King Crimson - Absent Lovers Live in Montreal 1984
Performance Notes:
The last four shows of the 1981-84 King Crimson took place over the two nights of July 10th & 11th 1984 at Le Spectrum in Montreal. The performances on these albums are drawn from the final night, shortly after which King Crimson ceased to exist. Crimson was reborn on April 18th 1994 in Woodstock, New York; but that is another, and ongoing, story.
Production Notes:
Mixing a recorded studio performance is always a translation. Mixing a live performance is even more a translation, because it attempts to represent a wider event than can be contained within the studio.
David Singleton and I don't mix as such. Probably, a Ton Prob production presents a particular worldview. We are not neutral, nor purely responsive, nor can we quite direct the action: but all three are involved. Essentially, our aim is to be true to the musical event in its moment.
The key word to the Ton Prob production of Absent Lovers, and one to which we kept returning, was "definition"; not in the sense of limitation, but of clarification: by delineating the edges and containing the boundaries, spaces between are more clearly illuminated and the players thrown into greater relief.
Generally, with regard to the presentation of live performance, this is not necessarily welcome to musicians whose idiosyncracies, conceits, illusions and failings may be revealed to the gaze of a critical ear. As one of the four musicians under present revelation, I am sympathetic; but responsibility to the larger translation holds my greater loyalty. If, as in much recorded rock music, the studio album is viewed as a definitive text or score, then live performance is an interpretation of that text; and an album of live performance is only one particular translation of one specific interpretation, and that in a given context of time, place and person. So what is "definitive"?
Firstly, the live performance of music is in its nature ephemeral. This, it shares with gardening. However, our experience of what is, on the surface, a relatively brief event may resonate in our lives to profound and continuing effect. Simply put, music can reach over and change our lives directly and immediately. Our experiencing takes place in sequential time, but is not always governed by it.
Secondly, if the continuing regard by members of a listening community for a particular performance, or performers, is worthy of attention - and how could it not be? - then the curious may be willing to heed the interests of that community. Absent Lovers continues to be available as a bootleg thirteen years after the radio broadcast.
Thirdly, in a post-modern world there is no one privileged position, translation nor interpretation. This necessarily implies that there are indeed privileged positions of translation and interpretation. This dictum applies, and otherwise, to the material interpreted by this incarnation of Crimson one evening in Montreal during July 1984.
If these comments seem to obscure the clarity which definition claims, I reply that clarity reveals a depth of perspective, a richness of potential, and a spectrum of experiencing within the material which may elude a surface examination. Or not.
Either way, here it is.
The Group
There have been five different personnel configurations of the live King Crimson. The members of Lineup Four (1981/4) are:
Adrian Belew: guitar, drums and lead vocal
Robert Fripp: guitar
Tony Levin: bass, Chapman stick, synth & vocal
Bill Bruford: acoustic and electronic drums & percussion
The first performance, at Moles in Bath, was on April 31st 1981; the last at The Spectrum, Montreal, on July 11th 1984. Live, the Tony, Ade, Billy & Bob Crimson were more song based than earlier versions of Crimson, but could also tear out and flatten ear hairs within a mile.
Each live Crimson has featured some aspect of new or current technology. This Crim featured two Roland GR300 guitar synthesisers, Chapman Stick and Simmonds electronic drums.
We recorded three studio albums. The material presented on this set is drawn from:
Discipline (1981): Elephant Talk , Frame By
Frame, Matte Kudasai, Discipline, Indiscipline, Thela Hun Ginjeet
Beat (1982): Heartbeat, Waiting Man, Sartori In Tangier
Three of a Perfect Pair (1984): Three of a Perfect Pair, Sleepless, Man With An Open Heart, Industry, Dig Me, Larks' Tongues In Aspic (Part III)
Larks' Tongues In Aspic (1973): Larks' Tongues In Aspic (Part II)
Red (1974): Red
Two videos of this group are available from DGM: The Noise (Frejus, 1982) and Live In Japan (1984). We have other archive recordings from 1982-84 but almost none from 1981.
DGM King Crimson Archive Series
The Great Deceiver (1992): a 4 volume set of KC live in 1973/4, originally released through Virgin. This is currently out of print (February 1998) and has now reverted to DGM. We are planning to release a second edition of this in 1999.
Epitaph (1997): a 4 volume set of KC, mainly live, in 1969.
