I love this image. Love it. These guys could be celebrating achieving tenure at Walden College. But it’s King Crimson doing publicity for a fall tour. Now I have no idea whether the new ‘configuration’ will be any good (the last few versions were kinda ho-hum) but they’ve got the right idea.

And I love the fact that Robert Fripp is an adult. He’s not a 60 year old man trying to act like a pirate. He’s a grown man, playing music for adults. At 115db. 😀

King Crimson was always about a quiet ferocity. The press tended to depict KC as this pointy-headed intellectual vibe, probably because Fripp is so pretentious and ‘British.’ But when you go to a KC show, it’s takes no prisoners. Fripp always reminded me of George Smiley… this tightly wrapped guy, who knows what he’s doing, but with a rage you cannot believe.

And this is (or should be) the future of classical music.

Whither Goest Thou

As some of you know, I’ve had […]

So the good news is that The Solid State Siren is ready to go. The other good news is that I’m ready to get out there again. So, please click here if this is of interest so I can schedule about a dozen shows starting in September 2014.

No Robots

I’ve seen/heard a lot of recent experiments by Tom Wilkinson (aka Squarepusher) and others using a variety of techniques whereby some automaton composes and/or plays something labelled as ‘music’. This sort of urge seems to occur every few decades (Google ‘aleatoric’ for an instant migraine.) They are always failures. The annoying part for me is because I am so aware of my prejudices against ‘machine music’ I go out of my way to be open-minded. I think I’ve subjected myself to more repetitive/random crap than any repetitive/random hater ever. I just want to be clear that going on ‘auto-pilot’ is not the show you’re gonna see. In any case, I can heartily recommend the records […]

…As opposed to ‘later’, which is how my last few records have been delivered.

But if you’ve stumbled on the site recently you can see, we’re getting close… er. Closer. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 😀 According to the site, the record will be shipping just in time for Independence Day. But you know what they say about believing everything you read. 😀

The question is going to be ‘how to push the first thousand of these little jewels out the door as fast as possible.’ Do I have ideas on promos? You bet I… don’t.

But I’m open to suggestions!

The first few hundred of these (these happy few) will be hand-signed

…For the simple reason that the manufacturer will be sending them to me un-shrink-wrapped. The first batch of every CD I’ve ever done has had at least some dodginess. So I insist on the first box being done this way (tip to aspiring marketers.) If I find a flaw (and I does […]

Said it before, say it again, I never really liked the guitar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when it’s played well. There is no instrument quite as compelling in so many genres. But you gotta have a certain agreement with it in order to really make it sing. And above all, you simply cannot fight it.

And by the way, I will immediately stipulate that some of the absolute best guitar music ever made has been made by people who do not have this agreement, who do fight like Ahab for every note. I’m one of them. But that’s different. There will always be something missing for those who don’t really surrender to the instrument. As with ‘The Great Whale Dick’ it may be a hell of a fight, but you will never win.

The big issue for me, aside from having elfin-sized hands (and I don’t mean Tolkien-elves, I mean the ones that make the cookies and live in small trees) is that the guitar doesn’t really sound ‘good’ in […]

When I started re-discovering ‘electronic music’ as a thing apart from ‘electronica’ I thought I’d connect with a whole new universe of old. I knew there was a thriving culture of people who were totally entranced (pun intended) by vintage gear and I thought that in addition to being good material for the new record, it would be fascinating to see how that culture had evolved. But the current world of synthesisers is just not what I expected at all.

When I first saw a synthesiser in 1975, that world was largely either rock stars or people at large universities trying by gain some respect in the ‘real’ music world. The common denominator in both cases was deep pockets. Synths were about as expensive as a small airplane and just about as easy to use.

But everyone with an interest really wanted respect for their new instruments and they attempted to get it in three ways:

By creating idiomatic […]