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It's interesting, and I think pertinent, that Axel chose Fripp/King Crimson as the key
example in his discussion of the WWW and its relationship to music fandom.
Superannuated musos with an enduring interest in production values have always tended
to pursue careers as songwriters and consultant knob-twiddlers on other people's hit
albums -- from Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvæus to Brian Eno. As Axel discusses, the
WWW now gives these highly skilled artists a relatively inexpensive and accessible means
of reaching a broader, enduring audience for their own music. Of course, the ability of the
Web/Internet to inject an amphetamine shot into the career of any (by traditional
measures) dying or dead pop phenomenon is not limited to electro-pioneers such
as Fripp; and this, from my perspective, is where things start to get complicated and
interesting.
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Take The Church, for example. Paisley-shirted,
Rickenbacker-wielding creators of a
uniquely layered, psychedelic rock/pop sound, in the early eighties they achieved a degree
of success in Australia with melodic albums like The Blurred Crusade (1982/EMI) and
Heyday (1985/EMI). Their efforts to break into the lucrative US market eventually bore
fruit when "Under the Milky Way", the ARIA-awarded single from 1988's Starfish
(Mushroom), debuted in the American Top 40. Suddenly, they were playing stadium
concerts across the US and were recording in LA, produced by industry heavyweight
Waddy Wachtel. Just as quickly, they vanished from the charts, broke up, and reformed
(several times), yet have never since achieved a comparable hit. How or why this
swooping, cinematic rise-and-fall occurred is not in question; what is interesting is how
the band managed to fail so spectacularly in pop industry terms yet continue to record, to
maintain an independent profile (after 19 years as a group), and even, in the past two
years, to undertake a world tour.
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The Church's (and Fripp's) recent history demonstrates how, in terms of the creation of
niche marketing opportunities for artists, it is difficult to separate the Web from the
broader digital revolution which is transforming the music recording industry. When you
can pick up a high quality PC audio card for under $AU2K and hook it up to your PC
running (say) ProTools to mix, add effects, design and
print cover artwork and burn to CD, the term 'bedroom music' takes on new and literal
meaning. And that doesn't just apply to Fripp-style electronica. For example, take a listen
to David Sylvian's latest album,
Dead Bees on a Cake. Notice how
the vocals sound strangely close-up (or 'forward') in the mix? It's because Sylvian ran out
of money mid-album, couldn't afford any more pricey studio time, and ended up recording
the vocals himself at home. The Church's recording history furnishes just one more
example of this industry transformation: of their last three albums, all have been at least
partly recorded at frontman Steve Kilbey's own studio,
Karmic Hit. The historical shift of power from record company to
distributor which accompanies this shift to the home studio forms part of this broad
industry trend towards the digital.
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This above point leads me on to the thorny question of artistic independence and its
relationship to e-commerce. The qualification Axel's review makes in reference to Fripp's
limited financial success is extremely important. Just as high-profile Web-driven businesses
such as Yahoo! and Amazon are
said to 'look great on paper' yet are also widely reported to be having difficulties in
showing a profit, Web-derived music sales are not yet sufficient when it comes to the
musician's income. Tours, publications, work on other people's albums remain necessary
sources of cash as well as important means of retaining a public profile. All of these
activities may be, and now usually are, fuelled by on-line fandom and promotions. In other
words, both the WWW and fandom in general, however disseminated or organised, may
still ultimately serve industrial or commercial interests. This demands a more critical
reading of the cultural protocols by which artists are able to celebrate the much-vaunted
independence of the Web while "set[ting] up a Web presence of their own, complete with
links to the major online CD stores" (Bruns b. 1).
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While all current members of The Church have continued to work on a variety of separate
group and solo projects, it is Church fandom which has arguably played the single major
part in the group's longevity as a band. By way of acknowledgment, both off- and on-line
fan activities have received particular attention from the band members.
Shadow Cabinet (the Church Website), and
Seance (the Church mailing list), have joined the off-line
NSEW fanzine in receiving special mentions within Church album credits. While all of the
above fan sites are independent, maintained by individual fans -- with regular contributions
and updates from band members, as well as fan content -- citation in the group's CD liner
notes gives them the most official status or recognition they can receive without being
adopted by the band's record company -- and the latter, as I have already indicated, is in any
case an increasingly nebulous concept. Fuelled by on-line fan fever, the positive reception
given to the Church's 'final reunion tour' in 1997 encouraged the band to keep recording
and to make a more extensive world tour in 1998 to promote their latest album, Hologram
of Baal (1998/Cooking Vinyl). In other words, on-line fandom is able to generate a vast,
potentially quantifiable amount of what would business analysts would term 'goodwill.'
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Yet so-called studio musicians, avant-gardistes and experimentalists like Eno, Fripp,
Sylvian (and yes, The Church), are particularly well-served by the Web because it enables
them to claim for themselves a position outside the commercial/industrial forces of AOR
and A&R. The enduring myth of the independent or alternative artist is brandished as a
protective talisman against a world of "Jaguars, Glocaine, Fenders, white skinned, cold
blooded alcoholic Aphrodites, large lumps of money, small pieces of moon ..." (liner
notes, Hologram of Baal). The nostalgia of Steve Kilbey's description can only confirm
the haunting absence of any "ethical company, where the musicians and not the executives
make the money, and where artists retain the copyright of their work" (Bruns b.
4). If this seems overly cynical, an historical perspective shows that a degree of informed
pessimism is perfectly in order.
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Just as the change from LP to CD technology ennabled record companies to re-release
albums with 'extra' or 'bonus' tracks, thus creating a rash of instant collector's markets, the
Web offers artists seemingly unlimited potential to 'give more' to their fans/customers. I
think it wise to retain a measure of critical distance towards the precise nature of this gift;
and furthermore to recognise that if the personal, the immediate, the non-commercial is
what 'sells best' on the Web, the successful artist will take advantage of the prevailing
Zeitgeist. As my own response to this issue demonstrates, the dichotomy of critical
analysis/fandom is never stable -- but that is no reason to abandon our efforts to achieve a
more complex critical paradigm for the Web than the twin caricatures of 'liberator of
humankind' and 'just another delivery medium'.
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Details
Robert Fripp: DGM Diary. http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/news/diary2.htm.
Published continually.
Part of the Discipline Global Mobile Website, http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/.
Axel Bruns. "Aspiring Musician: Robert Fripp's DGM Diary." M/C Reviews 27 Oct. 1998.
22 June 1999 <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/fripp.html>.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Catherine Howell. Response to "Aspiring Musician: Robert Fripp's DGM Diary." M/C Reviews 22 June 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/fripp.html>.
Chicago style:
Catherine Howell. Response to "Aspiring Musician: Robert Fripp's DGM Diary," M/C Reviews 22 June 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/fripp.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Catherine Howell. (1999) Response to Aspiring musician: Robert Fripp's DGM Diary. M/C Reviews 22 June 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/fripp.html> ([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://www.elephant-talk.com/images/fripp.jpg)