No Subject

[harvard!ima!inmet!ada-uts!wayne]

This is my first love-hounds note, so I'd thought instead of
contributing to various debates (be they useful or not), I'd offer
some news on Robert Fripp.

Here is the scoop:  sometime this month Editions EG will be releasing
two albums of his.  One is "Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox:  The
Lady or the Tiger?"  This album has on one side Toyah telling
children's stories at least some of which are written by Frank Stockton.
The other side has music from the League of Crafty Guitarists.

The other album is "Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists:
Live".  This album has on it one piece of Frippertronics (the
background is the same basic loop as "God Save the Queen"), and the
rest is music recorded live from the Crafty Guitarists from concerts
performed at George Washington University last December.

Who is "the League", you may ask (and so you may).  The League is a
collection of guitar students that Robert has been teaching in the US.
He has been holding seminars during the past year and a half
at Claymont Court, a Gurdjieff/Bennet community in West Virginia.

The music of "the Crafties" is uncatagorized (so don't ask me what
kind it is -- I hate these questions, almost as much as I hate
labels).  There are a lot of twentieth century classical
music influences (the most obvious being Bartok) and some pop
influences (a little...) and some improvisation as well.
Robert wrote most of the music, but there are I think two
student compositions on it as well. It is all performed on
Ovation guitars-- twenty of them in fact. Yes, twenty guitar
students and Robert were performing at these concerts. It is all
very listenable, and I liked what I heard from tapes of the concerts
as well as a tape of a test pressing.
(I would say the music is of the same vein as the album "I Advanced
Masked"... or rather, it is closer to that than to any of King
Crimson's works.)

There are rumors that Robert and the advanced students of the
League will be touring in the winter; I don't know yet.  When I
find out I'll post it (if I can).  How do I know all this?
Well, I am a Crafty Guitarist;  I'll be there next winter.

By the way, he and Toyah were introduced last fall at some prearranged
gathering at Editions EG.  Robert was to be her producer.  I didn't
get to meet her (she's also a Crafty Guitarist), but what I heard
was that they hit it off very well... so well that he proposed a short
time later, on Christmas Day.  And now they've tied the knot...

If anyone is interested in attending these classes, I can be a little
less vague (the opaqueness was intentional) and tell you more
about them.  I didn't want to bore anyone with my first note...

Wayne Wylupski                   ...!{ihnp4,ima}!inmet!ada-uts!wayne