Red

As many of you know, the Misanthrope, he is the fan of some of the 1970s progressive music. (Okay, no more Manoloblogging.)  

This is partially because when I was learning to play guitar and I was attracted to some of the virtuosity of guys like Steve Howe and partially because I get bored with the simple harmonic structure of rock very quickly.  I don't know how to square any of this with my adoration of The Who.

At any rate, I happened upon a live performance video of King Crimson (the current "double-trio" version) and it got me looking to dig back into my Fripp collection.  Sadly, most of it was on vinyl and most of that was stolen in my junior year of college.

So I went to iTunes to see if I could pick up "Discipline," my favorite Crimson album.  Nope.  No Crimson on iTunes.

This led to some web searching and I came upon Discipline Global Media, the company that now distributes Crimson and related music and also promotes other new artists.  The Rosenbergs, a band I remember seeing with Dfactor in Dumbo back in 2000 or so, were with DGM for a while.

This introduction and series of small essays by Fripp is, I think, fascinating for all those who have been interested in the "label for artists" dream and the frustrations of working with large record companies.  I have to commend Fripp for his clear-eyed review of where things went wrong.  He understands, having run things from the other side, that record labels are businesses and that businesses need to be run for profit.  And this leads to decisions that are unrelated to artistic love of the music.  Sometimes the artist you love and want to promote is simply not going to sell records.  And that has to be agonizing for somebody who started a label for the purpose of putting out music that would not otherwise be heard. 

(Side note: E.G. Records, Crimson's label in the late 1970s and 1980s, was actually run out of the 4th or 5th floor of the apartment building I grew up in.  I used to see Robert Fripp in the elevator four or five times a week.  The only problem was, I was too young to know who he was and I didn't pick up the guitar until I was 14.  It kills me that I didn't get a chance to talk to him after learning about him.)

On a related note, I was geeky enough to sit through a very long but fascinating documentary on Yes last night.  I really only like the "classic" three records (The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge) with the occasional track on a later record, but I became engrossed in the interviews about the periods before and after that era because of the monstrous band politics and the absolutely shocking business mistakes the band made.  Their first manager signed them up for something like an 18 album deal with Atlantic!  They sold their publishing rights in 1970 to buy a PA like the one they had seen for the band Iron Butterfly!  They were so screwed that the ended up touring constantly to pay off their debts and live their lives.

Yeah, I know, it's a common story (although selling the publishing for a PA is a new low), but in the documentary they compared Yes with Atlantic label mates Led Zeppelin and noted what an incredibly good manager Peter Grant was.  And I have to wonder if Grant's excellent management might have been why Zeppelin was so consistently good musically.  Touring constantly meant Yes rarely had six months off to recharge or write material without getting on a bus or plane.  And their output started to suck pretty rapidly because of it.

Anyway, enough snowy day ramblings.