QUESTION about King Crimson's no video policy

cstack3 wrote: ... I think that Fripp's "no photos, no videos" policy is on the money.  His recording, played before the show in Chicago, had him encouraging us to use our memories and senses, rather than recording technology, to keep the concert memory fresh. ...

As should be.

An experience is not something that you need to have a recording of. Like time with your favorite person, and memory!

cstack3 wrote: ... The Chicago show did require some concentration in order to hear all the nuances of the percussion and instrumental passages....

I'm positive that it was the same in all the other shows. The Seattle show had my ol'e roomie saying how any other music sounded so bland by comparison!

cstack3 wrote: ... As far as concert DVDs....my guess is that something will show up by DGM.  Let's wait and see, Fripp is pretty savvy about the new marketing techniques for rock.  Porcupine Tree is one band that has done very well with the concert DVD model, and he has surely learned much from his interactions with that band.

There are things that need a DVD. Mostly because no one else will ever have any idea of what it is that you can experience, and find out what it means to so many of us. The folks in Montana and Dakotas, can not see a show by KC, and will never have that pleasure, and what we, in a way very ellitist btw, are saying is that ... too bad ... I got to experience it and you didn't. But a DVD, at that point would be as good as a CD for me, although I do not exactly need the visual to keep me going, specially when the camera work and directing is so bad and ridiculous, and a total waste of the music and its special moments! Almost everyone of those folks doing these shows, do not know what "directing" is, and will lose special moments, because they do not know the music, and switch visual to someone else, when another person is actually doing a solo. This happened, for example with Gong, when one of the camera folks was on Daevid, and he played up to it, and as soon as he got started the camera light went off and to someone else, taking the focus off the words and his expressions ... what a f**king waste! And I would have fired that director on the spot! And worse ... they had no idea how to film Magma!

Other examples:

There are other moments ... when you see something ... and it is good ... but it's missing a spark. This was the case with Nektar's DVD ... and I was sad, because I saw them in their glory days, and the energy and love for it was gone. It felt like it had to be done for a new audience, or a bunch of geriatric hippies left over ... and by the end, I was not enjoying it.

GONG dvd's are frustrating to the max ... horribly photographed and no sense of what the music is about anyway! I've always told Johnny Green (Gas) to stop hiring morons and get someone serious and I would do it for free ... get me on the plane ... but that lousy directing concept from MTV has been dead for 30 years!

Zappa ... 3 DVD's. Exhilerating, because you know the guy is very good conductor with his band and he knows what he is doing ... and some musicians are giving it back to him! But I bet he told some of the camera folks that you can't move beyond that spot and such, to prevent distractions that shouldn't be there!

KC ... I probably would have done this, as I would a serious concert by an orchestra. But, knowing the music has to be a serious requirement by the camera folks and director, and this is where things fail 99/100 times. A camera, nowadays, has enough lens capability to make closeups and not be intimidating or abusive, and these could be used to perfection to examine the ability of some of the folks in the band. The problem is, that you will have to , to split the screen so you can see 6 folks soloing together! Now ... I LIKE THAT CHALLENGE! Up yours Marty!

Hammill/VdGG ... Probably the least important grouping to create a DVD on, but a design of the concept of the shoot would be important without the MTV sequence of shots to help Peter bring out the band, and the band to bring out Peter. And his solo moments, on piano, for example, need to be shot very tight, carefully and with total respect, by not switching shots and distracting it from the piece itself.

all in all, ELP would have been a nice shoot for a DVD, except that they wasted it. The musicianship is a natural for the camera, except that it was destroyed by bad directing and lousy concept design. Genesis, would have been great during the costume days, but MTV was still asleep in those days, and we had not learned anything from Betamax and Deep Throat, yet!