“Flew to Vermont in morning. Played gig at weird college in the woods, not too good”. Thus reported Ian McDonald in his diary entry for Wednesday October 29, 1969 recording King Crimson’s very first concert in America in the refectory at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.
On the same day on the opposite coast at another centre of learning, a group of computer scientists led by Professor Leonard Kleinrock are preparing to log in to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET for short, originally a defence department project that had evolved into a network linking 4 university computer labs, hundreds of miles apart, and the foundation of what we now know as the internet. As the team at UCLA, the first node of what would become the internet, are readying themselves to connect to the 2nd node at Stanford University all is set for the very first message to be sent. The network reportedly crashed as the word “Login” was being typed so that only the first two letters were received. This has gone down in internet folklore as the word ‘Lo’ seeming to portend “behold all the possibilities that await”.
ARPANET log of the first message on October 29, 1969.
Back at Goddard College, known for its experimental curriculum and focus on the arts, there was not a computer anywhere to be found. However as King Crimson were preparing themselves to go on stage, all would not go so well here either. In fact there wasn’t a stage, despite there being the Haybarn Theatre on campus they were performing in the refectory and the chilled-out audience of students were seated on the floor all around them.
King Crimson’s US Tour was the culmination of a meteoric first year and Goddard College had been selected by the band’s American manager Dee Anthony as a place to make their Stateside debut away from the spotlight. The band had brought 2 tons of equipment with them and their two full time roadies, Dik Fraser and Vick Vickers, who drove the equipment truck while the band flew up from New York. Greg Lake recalls the long drive through snow covered countryside from the airport at Burlington and eventually arriving at a small village where the band saw a community notice board with a large poster advertising King Curtis Appearing Live at the college where they were going to perform.
Robert Fripp wrote in his diary: “Goddard College, Vermont. King Crimson’s first U.S. gig to an audience with a high proportion tripping and expecting a happy soul band. We began with Schizoid Man. The audience never recovered from the first shock, their condition being delicate anyway. I had the impression of the crowd being squashed”.
Greg Lake explains: “They had come to see King Curtis, a rhythm and blues act we had seen advertised on the poster back down in the village”.
From his place at the side of the stage Vick Vickers observed: “The audience were completely out of their heads on synthetic mescaline and every time the strobes went off during Schizoid this very audible ‘Aaaaah’ ran around the room - it was hilarious”.
On top of that the different voltage of the US power supply had made the Mellotron go out of tune whenever the lights came on.
Such technical difficulties would be ironed out as the tour progressed and so too with the computer programmers in California, where an hour after the initial failure, with parameters suitably adjusted, a successful connection was made with Stanford. A permanent link between the two was then established on November 21 (as King Crimson play at the Fillmore in New York), and by December 5 the initial four node network (adding UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah) was established, with the Crims, oblivious to what was going on in internet land, beginning a week-long residency at the Whiskey on LA’s Sunset Strip.
So two beginning moments that didn’t go quite as planned, but which set in motion a future of possibilities. It would take almost 30 years before the two points would connect again and find King Crimson with its own place on the worldwide web.
Live at the Boston Tea Party on the first U.S. Tour, October 1969.
Every British band wanted to crack America and King Crimson soon found their stride, playing Boston then New York, Detroit, Chicago and two days at the Palm Beach Festival where they were greeted with standing ovations from an audience that had no prior knowledge of the band, finishing up on the West Coast in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and so it was with every live lineup since, America would be the cornerstone of live performance.
Fast forward to 1994 and the beginning of DGM. By now we had email! A string of numbers with a dot in the middle that made up a Compuserve email address. Some people even sent us emails. But it was not common at that time, outside of academic circles, to have a personal email address and on the artwork of the first releases contact information was listed as a PO Box and a fax number. Sometimes an email received might be printed out on to paper, a reply hand written on it, and the resulting page faxed back to the sender. Such was our grasp of technology at the time.
If you were online in those days the place to go for the latest King Crimson information was an enthusiast driven email digest called Elephant Talk, run by Toby Howard of Manchester University’s computer department. Discussion and opinion and sometimes, and increasingly, information from official sources including direct engagement by Robert.
The first King Crimson release bearing a website address was 1998’s ProjeKct Two debut Space Groove. The first official DGM site had been built by Abbey Road Interactive and Elephant Talk’s own Dan Kirkdorffer was recruited to become webmaster.
The home page greeting from the first DGM website in 1998
As the online world rapidly developed over the next few years www.discipline.co.uk became www.disciplineglobalmobile.com, which in turn became dgmlive.com
DGM Live launched on November 10, 2005 with the greeting “Good evening hippies …” emulating Robert’s words to audiences on tours in the 70s and heard on a number of the live recordings on offer - the first available downloads included all of the King Crimson Collectors’ Club releases up to that date.
Fast forward to now as we embark upon a partnership with nugs.net a music streaming service that will release selected King Crimson live shows beginning with the 2014 US Tour. For those unfamiliar with Nugs (it’s nugs as in nuggets) this too has its origins in a fan website. Nugs founder Brad Serling was a Grateful Dead taper and had been sharing his recordings online for free with the band’s blessing. This became so successful they went into business and soon signed up other like minded bands with the first to join being Phish. Phish were formed in Vermont in 1983, and although not contemporaneous with King Crimson’s debut concert there, Phish members Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell are both Goddard College alumni, as well as acknowledged Crimson admirers.
Sadly it appears to be the end of the story for Goddard College, which announced it would be closing its doors at the end of the spring semester in 2024 because of declining enrolment and financial difficulties, with the site being put up for sale.
Proof that elsewhere the flame still burns in the far corners of the internet: checking in to my compuserve email for fun, (I only remember the password because I can read it off a battered license plate on my wall), I am amazed a. that it still connects and b. there are 7 unread messages, fittingly a January 2023 Happy New Year greeting from Pat Mastelotto to all the Crims and crew, with their replies. Pat had inadvertently grabbed an old address from his saved contacts!
Suggested listening: King Crimson Live at Fillmore East
Evening Star by Brian and Robert … and a nod to Phish
Space Groove ProjeKct Two ….. the first of the King Crimson ProjeKcts
Live in Providence, RI ….. ‘good evening hippies’, one of the best from 1974
Live at the Egg, Albany ….. King Crimson beginning again, again in 2014.
Further reading: Epitaph sleeve notes
