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Looper's Delight
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The one time I EVER saw anything slightly violent at a Robert Fripp show was at the Sunset Blvd. House of Blues, February 1997. He was performing soundscapes, as the "1999" album had just come out, and they were slow to build, requiring the [ahem] "audient" to LISTEN to what was happening. In a place like the House of Blues, though, it can get pretty noisy anyway, so I think the place was a bit tense at first, and an obvious division between groups began to occur in the place. I became aware that around half the crowd there could care less who was on stage, most of them looking like rich frat boys from Westwood (and in this case I use the phrase "frat boys" as an epithet, even though I'm a FIJI myself!). I had the thought at the time that Daddy had bought them the primo membership along with the college package (after all the HoB was fairly new then). These guys, some of them with girls in tow (and that's an accurate assessment of the situation), were the ones who got drunk fairly quickly, and before the end of the first segment, thankfully, they left for louder surroundings. The other half of the crowd, the ones who'd really come to hear RF play, well, I don't need to describe folks like ourselves, except to say that, during the first segment, we were all straining like hell to hear what RF was playing, over the din of the college boys. After they left, and things quieted down, everything smoothed out, and the second segment (some of which including the California Guitar Trio, who roamed around the audience as they played!) was wonderful. BUT! (Here's the violent part!) During the first segment, RF was building a slow soundscape, and I was sitting at one of the bars having chicken fingers, when I heard the Muscle Beach-style bartender (who'd probably just discovered blues music by working there) quipped, "Heyyyy mannnn, like, I left my mushrooms at home, doooood", and someone tossed the contents of their drink at him. Instead of the drink-thrower being tossed out on his ear, though, the crowd around him stayed around him, glaring at the bartender, and despite the bartender's obvious internal need to annihilate him, his need for a job prevailed. Security wasn't called, and the drink-thrower went to another bar to resolve the situation altogether. Exceeding satisfying, frankly. There IS justice sometimes, after all. S.P. Goodman EarthLight Productions * http://www.earthlight.net/Gallery - Cartoons and Illustrations! http://www.earthlight.net/HiddenTrack - Cartoons via Medialine!