It's December 16th!

Happy Beethoven's Birthday!

ancient history...

( old old old... )

Fripp on Peter Sinfield

From his diary entry of 2 days ago.

Classic Rock magazine for December has interviews with Ian MacDonald & Peter Sinfield. The interviewer asks Peter whether The Great Deceiver (1973) was written about Peter; that is, whether the song is a commentary on the breakdown of our working relationship (1971). Firstly, the question would be better directed towards the lyricist, Richard Palmer-James, and the prime writer, John Wetton. I doubt whether either had Peter in mind and, if they had, I’m sure they would have mentioned it to me. Secondly, I am unaware of how such an impressively dopey notion might acquire enough currency that the question even be asked.

It doesn’t matter very much that Peter & I don’t like each other; it doesn’t matter very much that our views on Peter’s relationship to/with KC are fundamentally incompatible, and probably irreconcilable: the world is a much better place for Peter being in it than were he never to have drawn breath; and my life is better by far for knowing him. The song-writing partnership of Peter & Ian was remarkable, far more successful than mine with Peter, and the wonderful Let There Be Light (1999) continued the magic beyond KC. The suggestion that The Great Believer is a diss on Peter? Well, it’s just a load of bollocks.

faireraven and I can relate

rather personally, in fact, to this comment by Robert Fripp: A two-hour journey to Manchester, a one hour drive around Manchester city centre, revisiting the same series of landmarks in a demonstration of the Principle of Gradual Approximation, and then arrival.

Manchester's like that  In all a nice enough town compared to others, and one of the few with real suburbs in the American sense (you'd be surprised how difficult coffee to go is to find in rural England and Wales), but upon return the second weekend we realized how much we loved Shropshire.