Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Watching Earthworks from 24 years ago makes me think about the changing shape of the performer/audience relationship. To illustrate: in my quick 50-year spin through progressive rock and jazz, my colleagues and I used to begin a recording with some ill-defined sense of control over the performance. There might be a second take in the studio if you didn’t like the first. The music was laboured over until deemed ‘ready’ by someone, in some way, for presentation to the public.
But this control was not fiercely defended because nowhere did it seem to be under attack. Writing, practicing, rehearsing, overdubs, editing and studio manipulation - the covert activities on the path to the ‘finished’ product - were cut away and discarded as the shavings on the carpenter’s floor. We gave you only the polished ‘best front’.
One new, socially-mediated facet of modern life, however, is the progressive blurring of the distinction between the private and the public. Within that context, interest in the creative process appears at times to equal or surpass interest in the creative product.
The chippings from the sculptor’s chisel and the shavings on the carpenter’s workshop floor may be assembled and analysed to find which way the blade went and on what tool the blade was mounted. The preliminary sketch restored from the trash to help document the creative process takes on the patina of the oracle. Here, it seems to say, is a clue - perhaps even a key - to some sort of ineffable truth. Here is what the creator really meant to say, not what she actually said. Here is what she actually did, not what she said she did. Becoming in this way integral to the artefact’s interpretation, such scribblings, scrabblings and rejections attract a level of analytic interest that sometimes exceeds interest in the artefact itself.
Seldom is the ‘finished’ artefact afforded the consideration of the Commentariat without recourse to contemporary commentary or contextual positioning drawn from access to the ruminations and rejections of the creator, irrespective of whether her observations are provided willingly and knowingly. The voyeurism that seeks more than the original artistic gesture runs the risk of obscuring rather than revealing the nature of the artwork itself.
Needless to say, this performance from Santiago de Chile has not been fiddled with. Not much voyeurism possible here. You have only the uncontextualized performance. Perfect it certainly isn’t; spirited it certainly is. Perfection is not much sought after in Earthworks or the Pete Roth Trio. Vitality, commitment and spirit most certainly are!
#drummer #yes #drums #kingcrimson #music #drumming #jazz #groove #billbruford #livemusic #musicimprovisation #tamadrums #paistecymbals
Watching Earthworks from 24 years ago makes me think about the changing shape of the performer/audience relationship. To illustrate: in my quick 50-year spin through progressive rock and jazz, my colleagues and I used to begin a recording with some ill-defined sense of control over the performance. There might be a second take in the studio if you didn’t like the first. The music was laboured over until deemed ‘ready’ by someone, in some way, for presentation to the public.
But this control was not fiercely defended because nowhere did it seem to be under attack. Writing, practicing, rehearsing, overdubs, editing and studio manipulation - the covert activities on the path to the ‘finished’ product - were cut away and discarded as the shavings on the carpenter’s floor. We gave you only the polished ‘best front’.
One new, socially-mediated facet of modern life, however, is the progressive blurring of the distinction between the private and the public. Within that context, interest in the creative process appears at times to equal or surpass interest in the creative product.
The chippings from the sculptor’s chisel and the shavings on the carpenter’s workshop floor may be assembled and analysed to find which way the blade went and on what tool the blade was mounted. The preliminary sketch restored from the trash to help document the creative process takes on the patina of the oracle. Here, it seems to say, is a clue - perhaps even a key - to some sort of ineffable truth. Here is what the creator really meant to say, not what she actually said. Here is what she actually did, not what she said she did. Becoming in this way integral to the artefact’s interpretation, such scribblings, scrabblings and rejections attract a level of analytic interest that sometimes exceeds interest in the artefact itself.
Seldom is the ‘finished’ artefact afforded the consideration of the Commentariat without recourse to contemporary commentary or contextual positioning drawn from access to the ruminations and rejections of the creator, irrespective of whether her observations are provided willingly and knowingly. The voyeurism that seeks more than the original artistic gesture runs the risk of obscuring rather than revealing the nature of the artwork itself.
Needless to say, this performance from Santiago de Chile has not been fiddled with. Not much voyeurism possible here. You have only the uncontextualized performance. Perfect it certainly isn’t; spirited it certainly is. Perfection is not much sought after in Earthworks or the Pete Roth Trio. Vitality, commitment and spirit most certainly are!
#drummer #yes #drums #kingcrimson #music #drumming #jazz #groove #billbruford #livemusic #musicimprovisation #tamadrums #paistecymbals
