Xmas meant dazzling presents, to me, as a kid, in the 1960s, just as it meant snow and ancient (and not-so ancient) music and pretty lights and the annual return of cartoons I couldn’t otherwise watch. It also meant, for the last couple of weeks of December, movies at the Cinema, designed to snare the Xmas audience. This screenplay (written in 2002 after I had already sold the option on another script, but right before the funding-system for indie films, in Germany, sort of collapsed in the wake of 9/11) is my idea of the kind of film I think should have been a big hit in ’69 or ’89 or 2001. It’s topical Sci Fi Blaxpoitation with an “R” rating: what’s not to like? And, Lo: it is actually, and not merely allegorically speaking, absolutely pertinent today; “Torn from Today’s Headlines!” could have been a tag line from the vintage trailer that should have been. Sit back with your bulging Xmas insides and pie-glossed grimace… sink into the worn velour seats of the fancy deco cinema of your mind as the lights go down…
THE IMPERIALIST 
This has got franchise written all over it, at least a trilogy. For some reason it got me wondering if there’s ever been a film produced of a sequel screenplay to an unproduced part I.
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A) That’s what I fookin thought when I wrote it! laugh and B.) that question rings a bell in the nether-reaches of my film-script-collecting mind…!
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BTW: re: KC: The Jakko version of Starless has, over the years, just about weaned me from the Wetton version… Wetton who betrayed me by founding Asia and singing “Heat of the Moment”! Laugh. Though Wetton’s voice was so eerily perfect for it before the retroactive Top 40 taint…
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I find Jakko to be suitable for much of the older catalog, including Islands and Starless with the caveat of his occasional lack of restraint. There’s some non-lyrical vocalizing he does during the instrumental section that’s unforgivable beyond cashing in on the heat of the moment.
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Non-lyrical vocalizing only works in the transitional passage of “A Day in the Life” or in the fun part of “The Great Gig in the Sky” and *possibly* in “Sound and Vision”… otherwise that’s the kind of shit, from among the crypto-Vegassy traditions of Dino Rock, we couldn’t wait to escape when the ’70s petered out! But I’m starting to warm to him… Belew’s voice was good in the “Eyes Widen Open” period but often too cartoony, mebbe. Not that I’m enough of a KC aficionado, any more, to talk like this without a twinge of guilt! Laugh. It’s been years since I even checked out Fripp’s webpage (plus I’m not sure that his Wife’s contributions to the updated legend aren’t wearing thin)…
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You’ve let the worms loose here.
Preface: two kinds of fan: those who reserve the right to nitpick the shit out of what they love and those who police others for daring to pick even the tiniest speck of shit. Both, I suppose demonstrate the obsession that lends justification to the term ‘fan’. It’s just a matter of where to place perfection: either via criticism wherever it’s absent, or via the demand to insist upon the declaration that you wouldn’t change a thing or be quiet about it.
My brother fostered in me a healthy dose of the former vis a vis criticism of the live Belew in how he often detracted from KC’s stage potential with his proud-of-himself antics. Yet I say this as someone who both appreciated most of Belew’s solo work as well as Fripp’s reconvening the group in 2008 in what turned out to be a one-off, featuring for the first time Gavin Harrison (itself a revelation) for a largely lyric-free set list. It was if the venal leader had under clever pretext put a muzzle on the front man complex for the sake of something greater, which itself reminds me how it would seem he brought together the double trio for the supplementary ulterior reason of eventually reforming with Mastelotto and Gunn in place of the previous rhythm section (which maybe he had felt reached a wall).
With the subsequent revelation that Fripp had tried to get Sylvian to be his double trio man, it would seem he really wanted the Sylvian/Fripp lineup to be the new KC. A recurring theme from the end of the eighties lineup, through the nineties, and into the aughts was the fact that Belew had repeatedly attempted to elevate his financial interest in the various configurations, which Fripp had, and has to-date insisted be, instead, band as members of equal standing.
The irony is that last fact would result in a self-inflicted butt-hurt Belew, when Fripp decided to triple down on the two drummer lineup from that ’08 one-off, making the band so large he probably knew that Ade’s wife/manager would view the tour figures divided by seven as an affront to Ade’s genius, and therefore Belew would be forced to balk (it’s only balk:-).
Long story short: Fripp and Belew are a passive-aggressive pair in perfect standing, but I’ll go with the founder with a vision every time, rather than the guy who let go to his head his fan base’s attitude about his under-appreciated legacy to music. As to your last point about what might be wearing thin (don’t suppose you intended a pun there?): only to extent that you pay attention to it. Or, put another way, take it (when you can) or leave it (when you can’t). I will say that his present contentment appears to be genuine.
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There’s a jiggling rich sack of golden insights for me to drag home, there, D, and I super-heartedly agree with every point, especially on the matter of Ade, great as he often was (singing about the penis tip of a fly… was that the lyric?… in the Eyes Wide Open show, was his pointy zenith, for me). The aesthetics of Belew-as-seasoning reminds me of Rosmarin in the old school kebab bread: I couldn’t get enough of it from ’90-’91 but now the mere thought still makes me a wee queasy. Too many bendy notes in foghorn tones. Too much Joker gurning. And of COURSE you go with Fripp for Vision. When I first fell really hard for KC it was the late ’70s, I bought all the LPs secondhand and the surprisingly Heavy (yet un-macho) Riffs, wielded with Anal Book Worm Poise, felt like a brainy dweeby call to battle: I wanted to suit up and have at it. Ladies of the Road! I Talk to the Wind! That demographic transition from “rock” and “stadium rock” into smarter, more ambiguous stuff (which wasn’t above appropriation, pastiche and collage) was all about the kind of nuanced-worlds-straddling I’ve been into since and find less and less of among the people just rushing, now, to Sell Out and do little else. I didn’t want to be rich-and-famous when I was 17 & 18, I wanted to be a super specific kind of un-corny Cool that I could admire in myself. I STILL want that and conversations like these convince me I haven’t lost the yen. And for that I thank you!
(sending you a box of Marron Glacéd Fishbones: check your letterbox from a distance)
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(I open worm-cans like peanut cans)
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Re: Sylvian: that’s another can…! I always had a thing for much of Mick Karn’s bass-work, though. But I felt Duran Duran was the Evil Mirror Image of Japan in which Japan became honest about its motivations and pretensions. Bowie has a lot to answer for and I hope they aren’t too charmed by him, in Hell, to properly punish the fucker…
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There’s a solo record by Karn I love. Unfortunately I didn’t DISCover it so much as stumble upon its digital remains. So unlike in the bygone era when such things would be acquired and fetishized, I’ll probably never hear it again.
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Here is a track from my Karn crush album:
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(hilariously, perusing the comments attached to this video I found one of my own from 7 years ago; always an interesting sensation, like seeing the back of your head in a mirror)
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