Crimson Commentaries 1991-98

Background To The Club.
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I

As background to all other enthusiast discussion / commentary regarding DGM: please know
that it is hard to exagerrate the difficulties which a small company like ours has to merely exist. That
we are here is in itself a triumph.
Various postings to DGM and the Elephant Talk site wonder why various anticipated projects
have not yet been finalised, or released. Why have they not received a reply to their urgent request
for detailed advice on how to launch their career in the record industry, or a critique of their
unsolicited CD?
The answer to these queries is simple; for me, painfully simple. This simple answer has three
parts: time, money and necessity.
There are three primary constructs of my professional life which, although in all cases
involving the energies and contributions of others, nevertheless have been prime and determining in
my own life. These constructs are King Crimson, Guitar Craft and Discipline Global Mobile.
Throughout the period 1969 - 1984, whenever Crimson was active my involvement was total.
Since 1984 I have not been a "public figure", a role I had formerly considered to be an important part
of my necessary work and personal practice. The next seven year period, 1984-91, was dedicated to
Guitar Craft. The period 1991-98 has been one of radical reconstruction, including almost seven
years of dispute between my former managers and two of the largest music groups in the world; the
creation of DGM; the reincarnation of King Crimson; and the continuing life of Guitar Craft.
So, whereas formerly my responsibility was to one main construct, currently all three feed
upon me and exert their own ongoing demands.
Conventionally, independent companies are underfinanced. We honour this convention.
Commonly, when an independent company is successful its owner sells out to a major. The major
then uses the apparently-independent label as a front, luring young artists into mainstream control
with its attendant common trading practices. Commonly, the former owner has by now become
independently wealthy.
An historic problem for independent labels is that their independent distributor (the
organisation which puts records into shops) goes bankrupt. This causes appalling knock-on problems
and difficulties for the smaller people and artists associated with the distributor. This befell DGM in
the US in October 1997 when Alliance defaulted, by our calculation, on approximately $459,000
outstanding to DGM.
A record company's value is its ownership of recording copyrights. DGM refuses to own the
copyrights of its artists which, regardless of its status as a "common practice", I regard as a criminal
act. Therefore DGM has nothing to sell. In this sense, DGM can never be sold.

II

Discipline is seeking an informed and engaged audience for our artists and music.
I conceptualise the music industry as working on three levels (which also have three internal
divisions):
1. First division: access directly to the mainstream. This means, in DGM terms, that our
releases are stocked and available in shops.
This is the world of popular and mass cultures. Popular culture is where our poets, authors
and singers call on the highest part in all of us, where we are the same person.
Mass culture is where our artists tell us what we want to hear, for money. This is a domain of
consensual deceit, is enormously seductive and immensely powerful.
2. Second division: this provides indirect access to the mainstream, via a public which
has its eyes and ears open. This constituency is addressed DGM mail order.
It is the world of the professional, rather than the popular, artist; of the enthusiast rather than
the fan. Enthusiast appraisal is personal, but informed. The fan's view is governed by like and dislike,
by attraction and aversion. The fan's assessment is subjective.
3. Third division: access to a specialised and informed audience. This is the likely world
of the connoisseur, where the artist relies upon the critical judgement of an expert audience. For the
artist, this is the domain of musical R&D. Performances will be mostly in small spaces and venues,
with record sales to match.
The specialised nature of third division music, artist and audience place all three outside the
mainstream. The small sales of CDs in this division may not even justify release on a general mail
order catalogue.
This is the operating niche for the DGM Collectors’ Club.

III

The public in each of the divisions has its own expectations and demands. My expectation as
record buyer for a DGM (or any) record bought from a Virgin Megastore, in sonics and packaging, is
"professional" at least. Also for mail order. In a bootleg outlet, whether under the counter or through
discreet mail order, I anticipate amateur art and sonics (unless the bootleg comes recently from
Japan).
Many of DGM's natural audience, as reflected in the Elephant Talk internet newsletter, my
large personal correspondence over many years, and letters to DGM, belong naturally to the third
division.
Please note ongoing comments on bootlegging, and recent postings about recordings of
ProjeKct One & Two shows. There is not much complaint about the dismal sound quality and feeble
artwork. If DGM released two CDs from Ronnie Scott's in Birmingham at the quality of the currently
available wretched volumes, we would be deluged with complaints.
Why this radical disparity in expectations?
We reasonably expect from a professional record company records of "professional" quality.
Here the irony and the paradox: if DGM is unable to meet "professional" standards with its releases, it
can't release them. So, we can't compete with bootleggers. This has the effect of limiting our
catalogue to records where we are able to meet our own high standards (in some cases where we set
the industry standard).
In the DGM archive series, "Epitaph" took four months of painstaking sonic editing and
scrapbook assembling. "The Night Watch" is another labour of love, with specially commissioned
artwork from Pam Crook, an established artist. The sleeve and notes, again, are an extended
commitment. "Absent Lovers", also the same. In 1992 "The Great Deceiver" took four months to
prepare. Now this has reverted to DGM from Virgin, and is out of print, we have to choose whether to
reprint in its existing format or to remix / re-present in a Second Edition.
None of this work is economically justifiable by the normative commercial standards and
practices of the record industry.
A new release of a Soundscape album, of less appeal than classic King Crimson, requires
enormous listening and sifting; e.g. assessing 50 performances (as on the G3 tour of North America)
over a two month period. Editing, mastering and commissioning original artwork follows. Although
Soundscapes have not yet found a mainstream audience, some of the new artists joining DGM aren't
even as well known as Soundscapes.
We are able to place our established artists in stores, and provide our becoming-established
artists with reliable mail order distribution. But we have been unable to address the audience which
bootleggers supply, this in two main areas:

1. Speedy releases of current musicking and live performance.

2. Rare items of classic / historic live performance.

This is not because the RF / DGM archives are lacking in material from current or classic
work - shelves groan with four months of Frippertronic reels from 1979 alone, 8-track tapes from
1982 Crimson, every performance by ProjeKct Two and ProjeKct One (and unreleasable goodies,
like Peter Gabriel croaking an early morning demo into a cassette for me to learn a song for his first
album) - but because we have not been prepared to compromise our standards in sound or
packaging.
The effect of this has been to:

1. Distance us from our natural audience: the audience whose primary concern is the
spirit of the music and its performance; secondarily the sonics; and thirdly, its presentation (this is my
sense, based partly on viewing the broad range of commentary and suggestions to DGM).
2. Limit DGM to around 6 - 12 releases a year.
DGM is a definitive example of an ideal third division record company. Our second division is
very good, and our mailing list growing steadily. Our first division is effective and successful for first
division artists, that is, King Crimson.
So, from the third division we address all three divisions.
But right now we have a powerful download of music underway, and available, which we
need to release: this to honour DGM's first declared business aim - to help bring music into the world
which would otherwise be unlikely to do so, or under conditions prejudicial to the music and / or
musicians.
The DGM Collectors’ Club is a proposal to meet this perceived need, but is dependent upon
support from the listening community.
DGM Collectors' Club
PO Box 1718,
SALISBURY,
Wiltshire, SP5 5ER
(44)722 781042: fax
[email protected]
July 21, 1998

The End.

So what are your opinions on this organisation ?