With the potential legal problems now out of the way, we’ve received confirmation that No-Man’s early albums will be reissued by One Little Indian in the Spring of 2004.
The last fortnight’s strongly worded emails and threatening phone calls have given way to something more constructive and plans are finally underway to make the ideas a reality.
This, along with finalising the vinyl issue of ‘Together We’re Stranger’ and launching more archive titles on Burning Shed has temporarily taken the place of actually making some music, and as a result, I’m feeling pretty restless.
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With the diaries, it’s often difficult to know how much detail to go into.
Unlike the excellent, idiosyncratic and highly readable Roy Harper sleeve notes, I’ve always avoided any mentions of my personal life, partly to protect the privacy of those close to me and partly to keep something of myself secret, although as Harper’s musings eloquently testify, the personal and the psychological make-up of the artist is frequently the trigger for the art.
Robert Fripp’s diaries on the other hand, have always fearlessly sought to expose the corruption and ‘industry’ that surrounds the creation of such an essentially abstract and magical thing as music. His is a more detailed and dry analysis of the mechanism of the music business and the tedium of the processes that lead to ‘the moment’.
As somebody already involved in the mundane, day to day frustrations of what serves as a backdrop to creativity, it’s hard to know whether this information in some way tarnishes the enjoyment of the average listener, or whether it serves to make ‘the moment’ even more special.
For me, in a creative sense, I’ve always been ‘living on the edge of my nerves’ and always been capable of summoning something out of nothing.
Regardless of the details of production or the contracts that bind the product, there’s a side of me that still needs the frequent release of expression through music. When that stops being the case, hopefully that’s also when I bow out gracefully and take up undertaking for a living.
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‘every time you try to speak, more life gets in the way’