Thursday, August 14, 2008

Reviewer sees red, misses Crimson

When is a concert review not a review?
When it's like this.

This guy had it oh so wrong. The strangest aspects of the review are that there was barely mention of the actual show and some of the things the reviewer did mention were either incorrect or skewed or inanely deduced. He showed all the finesse of a teenage girl in full-on tantrum because she couldn't use her blasted cell phone.

It's worth a skim, especially for some of the intelligent comment responses. It's disturbing what passes for journalism these days.

4 comments:

sparky said...

"He returned to musical work as a studio guitarist on Peter Gabriel's first self-titled album in 1976, released the following year. Fripp toured with Gabriel to support the album, but remained in the wings and used the pseudonym
"Dusty Rhodes"."

and what i find interesting about that statement is that, back then, i'd heard rumor that he was asked to play from the wings because his stage presense at gabriel's concerts caused fripp fans to yell out his name/requests. so, maybe now, he likes it that way

CommonWombat said...

RF has all kinds of legitimate and personal reasons for keeping his stage presence subdued as well as the strict "no cameras" policy. I wish more reviewers would try to understand this instead of grabbing the "he's an eccentric snob" angle.

I hate the notion that just because you've purchased a ticket you're entitled to dictate what kind of theater experience you should have. Shouldn't that be in the hands of the artist?

Brickgrrl said...

Wombat-
Agreed!
I really can't understand all the ballyhoo about Fripp's stage position choices. And I've always subscribed to the idea that once you pay for a ticket, the rest is in the purview of the performer.
Interesting how entitlement is so pervasive in our society.

sparky said...

i found this interesting?
he created an atypical style of tuning for guitar, new standard tuning, nst, which in his words, among other things, helped to keep the drummer's cymbal from stealing fripp's accents

and if you want to gain more insight into the man, check out the 'fourth way'; http://www.answers.com/topic/fourth-way

or, http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/FAQ_-_Robert_Fripp#Who_is_J.G._Bennett_and_what_is_his_relation_to_Fripp.3F

or, http://www.claymont.org/, where he has instructed