We fast-forward a few days to the ProduKction Office back-stage in Minneapolis with the strains of Fracture coming teasingly from the soundcheck (which just caused me to lean over and take a sneak-peak at the set-list).
But we don’t want to talk about King Crimson. For a brief and wonderful day while flying from LA to Denver, I escaped their artistic clutches, and began reading “The Artist’s Way”, a “spiritual path to higher creativity” which my daughter, Iona, gave to me, saying she knew I should read it, while being nervous about the consequences. Interestingly, many of the concepts, although worded differently, would be familiar to any student of Guitar Craft. On Page 28, there is the glorious sentence “Intended artists may become artist managers and derive a great deal of secondary pleasure from serving their dream even at one remove.” Ho Hum! ‘Reasons To Be Fearful, Part One’ - although, the moment of maximum peril as I address my inner artist is, I think, behind us and was addressed when I opened the Pandora’s box which led to The Vicar Chronicles and The Vicar Songbook (and if you don’t know about those, you should, of course, immediately dash off to the dgmlive shop to discover them). Reading the start of ‘The Artist’s Way’ has at least proved a pointed stick encouraging me to address the final pages of the long-awaited, hugely under-subscribed Third Vicar Chronicle (out for Christmas, if I don’t get distracted by this minor, third-league band of ProgRock pond-scum bumming me out). Actually, boring but true, being around them is a pleasure. And I even have my daughter along for the ride (who is mildly amused by those attendees wondering if she is my wife, sister, mother, grand-mother, great-great aunt or other branches of elderly Singletons). I know this is the rock business, but no, my wife is not young enough to be my daughter. Iona is indeed my daughter. At least, we have got that straight!
But if the band can’t bum you out, management certainly can. A wrinkle in the larger Crimson stratosphere sent me down a wormhole last Friday, and I was still dealing with the ramifications yesterday, while struggling to see how to square an unfortunate circle, which may or may not make the wider pages. “We go as far as despair and then say ‘Lord Have Mercy’. Let’s blow that dark cloud away it might never happen”, as The Vicar might say (and, of course, did in the First Vicar Chronicle).
I shall post more pictures of LA and Denver, once I have time to look through them properly – in the meantime, here is a view from the empty stage in Denver :
And today’s Royal Package introduction :
"What we hear is the quality of our listening."
