Re: Bitchery vs. Fair Comment

[MIvanBerk@aol.com]

I think I mentioned this a couple of weeks back, but I had the odd 
only-in-New
York City experience of being bored by Fripp at the Bottom Line (most 
likely
the same set David Myers witnessed) immediately after hearing an immensely
exciting performance by looping violinist/LiSa manipulator Kaffe Matthews.
But that's my personal bias.  I felt that she was doing quite a bit more 
(so
far as loopy density goes) with quite a bit less gear, but then again, what
she was doing was far more compositionally oriented than what Fripp was 
doing.
Matthews would generally improvise a theme, then begin to alter it via
processing and resampling, move on to new figures, and resurrect old ones.
Fripp's appeared to be less interested in dealing with the material he
produced once it hit the Eventides and tc 2290s, doing his best to absent
himself from the process to the point of walking offstage and letting the
machines speak for themselves for a good amount of the performance.  

I found this tiring, and left immediately after the flashbulb incident.  I
must admit, however, that what did hold my interest about the performance 
was
the audience's reception of Fripp than by anything he was doing. Those 
seated
near me (at least the ones who didn't spend the evening competitively
cataloguing their Crimson bootleg collections), seemed to find in the
performance nothing but an affirmation of their solid belief in Fripp's
virtuosity -- a performance that seemed (at least to me, and for better or 
for
worse) completely uninterested in providing such evidence.

Basically, yeah, he's boring -- and perhaps he means it.  But does that 
make
it better?

By the way, if our David Myers is the one who's recorded lots of
"multiprocessor feedback" as Arcane Device, he produces some interesting 
and
unsettling loop music of his own and has every right to comment without
possibility of damnation.

-mike