Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 12:58:48 EST
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      Richard Sinclair gig report (was Re: Progrock/King Crimson)

On Tue, 15 Dec 1992 09:23:24 CST Paul Heroy said:
>There were some rumors (maybe a little more solid than rumor) floating
>around here not too long ago about Fripp putting together another edition
>of King Crimson. Has anyone gotten any solid info on this? Album, tours,
>personnel, other plans etc.?

No solid facts. The stories I heard added up to an interest on Fripp's part to
get the '80s band back together, except that Bruford wasn't invited because he
and Fripp are pissed at each other. Belew wasn't certain he was going to do it,
when I spoke to him last spring on his tour to promote _Inner Revolution_; he
was planning to go talk and jam with Fripp later in the year. Then I heard that
Levin and/or replacement drummer Jerry Marotta couldn't do it because he/they
was/were committed to tour the world with Peter Gabriel, but I heard then that
Fripp had found a replacement drummer in Michael Giles, the original drummer
from the very first album-- and it was also claimed that Ian McDonald expressed
interest in getting involved. My contact at Caroline Records won't say any more
than that he has every expectation that some form of King Crimson will play out
before the next live box set comes out (two CDs of the _Court_ and/or _Islands_
lineups is the current plan for that, watch for it by Xmas 1993). Did I already
say all this? "I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time."

>Also with respect to progressive rock, I'm interested in picking up some good
>stuff by bands other than KC & Yes (the only recordings I have that fall into
>that category) so I did some scanning of the archives and found a few previous
>posts on the subject. Michael Bloom had a good post on the 'Canterbury

Richard Sinclair (Caravan, Hatfield, Camel) just played here last night, and
was just lovely. I'll talk more about it below, but I will note here that he's
found some people expand their definition of the Canterbury scene to include
Hammill, which is pretty ridiculous (maybe they're comparing Hugh Banton's
organ sound with Mike Ratledge's).

>school', and I've picked up a couple of other names here, such as Peter
>Hammill. So I picked up my trusty Noteworthy catalog to see what's available,
>and need advice on their selections. (I browsed at a coupld of local stores,
>but aside from one placard for Hammill behind which were no CD's, I came up
>empty.) Here's what Noteworthy offers:

>Camel: Compact Compilation, Pressure Points

Camel were second-raters IMHO. Sinclair was the best thing that ever happened
to them, and Andy Latimer was too clueless to realize it.

>Gentle Giant: Acquiring the Taste, Free Hand, Gentle Giant, Octopus,
>              Three Friends

_Three Friends_ was the first one I ever heard, and it's swell. _Octopus_ and
_Free Hand_ are also swell. It is claimed that _In a Glass House_, which was
probably their best record, is due for rerelease imminently, but if you wanna
dive in right away, I'd recommend _Free Hand_.

>Gong: Gazuese (with Holdsworth - yeah!)

In this country the album was known as _Expresso_. Good record, non-stupid
fusion music with lots of tuned percussion (which is my new hobby).

>Peter Hammill: Black Box, Fool's Mate, Over

You'll get a better opinion from Marco, but of these I like _Black Box_ best.
It's pretty weird though, even by his standards. I got into Hammill through
Van der Graaf Generator, which I think I still prefer, and the Hammill solo
I would recommend to a beginner would probably be _The Silent Corner and the
Empty Stage_. _Fool's Mate_ is early and simplistic (although Crimso collectors
will note the presence of Fripp on three songs) and _Over_ is about the end of
a love affair and is unrelievedly depressing.

>Hatfield and the North: <eponymous>, Rotter's Club

Now I think these are both essential albums. Dave Stewart claims he had nothing
to do with the Canterbury scene as such, but this band exemplifies everything
Canterbury meant to me: intricate music, with the whole panoply of progressive
rock stunts like odd time signatures and weird chord extensions, but played in
cheerful major keys and with a playful sense of humor, just gorgeous stuff. Of
course, after you absorb this, Caravan and Soft Machine will sound tame.

>Soft Machine: Third (2 on 1 CD)

This is the record where jazz-rock fusion was invented from the rock side, and
never got any credit. Actually this is Soft Machine's _Tales from Topographic
Oceans_, which is to say these are works of great cosmic significance that go
on too long :-) This is one of the very few genuinely progressive works to get
high marks in the _Rolling Stone Record Guide_ (they also liked _Close to the
Edge_ and Another Green World_, but they hated Crimson et al).

>(Nothing from Caravan or Robery Wyatt listed.)

Too bad; I'd have thought you could still find something like _Old Rottenhat_
pretty easily, and it's a lovely record too.

