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Re: Robert Fripp...



The one time I EVER saw anything slightly violent at a Robert Fripp show 
was
at the Sunset Blvd. House of Blues, February 1997.  He was performing
soundscapes, as the "1999" album had just come out, and they were slow to
build, requiring the [ahem] "audient" to LISTEN to what was happening.  In 
a
place like the House of Blues, though, it can get pretty noisy anyway, so I
think the place was a bit tense at first, and an obvious division between
groups began to occur in the place.

I became aware that around half the crowd there could care less who was on
stage, most of them looking like rich frat boys from Westwood (and in this
case I use the phrase "frat boys" as an epithet, even though I'm a FIJI
myself!).  I had the thought at the time that Daddy had bought them the
primo membership along with the college package (after all the HoB was
fairly new then).  These guys, some of them with girls in tow (and that's 
an
accurate assessment of the situation), were the ones who got drunk fairly
quickly, and before the end of the first segment, thankfully, they left for
louder surroundings.

The other half of the crowd, the ones who'd really come to hear RF play,
well, I don't need to describe folks like ourselves, except to say that,
during the first segment, we were all straining like hell to hear what RF
was playing, over the din of the college boys.  After they left, and things
quieted down, everything smoothed out, and the second segment (some of 
which
including the California Guitar Trio, who roamed around the audience as 
they
played!) was wonderful.

BUT!  (Here's the violent part!)  During the first segment, RF was building
a slow soundscape, and I was sitting at one of the bars having chicken
fingers, when I heard the Muscle Beach-style bartender (who'd probably just
discovered blues music by working there) quipped, "Heyyyy mannnn, like, I
left my mushrooms at home, doooood", and someone tossed the contents of
their drink at him.  Instead of the drink-thrower being tossed out on his
ear, though, the crowd around him stayed around him, glaring at the
bartender, and despite the bartender's obvious internal need to annihilate
him, his need for a job prevailed.  Security wasn't called, and the
drink-thrower went to another bar to resolve the situation altogether.
Exceeding satisfying, frankly.

There IS justice sometimes, after all.

S.P. Goodman
EarthLight Productions
*
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