The Night Watch (1997/8): 2 volumes of KC at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw on November 15th 1973.
Absent Lovers (1998): 2 volumes of the final show of the 1981- 4 Crimson at The Spectrum in Montreal on July 11th 1984.
DGM plans to release other archive material, if there is sufficient expressed interest.
General Comments
I
The aim in presenting this live performance is to reflect the spirit of the group in a moment of its appearance. Live recording is not a precise art. But then, neither is recording.
Here are some reflections on live recording, drawn from many years of experience:
1. The sound at a soundcheck bears no relationship whatsoever to the sound once the audience appear.
2. Distrust any musician who claims to give you their maximum level at soundcheck.
3. Microphones move from their original positions.
4. Drum microphones record everything, are occasionally used as percussion accessories, and occasionally record nothing at all.
5. Vocal microphones also record everything, except sometimes the singer.
6. The audience is a featured performer.
7. The foot is not an exact instrument of calibration when placed upon a volume pedal.
8. If a lighting person tells you their lights can't, don't and won't cause buzzes on amplifiers or the sound system, spit on one, or both, of their feet and bite your thumb while shouting: "The fig of Spain!".
9. Tuning a guitar with whammy bar, but no string lock, can lead to a quarter-tone exchange between duetting guitarist-buddies. And if it might, it will. On live television.
II
This record is true to the music and spirit of the event, but it is also a translation of that event. The time, place and circumstances of listening are very different, and music is only one part of a musical context.
If anyone listening, of a certain maturity, had their lives radically reshaped by this band or these performances (and I was one of them) they might be interested in re-visiting their original experience while listening to this record.
Records and live performance are two worlds. One is a love letter, the other a hot date. Crimson have always been the band for a hot date, but from time to time they could write a love letter. So, there is considerable irony in a DGM archive series of live Crimson. Perhaps, these are the love letters of close embracing.
When music comes to life, seemingly of itself, is when, for a musician, life becomes real. The rest of the nonsense, waste, manipulation, deceit, theft
and idiocies of the professional musician's existence is the price we pay to reach the point where music may directly enter into the act of music.
It is unrealistic, and contrary to experience, to believe the aim of the music industry is to provide music, or to rely upon it to service our musical needs.
The performance of music in our contemporary and commercial culture is inherently unlikely and almost impossible. But not quite. This point of "not quite" is a small space where audiences, musicians and businesspeople of goodwill may co-operate in the birthing of music.
Bicker, Banter, Broohaha and Progressive Rock
... An Aftermath.
I
Several books (by Alan Moore, Paul Stump, Edward Macan and Bill Martin) have recently been published on the music categorised as "progressive rock", three of them academically oriented.
Professor Bill Martin (in his Listening To The Future) puts the period of "progressive" as 1968 - 1978. Conveniently, this places the Crimson incarnation of 1981-84 outside the category. Also, the 1981-84 Crim included American musicians for the first time, in contrast to the quintessentially English nature of "progressive".
"Progressive" during 1968/9 - 1975/6 described where vernacular and conservatory traditions collided, and in England. Within a purely English context this immediately had class implications and indicated class distinction: the vernacular / oral tradition had a greater resonance for those with a strong working-class background; the training associated with musical literacy, and time available for practising, more available to children of middle class families, or at least where the families could afford music lessons.
I write this as the grandson of a miner who died at the age of 59, his lungs punctured by coaldust from the mine in which he lost a leg, crushed in colliery machinery; the son of his daughter, brought up in a Welsh valley during the General Strike; and the son of a man told by his father to leave school at 16, to help feed his brothers and sisters. My parents made the transition to the lower middle class - in their time and place, a difficult move - and provided me with the opportunities to have guitar lessons for three years.
For American critics attached to Romantic notions of the Noble Savage (cf. Ken Wilber's notion of "the pre-trans fallacy") young English musicians who lacked both innocence and mastery were fair game for derision. For English critics, a whole range of attitudes came into play: some of this idealogical and class based, and some (I believe) a simple jealousy towards young men of the same age who seemed to be given much of what the world had to offer.
But this is a complex issue, and my present suggestion is that the criticisms of the period (and they are continuing) had less to do with the music than other factors.
