PAINTING WITH GUITAR HAS ADRIAN BELEW GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE PHRASE ONE MAN SHOW!

Adrian Belew brings his art and music together in one place, The World Cafe Live. Photo by Lynn Vala

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  Again, the Friday Flashback reaches deep into our available archives to bring you a groundbreaking review.  There is a sordid history behind this one which will explain some of the mindset when this was composed.  You see, yours truly was involved in a global controversy because when I first started this column thousands of years ago, I used artist websites as a source of information.  I had been scouring both the website journals/blogs of Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, Tony Levin, Trey Gunn and Bill Bruford (pertinent to this story and King Crimson).  On Belew’s site I gleaned some information.  On Fripp’s site, I gleaned some contradicting information.  Not knowing which was the truth, I presented what I believed was the truth.  Belew became immediately incensed and called me out on the former PREX blog.  I dismissed it as an artist not wanting to be portrayed as “the bad guy”.

Turns out, Belew was correct.

I was offered the truth by Belew’s power trio bassist Julie Slick’s mom Robin.  A respected author in her own right.  I declined.  I had been caught in the crossfire enough and I will forever go down in history as the patsy who took the fall and reported the end of King Crimson.  NOT my proudest moment, and a tremendous personal loss to me.  But as it turns out, Fripp would go on shortly thereafter to retire from public music performance as Bruford had done shortly after the release of his autobiography.

One more tragic note:  There were literally thousands of photographs taken for this show.  Unfortunately, due to the crash of an IBM machine (yeah, fuck you Bill Gates) those photos were lost forever.  They were great shots as well.  One is utilized in the header to this blog and I will not repeat it here.

Also, this was originally presented as four parts (a photo blog) on PREX and a two part blog on the rest of the syndication.  It is going to be condensed into one humongous blog here because, well, I can!  This was the show where I apologized to Belew afterward and I made up for my transgression by reviewing his previously released e disc, as well as the live DVD of the power trio show and Julie Slick’s debut CD.  For the whole story, read on…