There are two points I’d like to make...” says Fripp after explaining how he rarely comes to the microphone preferring to sit at the side of the stage and keep his mouth shut. “I saw the piece in the university newspaper and it had a piece on King Crimson.It’s very rarely that I get angry...I found that piece most offensive and if the lady who wrote is here may warts encrust your...” and at this point the roar of the crowd obscures the body part in question.
“Secondly has to do with the way audience and performer get together with this process of making music. We have the most absurd notion of our performers, in some way they are elevated creatures and we externalise this notion and build stages; we put pits with water and piranha...so that if you did want to connect with the performer you’d be eaten in three seconds flat. The Shakespearean theatre was constructed in the round so that it was entirely impossible for the event to take off unless the audience got stuck in. You can play rock ‘n’ roll clubs and they’re sweaty and uncomfortable and you can play theatres like this and they’re like cold and uncomfortable...I’m saying we all have to make a little more effort to bridge this gap.”
Writing in his diary 11th November 2004 Fripp noted “a late lunch with Steve Ball, who lived two blocks from the hotel until recently. Steve reminded me that today is our 23rd. anniversary of meeting on The Drive To Carbondale. The anniversary links two parts of my history: King Crimson & Guitar Craft. On one GC course, I asked Steve: what brought you into Guitar Craft? Steve replied: seeing King Crimson at Carbondale in 1981.
The Drive To Carbondale refers to a KC performance at Carbondale University in Southern Illinois on November 11th. 1981. It was so named because the date fell in the middle of a three-month tour through the US and on to Japan. The band knew extended touring fucked me over, that the middle was a low-point of energy & enthusiasm, therefore that at Carbondale the English guitarist would be in very bad shape. To acknowledge his easily-anticipated condition of feebleness & despair, they named the tour for the middle-of-the-middle & The Drive To 1981 - The Drive To Carbondale.
It is interesting & instructive to learn, even well after the event, of repercussions that result from our actions.”