The present album and the 1981-84 Crimson, for those keen to attach labels, belonged in sequential and calendar time to the second period of the "punk" explosion, sometimes referred to as "New Wave", and outside the time of Progressive Rock. This is a period which has not yet been much considered academically, but for present purposes I suggest that the increasing availability of world musics, and anthropological studies of cultures from which those musics came to life, was beginning to have an increasing influence within (at least part of) the rock community.
II
Professor Martin suggests that "KC was never a group". Although he has my considerable sympathy, in this Professor Martin is impressively in error. "Never" is a long time. Arguably, the only period in which King Crimson was not as fully a group as I claim it to be was during the period January 1970 - mid 1972. This coincides with the collapse of the 1969 band, continuance under the direction of Peter Sinfield and myself, and the second live formation of Mel Collins, Boz Burrell and Ian Wallace. (DGM is planning to release archival material of this group during 1998).
In a spirit of engagement and critical goodwill, and without doubting Professor Martin's personal commitment to the music of the "progressive" period, I remain a prime authority in matters Crim and Professor Martin's statement does not fit my own experience.
Reasonably, how could a group of fluctuating members, regularly convened by the same person, claim to be an ongoing expression of the "spirit" or "individuality" which bears the name "King Crimson"? Professor Martin's conclusion, that Crimson is a series of "projects" initiated by myself rather than a group, is a fair position to adopt and argue for, and is true in terms of how it might appear, episodically, in the world; but it does not explain the idiosyncratic nature of King Crimson. My own view is that KC stands apart, while existing within, the classic progressive period and subsequently. Acknowledging Professor Martin's continuities, I embrace the discontinuities.
If this gives a reader pause for thought, confusion or doubt, we hold this in common: I have entertained all these responses, and more, during nearly thirty years within and without the strange and ongoing creature called Crim.
A group forms in service of an aim. Its effectiveness is governed primarily by the clarity of its aim, the depth of commitment by and between the members, the degree to which the group's action reflects a larger social / cultural usefulness or necessity, and the quality of its work. When the aim has been served, or the commitment discharged, any group worthy of the name disbands. Otherwise, it becomes an institution and its members suffer the ossification which accompanies institutionalisation.
The simple, quick and easy, or punters', guide to whether a group is a group - or collection of hired hands - is this: do the members share the money? For this reason alone, King Crimson began as a group and continues to be so.
III
In suggesting that "KC was never a group" Professor Martin suggests I have written a revisionist history of the Greater Crim. These are my comments from the Epitaph booklet which attracts his criticism:
"King Crimson is not the Robert Fripp Band, this a wearisome subject in dozens of interviews over two and a half decades. If in doubt, ask the other members.
Nor is King Crimson simply the sum of its members. There has always been something other, completely outside the operations of the musicians, the business, the paraphanalia of rockdom, the records, the performances, and everything which gives rise to the tangible entity of the group/s, King Crimson.
My experience of Crimson is probably very different to the other players, and not necessarily any more true. Different opinions, based on different experiences, are not necessarily wrong, or right, merely different. My own experience of the Individuality which informs the musicians incorporating any particular King Crimson makes me feel a particular responsibility to the project. Honouring that responsibility has been educational, stressful, joyful, painful, illuminating and not something I would do to earn a living (EG made more money from KC than any of its musicians). Neither does it make me a "bandleader".
Crimson's personal history is fairly circuitous but well documented (although with inaccuracies) and remains available to enquiry, and listening. But not facile generalisation."
This is, I suggest, largely the historic position. Although in Crimson anything can change.
IV
King Crimson has been widely vilified as part of the "progressive rock" movement, although most of its action lies outside that particular period.
Received wisdom, for a younger generation of listeners, has been mainly the hostile commentary of hostile commentators. (The particular agenda and ideologies of those commentators is a subject worth considering in itself, and is touched upon by Professor Martin). However, there has been relatively little primary material upon which to base a considered judgement: i.e. recorded live performances of the "scores" and "texts" established / created by studio albums.
The DGM archival series, by making available primary materials, is contributing to a reconsideration of the period's music. Absent Lovers shares similarities to The Nightwatch : both are extensively bootlegged, both were radio broadcasts. Hence the adage that whenever a group broadcasts a radio (or tv) show, it releases an album three months later (or one month in Japan).