>Any guidance about the above would be appreciated, as would be recommendations
>for other stuff (and please don't tell me about some impossible to obtain
>recording that's a 'must have great classic orgasmic album' :-)

I don't do Kollector Skum. I tend to think everything should remain in print,
and that obscure B sides should be added to CD reissues. The Hatfield CDs were
real good about that; the first album includes their single "Let's Eat (Real
Soon)," and the second includes some live material that appeared in various
obscure places.

>BTW, I was going through a bunch of my jazz CD's last night to put together an
>intro tape for a friend, and pulling out Miles's album 'Working', noticed a
>cut named Bloomdido! (And it was great to listen to some of that stuff again,
>it's been a while since I've pulled that one out - Four, The Theme, Ahmad's
>Blues... classic stuff.)

That's right. How the name got attached to me is, Gong had a saxophonist named
Didier Malherbe, and founder Daevid Allen (who quit by the time of _Gazeuse_)
had this penchant for renaming the members of the band. Knowing Malherbe to be
a big Coltrane fan, he dubbed him "Bloomdido Bad de Grasse," where the latter is
a punning mistranslation of "Malherbe" (this was back when Gong sang about "Pot
Head Pixies," among other things Tipper Gore might object to).

Now, about Richard Sinclair: he's re-assembled a band called Caravan of Dreams
to play some of the old material and some new stuff. It includes Camel's old
drummer Andy Ward, part-time National Health bassist Rick Biddulph, everybody's
favorite session reedman Jimmy Hastings, and some keyboard player I never heard
of. They're playing a little bit around Europe, and Sinclair would like to have
them come and tour the US, so he came over to play some solo dates and see how
feasible it would be, and try to promote the _Caravan of Dreams_ CD.

He brought three instruments with him: his old reliable fretless bass (which
still has the old Hatfield logo on it), one'a them newfangled Washburn acoustic
electrics that everybody and his brother seem to have nowadays (especially the
people from England), and a Casio electric guitar that had MIDI capability and
built in synth module (sounded pretty silly). He played and sang over a dozen
songs, ranging from Caravan's third album in 1971 to one tune so new he didn't
even have lyrics yet (and improvised a verse about how he needs new lyrics, and
if you have any, to get in touch with him! Carol, you should contact him). He
loves to use chords with ridiculous extensions, and the fingerings are pretty
frightening, although I should certainly practice the ones I remember. He also
takes some really nice solos, especially with the synth timbres. Maybe I want
one of those Casio guitars for Christmas.

The other bands on the bill included the EXI's (short for "existentialist"),
a strumma-strumma singer-songwriter type group with a digeridu player, and my
other group, Judas & Natasha Experiments. (The Urbans didn't want to do it,
having bad memories of the Daevid Allen/Magick Brothers show promoted by the
same people.) I decided to bring all my new percussion equipment for Judas &
Natasha: the marimba, the Indonesian _bonang_ gongs, my Amerindian drum, etc.
Including Judas's bongos and African drum, I believe we had every inhabited
continent represented by appropriate percussion! Since Natasha doesn't like
the sound of the Middle East's PA system, we decided to play acoustic; as we
started I turned to the audience and said, "Welcome to JNE Unplugged :-)" We
played a short, pleasant set, some six songs in 35 or 40 minutes, where I only
played bass once. The way I played the marimba basically imitated the way Bill
Bruford used the slit drum in "The Sheltering Sky," except that I had the full
chromatic scale to work with. I also did fairly simple patterns on the gongs:
the version of "Hope for the Best" was almost in tune with the gongs, and some
nice simple fake gamelan licks worked out splendidly. The extreme progressive
rock fans, like the promoter, still didn't like us-- we're too improvisatory,
and there's still the matter of Natasha's voice-- but Richard liked us fine.
I'd impressed him during setup by playing some old Hatfield melodies on the
marimba, and he insisted I record some solo marimba transcriptions and send
them to him :-) He's going to stay a couple more weeks in the USA, recording
some in Kansas City for Voiceprint and in NYC with Kramer (Bongwater), and he
has a couple more gigs booked (the only one I know is Waterbury CT just after
Christmas), and his flight home is out of Boston, so it's possible I'll hook
up with him again, maybe write him some lyrics, maybe even book a recording
session with him... there's a project I'll tell you about later.

I missed most of the EXI's set because my wife wasn't feeling well, and taking
her home also allowed me to take the percussion home early too-- Richard used
two of my amplifiers (the direct guitar and the synth effects went in separate
channels) and I would never have been able to fit all the gear in our Hyundai
econo-box, so it was probably all for the best. Sandra and I diverge over the
importance of Canterbury anyway-- she prefers the Henry Cow/King Crimson/Magma
aggressive dissonance thing, as well as the Captain Beefheart rhythmic thing,
and thinks Hatfield is kinda wussy-- one of the very few instances where she's
clearly wrong :-)
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