30 lobby call. Thursday Night - Friday Morning 3-4th. July, 2003; 01.17 The venue: a beautiful square, with performance in the open air. A responsive, supportive audience. The show was punctuated throughout by flashes. This undermined my show & I played poorly in several places, to the same extent that Ade played well & enjoyed his. Have I mentioned that my performing life has been spoilt by photography? Have I mentioned that this has removed joy from my musical life? A performance may, under certain circumstances, acquire a "soul". That is, it may take on a life that persists through time & be available to us, as if it were a friend. But, for the soul to "become", the conception must be true, the gestation healthy, the delivery fine, and the progress through the world fitting & just. Otherwise, the possibility is lost. And I have suffered the attention of a Total Commitment mosquito. It has bitten me on a place that only a very needy, hungry mosquito would go for food. Ade did a 'phone interview today. One of the questions his interviewer asked, in all seriousness, was is Fripp a monster?
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