A younger listener coming to King Crimson for the first time might recall criticisms of "prog" such as: pretentiousness, bombast and long-winded instrumental solos (although recordings don't show the non-musical features such as satin capes, Persian carpets, laser light shows shooting into the night, revolving drum risers or flying daggers). Currently, there is now sufficient source material for them to take a view on whether these criticisms are true of King Crimson. And older listeners, critics and reviewers of all shades of opinion, have an opportunity to consider / reconsider their positions.
The hostility of music writers continues to reverberate today, although it has mostly loosened its damning embrace on the careers of musicians closely associated with "progressive". The degree of nastiness towards "progressive" and its players, for more than two decades, is a clue that something more than music alone generated the heat. In 1998 it is possible to find even praise, now mainly in fanzines and internet newsletters which convey no sense of the recent stigma and social unacceptability associated with "prog".
To be negative over time is harder, and takes more energy, than to be positive; but, like John Gill, there are some writers who are prepared to persevere. The Scrapbook to "Frame By Frame" presents a broad sample of criticism and commentary pro and con. On balance the criticism cancels itself out, even though a lot of noise minus a lot of noise doesn't equal silence. Overall, thirty years of commentary has provided me with few musical insights and done little to help direct my work as guitarist and aspirant musician. Rather, the overall effect is like being near someone who makes an unpleasant smell in a contained public space: I don't take it personally but I hold my nose.
As I grow older, and the bodies of both my grandfather and father come to exert a hold over mine, the common currency of unkindness in reviews saddens me. Reviews act like grafitti - they provide a barometer of our social and cultural lives.
Alan Neister, of the Globe & Mail (Toronto) has now earned the John Gill Award for Persistent Nastiness, in acknowledgement of a willingness to persevere in seeking out opportunities to be negative, now reliably for over a period of nearly 25 years.
Better for Mr. Neister to be nasty to me, and to denigrate my work, than to vent his ire by poking small creatures. But better yet to see that the reviewer describes their own world of experiencing: their seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing, understanding. That is, the reviewer reviews themself by presenting to the public an entry to their perceptions, qualities of judgement, and simple humanity.
Mr. Neister's ongoing reviews are critical of me personally, and I make no complaint nor denial of my own clear failings clearly revealed. After all, musicians grow up in public. But I am unable to see Mr. Neister's comments as a commentary on my work as such, rather an insight into a world which evinces a parsimony of the spirit and a perseverant unkindness. I take this to be a world of Mr. Neister's experiencing, not my own.
Competence within a listening community has its own injunctions and standards. As a technical injunction, competent judgement only begins (and can only begin) when we become able to enter into the space of others. Compassion is asking too much, empathy is only a beginning.
Generosity and goodwill are necessary entrance conditions if we wish to access the potential which a musical event makes available (and the extent of what is possible is probably inexpressible in words). Generosity, goodwill and kindness do not of themselves confer understanding or critical acuity, neither do they suspend the power to discriminate; but without these qualities the capacity to evaluate, or exercise judgement, will not (and cannot) develop. In any case, better to be kind and incompetent than cruel and inept.
If my sense of this is true, then the very worst I might want for Mr. Neister is that he lives in the world which his jaundiced prose so well depicts. This would be unChristian of me, and is far from the actuality. I wish for Mr. Neister that he might describe the world from which music emerges: this is a rich, vibrant, joyful place of the daily miraculous. It is also a world of acceptance and communion, where we are knowingly the same person. Unkindness and hostility close the door to music, pollute the musical environment and spoil something precious. We all deserve better, including reviewers.
A gate to Paradise is always open to the generous heart, albeit through the eye of a needle.
V
A particular vocabulary, repertoire or leitmotif has currency for a particular period. Then the wind changes direction and everything is different. The traditional Crimson response, when faced with the end of a cycle, is to break up. And in this KC's timing has been impeccable.
Our current approach is different. Rather than disband and cease to exist for a period, we are fractalising into smaller units within the Double Trio and working together, privately and publicly; this, rather than for all six of us to clatter and bang away simultaneously - which is wonderful, for some of the time.
The practical difficulties of King Crimson working together are immense: huge expense, expectation from audiences of established King Crimson repertoire, major logistical problems, fixed concepts of how a "major" band should - and must - record and tour. This makes mobility difficult, immediacy unlikely, spontaneity a rarity, and places emphasis outside the musical event.
