Toyah is here with The Live Bed Show and I have deserted Beaton, David, Diane, Hugh, Alex and Chris, and The Late Shift, to play with the Little Horse.
The route from our English valley towards London passes Stonehenge. There is an alternative route but its ugliness upsets me. So I choose the country way, passing close to the nearby Detmar Blow manor of Sting & Trudy, and glance leftwards at the henge. The ongoing mystery of large blocks of stone assembled to a degree of mathematical precision, astonomical accuracy, symmetry and mysterious beauty, has escaped all recent architecture of Peterborough.
Peterborough has a cathedral I have yet seen only from the outside - a joy; a handsome church with an impressively incongruous 1960s construction immediately adjoining; a large amount of building over the past three decades of varying qualities of offensiveness; and an unforgivable 1960s towering structure on the Long Causeway. There is enough in the town to enjoy, but the integrity of its centre has been almost lost with the arbitrary additions / subtractions. If "there is no society, only individuals" then there is no town, only buildings; no song, only notes. I can't imagine this mess happening in historic French and Italian towns.
But our room in The Bull is more than sufficient, an enjoyable lunch in what presents itself as a French restaurant (but is irremedially English in light camouflage), a walk around the town, the company of my wife, and this is a holiday. And was your Web diarist a pathetic, brain-dribbling creature today? he asks rhetorically. The cumulative Late Shifts, DGM's global time connections around the world, plus the demands of progressing all our current projects, have taken their portion of this nascent soul.
One refreshment and delight for me this evening: I have begun to read David Singleton's music biz novel. It's very interesting to know a person well (which is impossible unless you work with them) and then discover them again through their personal work: which reveals their inner aspects quite clearly. Any work of art (which is, by definition, honest) reveals / presents / more than the artist contains, or could contain. But the artist is also revealed. It is impossible for an artist to hide behind their work of art (which is reassuring). So, I am discovering aspects of David in his novel which I only glimpse on The Late Shift, his choices in editing, his intellectual and logical capacities focusing on business choices and errors of (former) advisors, and his musical thinking. How many Cambridge graduates in Philosophy are Production Managers in the record industry?
My tasks have accompanied me here: sleeve notes for "Cirkus: A Young Persons' Guide To King Crimson - Live". This will be a 2-CD DGM release through Virgin in January 1999 (licensed for a short period of years) from our archives. The aim is to present an introduction and overview of KC's live manifestations to a (presumed) new audience that hasn't / won't / is unlikely to discover Crimson through DGM.
Devotees and enthusiasts will already have some of this material, but there will also be a significant proportion of unreleased material: Cap d'Arge (1982), Broadway (1995), Mexico City (1996), for example. The earnest, completists, and members of the Club will probably be able to acquire all this through DGM in time, if they choose to wait. Were I a young audient looking for an introduction to a well-known and influential group with some history, I wouldn't want to trawl through their complete archive to get a sense of who and what they are. (The same is true for Fripp as an older audient). So, "Cirkus" is "The Young Persons' Guide To KC - Live". Assuming little prior knowledge in the audient, I would like them to have some over informational overview of the thirty years.
