Re: First Excursions into Frippertronics

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

On Saturday, November 23, 2002, at 11:09 AM, 
Loopers-Delight-d-request@loopers-delight.com wrote:

> I think "the question of who brought the techniques to a wider 
> audience" is moot. Fripp, Carlos, Tangerine Dream, and other such 
> essential commercial brought musical ideas and technologies into the 
> mainstream, but in many cases watered it down. I don't think of this 
> as intentional pandering, but rather as these artists having personal 
> tastes more in touch with a potentially larger audience.


One person's "watering down" is another person's "beefing up".   Some 
people view Led Zeppelin as "watered down" blues and some people hear 
"turbo-charged".  I love Riley's stuff, but Fripp's much higher profile 
insured that he'll always be the one associated with real-time looping 
in the public's eye (such as this hypothetical, looping-aware "public" 
of obscure music fans might be).

Who started doing something first is really only of academic interest.  
Someone usually comes along a bit later and does the same thing, or 
something very similar, but bursts into the public consciousness.  I've 
seen footage of Steve Hackett doing two-handed tapping from a Genesis 
concert in 1971, but the answer to "Who popularized two-handed tapping 
technique on the electric guitar?" is "Eddie Van Halen", despite 
Hackett, Harvey Mandel, Steve Lynch and a number of other people 
(including I believe, Fripp) who were documented as using the technique 
before Van Halen.  If I found out that Sherman Stewart (made-up person) 
was doing exactly what Terry Riley was doing, ten years earlier, it 
doesn't diminish anything on (for example) "Rainbow in Curved Air"  for 
me.

There's so much good stuff out there, it's more important to find out 
and listen to it without fixating on how the file it away in the 
library.

TH

>