Commiserations to both from the autocratic wretch who sends them around the world, and away from each other; this in a desperate attempt by that heel to recover personal riches lost by a series of decisions which, cumulatively, deprived him of a huge and unceasing flow of cash otherwise available had he been prepared to constantly repeat himself (in the company of significant others): while smiling, unleashing a seemingly wild demonstrative physicality convincing enough to win over the most recalcitrant of Prog editors, and allowing willing and eager audiences to sponsor his deceit.
DGM's morning meeting - David, Diane & RF - addressed the structure of DGM US, the status of DVD and DTS formats, temperature in Los Angeles (114 F.), and the launch of a new Japanese format for laser disks - Blue Laser - next April. Japan is evidently trying to ignore DVD as a format and use its own technology instead.
England, meanwhile, is utterly unaware of two main changes which will revolutionise home entertainment (passive home entertainment, that is):
1. Digital television (30 or 100 channels, depending on the supplier). Japanese high definition tv, which I saw in Tokyo in 1992, was very impressive; but it was analogue and Europe put its R&D money into digital.
2. DVD.
Industry players anticipate that pornography will underwrite DVD's success, as it did with home video. One of Richard Nixon's better comments was that if we attribute to fine art the capacity to enrich and improve a culture, we should also allow that pornography has the opposite effect. My view: better to have the choice. Unless we are able to say "yes", we are unable to say "no".
Regular Website visitors will know where and what - it's The Late Shift: aka the David & Robert Show, and it's the Music Room at World Central. Chris Murphy is also present, computerising, and Hugh is Art Departmentalising. Chris has presented me with rough mixes of King Crimson's second and third nights in Mexico City, August 1996, to add to the first night (my listening before hotsy-trotting over here).
David and I are discussing which of the more recent musics might be released in the Collectors' Club: KC in Mexico City, ProjeKts One & Two, and who knows what will happen with ProjeKct Four?
But onto important news: my Sister saw "Snake Eyes" and "Armageddon" last night, on the way home from San Francisco airport. She enjoyed both but gave away the plot of "Snake Eyes". American movies take so long to arrive in England, she suggested, that I will forget before I get to see it. This is a feeble excuse. My sister has forgotten my capacity for remembering.
And Beaton the Wonder Bun has recovered from last week's attack of lassitude. The state-of-the-art rabbit food, consumption of which would have made him a wealthy and famous rabbit, seemed to have upset him. Bun's spirit returned as soon as his bowl was filled with Wilton pet shop's non-designer trough-filler, attacking Les' cabbage leaves with a rediscovered ferocity, and bunny legs snapping like whipcords as he leapt around the environs of Beaton Towers. This Prince of his kind spent Saturday night in the family warren, under our marital brass bed. Sunday morning I discovered that he had mounted the recently re-upholstered (by Mike Hobbs of Odstock) chaise longue in my study and left his claim to the territory.
Today I have been hanging John Miller's series of "Interior Landscapes", painted for display in Newlyn Church to accompany the Soundscapes performance there last December. Three have gone into my study and one into our bathroom. One "Horizon" has yet to find its place. John's horizons are not horizons of this world.
Back to the Music Room: we are running into the SADiE three alternative cassette versions of "Trees" from KC at the Fairfield Hall, Croydon: a bonus track to accompany the Marquee show for CC No. 1. Only one of the cassettes has the continuation of "Trees" into what became "Pictures of a City". David has improved the sonic quality of this from -2 to -1. "Trees" has been known to Deep Collectors for a while but has never surfaced (to my knowledge) on CD via industrial bootlegging blackguards; but the sound is even worse than a Max Roach drum solo (recorded live at New York City Hall) featured on a budget jazz lp acquired by the fifteen year old Fripp in Bournemouth. Two electric Reinhardt tracks ("Nuages" and "Melodie au Crepuscule") and a Mingus more than compensated for Max's dodgy sound.
Max, a true Hero, came to see King Crimson in Houston in 1981. I asked him his "Why did you leave Yes?" question - "What was it like to work with Charlie Parker?". Max, a gentlemen, told me. But that is another story. There was talk in 1982 of a Roach / Summers / Fripp album, but it didn't happen. Max, a model to all players, last came to see Crimson at the Town Hall, NY, in 1995. (Lenny Kravitz was also there).
Now the theme to "Trees" is being reprised in a muscular fashion at the end of "Pictures". Sonic value currently around minus 3.
Perhaps a Deep Collector sufficiently values the intrinsic secrecy of music so well hidden behind a veil of noise to instigate earnest debate with fellow (male and bespectacled) Deep Collectors on the significance of a rock group playing in Croydon's concert hall during 1969, allowing for the salient arguments of Attali's "Noise" and Bourdieu's "Distinction". (I have "Noise" but gave my Bourdieu to Eno).
"Two-dimensional Gallic intellectualism - next you'll be pratting about the semiotics of small case `a's in `THRaK aTTaK'" - thus the retort of an imagined English reader. Hey dude! this guy read Regis Debray's "Intellectuals" while pumping down a French brew in the modest breakfast room of a Parisian hotel!
Sonic value of -4 has now been reached. David and I are hoping that this will soon end. Forever. Please stop. "This is history, David - look at it like that," suggests Robert, hoping DGM's production manager will not run away crying and never return. The track cuts out. Hooray!
Little Horse Willcox has just telephoned (23.05) from Chez Horse in London. Tonight "The Live Bed" opened successfully in Peterborough, where I shall join Toyah on Wednesday. She has returned to London to record her VH1 shows tomorrow morning.
Coming downstairs from speaking to my wife I checked the fax machine. A customer from Hungary, whose name consists mainly of letters found at the end of the alphabet, writes that his mail order information is still inaccurate, although he complained about this a year ago. The letters in our valued customer's name are arranged in a code which, although clearly not arbitrary, defeat all my attempts at pronunciation and, despite claims above, remembrance or recall. "Hey pal" says the heartless, autocratic wretch at the centre of DGM, "that's what you get for being foreign".
But at least our Web visitors now know that struggling musicians sending in their unsolicited tapes, and our customers suffering problems with the spelling of their names, are treated with equal concern.
"That's as good as it gets": David's appraisal on the sound of "Trees" in Croydon. He has cleaned up the sound sufficiently that the average audient may now detect appalling sonics formerly hidden behind a sheen of noise. "David - what are we doing here at midnight with this appalling noise?" - an authoritative question from the dictatorial head of a global record company. It merits no answer from David, and needs none. The answer is transparent, obvious: this is a pathetic ploy to squeeze the hard-earned pay from clenched grasps of loyal audients, whose loyalty is about to be put to a severe test.
Croydon added to The Marquee gives us a 79 minute CD.
00.05
We are going home.
