Re: OT ELP/JP f(rip)p

["samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

  Those who beleive that it is less than honest and honorable for 
musicians 
to do things for financial reasons are basically making it difficult to 
impossible for they themselves to make a living in music. Isn't it hard 
enough already? Once contracts have been signed,a band name is a brand 
,and 
a marketing vehicle. if you want to sell recordings/tickets,packaging is 
necessary,the package is the vehicle to deliver the goods.Since people in 
modern industrial countries have been trained to respond to name 
recognition 
( it's called branding -not too different from branding cattle) it is 
necessary to work with that reality in order to sell 
recordings/tickets,just 
as it's necessary to work with the conventions of staging,electrical 
current 
standards etc..Now some people in music put everything into packaging ,but 
there's little or nothing in the box-or it's like cotton candy -tatstes 
sweet but when you try and swallow it,nothing reaches your stomach 
,there's 
no nutrition.On the other hand I often encounter creative, imaginative 
intelligent ,soulful artists who put no energy into business .Some of them 
consider themselves to have artistic purity because they don't stoop to 
commerce but then have limited time to devote to their art because they 
have 
to make money to live,y doing something that they only do for the 
money.Some 
purity. Certainly very fine works can be produced with no commercial 
intent 
by people who do other work that is satisfying.Well and good but no reason 
to dismiss folks who are trying to make a living in music.Zappa,according 
to 
his autobiography spent years turning out music aimed at teenagers ,and 
touring the auditorium circuit in a music business he absolutley 
hated,trying to raise money to hire orchestras to play his serious works.  
If Fripp was just turning out commercial crap to make money I would 
consider 
criticism valid,but to use an established name to sell recordings which 
are 
imaginative, creative,original,take artistic chances etc, seems completely 
reasonable to me.I think in fact an arguement could be made that the Court 
of era Crimson was a more commercially oriented venture than later 
incarnations.That music was made to be played in auditoriums for huge 
audiences.It's great music but it's not hard to think -here are some very 
talented classically trained musicians that have decided to try their 
hands 
at stadium rock-w/ glorious results.  The current Crimson certainly 
doesn't 
play the big venues.