King Crimson has already begun a series of projeKcts by fractals of its six members: Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn, Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto. The aim of these smaller Crimson projeKcts is to function as Research & Development for the Greater Crim. The projeKcts may become as much and as little as they may, recording and touring as stand-alone and independent units.
PROJEkCT TWO is the first of the smaller units into action, featuring Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp & Trey Gunn. A double album recorded at Studio Belewbeloible during November 19, 20 & 21st 1997 - Space Groove - is released by DGM in April 1998. P2 made its performance debut at The Cannery, Nashville, on Friday 20th February 1998 as part of the NEA Extravaganza week, and begins global touring in March 1998.
PROJEkCT ONE is the first King Crimson sub-group planned, and the second into operation. Bill Bruford, Robert Fripp, Trey Gunn and Tony Levin improvised four nights of music at the Jazz Cafe in London, December 1- 4th 1997. The performances were recorded and DGM plans to release an album later in 1998.
The Music Of Business
I
The Book of Craft (2017)
There are as many paths to music as there are musicians. So, it is necessary for each musician to find their own path.
Subjectively, this path is unique. Objectively, each path is the same path as that of others. Eventually, the individual musician discovers this.
But, there are signposts; there are maps; there are guides.
II
A deepening of understanding, that is, a change in consciousness, requires new institutions if it is to have effect in the world. These institutions are generated by, and act in accordance with, the deepening understanding.
Negative by-products of industrialisation and the rational scientific world-view are the institutionalised traits of rapacity and greed. Perhaps the buccaneering spirit served England well when defending Albion against the Spanish Armada (although quasi-official piracy helped provoke the invasion) but increasingly the implications of irresponsible self-interest are now accepted within the mainstream of public debate as "non-sustainable" in both human and environmental terms.
We have yet to extend the implications of this thinking into the less dramatic and less potentially lethal areas of our lives; like, the making of music.
If we accept that greed and rapacity have finite implications for natural resources, perhaps we may also accept that greed and rapacity, exhibited in inequitable and exploitive common operating policies of global music groups, set comparable restraints on the supply of music.
The argument is not that multi-nationals should be overthrown - over the next 200 years they will necessarily and inevitably replace the operations of national governments in many areas - but that these institutions need to be re-modelled in accordance with deepening understanding and insight, and gradually replaced by more suitable agencies formed directly in response to the necessities recognised by a maturing humanity.
The move towards ethical procedures in business is an indication that this process has begun. But the process does not move automatically, and runs into the enormous resistances and rigidities of established modes of operating.
New bodies acting in accordance with present needs are concerned with rightness: becoming the right size, not the biggest size; finding the right market and customers, not the largest market with the most customers; discovering the right suppliers, not the most compliant or cheapest suppliers.
If we compare the new breed of institutions to the current dominant mode, we shall find that the best of them are relatively small, mobile and intelligent, and act in accordance with vision. Its employees are motivated by conviction, rather than the narrow self-interest of career, and their larger self-interest is honoured by the company, in whose success they share in proportion to their contribution.
Company aims are directed towards necessity and sufficiency, equity and fairness, rather than profligacy and abundance, exploitation and the dissembling of information.
III
Jay A. Conger of the Leadership Institute of Southern California, has researched Generation X managers (born between 1965 - 1981) and compared their aims with those of the Baby Boomers (1943 - 1964). The Financial Times, reporting his findings (February 16th 1998) indicates four prominent Gen X traits:
1. The need for independence and mobility.
2. The need for a workplace that feels like a community: "And teamwork is a favoured way of creating momentary communities".
3. The need for a balance between work and private life.
4. Fluency with computers.
IV
If the young artist today is to succeed in the music industry, a beginning generation of business people is needed. A new and alternative kind of music industry will probably not yield huge levels of success. The mainstream industry is set up to address the mainstream. Its apparent success in achieving the distribution of music is mainly apparent. Outside the industry one doesn't see the failures, deceit, dishonesty, manipulation and distortion of the lives of artists and industry rank and file.
Should a reasonable, professional and liberal reader, even one in a position of authority over others, feel I overstate the case, I regret that I do not. Should a worldly-wise reader, trained in power negotiation and irrefutable techniques of persuasion, suggest that this is the case in business generally, I reply that I can only speak with confidence of what is within my experience.
Robert Fripp.
Chez Belewbeloid, Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
February 20th 1998.
