Notes of Note
Late again. It's a miracle the folks at Jambands continue to accept my
columns.
I saw King Crimson at the Fillmore two of their three nights last month, and
once
again I can't but think that Robert Fripp is one of the greatest musical minds
of the
20th century. In fact, I was considering posting one of his on-line diary
entries
in its entirety, as he said in that one e-mail just about everything serious
I've been
wanting to say about live music in the past ten years. And he did it with more
eloquence
and knowledge than I could ever muster. For dumb technical reasons I cannot
access
that column, and so that will have to wait. But if you like Phish because you
like
the juxtaposition of complexity and unpredictable jam, then you should do
yourself a
major favor and have a listen to some live 1970's Crimson - the box set "The
Great
Deceiver" is phenomenal.
What Fripp does for the intellect, Steve Kimock does for the heart. There
is
only
one word to describe the feeling one gets at his shows, and that word is
joy.
Kimock plays guitar like it - well, here's the image. You know on Rush's album
Hemispheres, when the protagonist finds the guitar by the riverside and
picks
it up and sings about its "wires that vibrate, and make music", and then
proceeds to
play some nifty major chord progressions? Well, Kimock plays like that Rushian
hero would sound a decade later, after having brought his heart into it. I
like
to
poke fun at the Kimock list fans because they've become masters of the
superlative -
every show is hotter than the previous, every song is more soulful than the
last.
But you know, those fanatics just might be right.
Sir Chan Destroy, in his usual stealthy manner, dropped another musical bomb
on me
last month when he casually popped in Cornershop's "When I Was Born for the 7th
Time"
as we were driving to see Crimson. Holy cow! This is an English band which is
fronted
by an East Indian, and they deliver a trip-pop melange of Ganges meets Thames
that
signifies the enormously exciting time in which we live, where musical
influences are
global and it's all available. Now, I'm a technical fuddy-duddy, still paying
for my
music and surfing the Internet using a (Austin Powers voice here, with
finger-quotes)
mo-dem, but this is what the Internet is all about (well, that and porn)
-
gaining access to all things musical you can imagine. Highly recommended; like
they
sing, "Good shit's all around."
As I write this, America still doesn't have a president for the next four
years.
I'll just say that I really appreciated what Andy Rooney had to say about it -
that
we aren't under martial law, we don't have a general lurking in the wings
waiting to
overtake the country, that it's being taken care of in the way that we claim it
is
when we go sell democracy overseas. Yeah, the rush to the courts is entirely
expected in our ridiculously litigious society, and Bush and Gore are
embarrassingly
unpresidential while we wait for recounts of recounts. But what we do here in
this
country isn't about what the clowns at the top do, it's about what we do in the
precinct halls and the county seats.
See you at the next show.
DM
