Andy Gill (New Musical Express, October 3rd. 1981 reviewing the Discipline album): ‘It’s all technically tight and ship shape, as you’d expect, and will no doubt be a source of some excitement for those who get into a lather over lightfingered fretboard work and similar musicianly virtues. It’s also incredibly dull and pointless, like a film that sacrifices plot and characterisation for flashy special effects and stunts. No real risks are taken, and not an ounce of authentic joy or anger cruises its pedantic grooves.’

Andy is the author of an all-time favourite reviewer-comment: ‘music is too important to be left to musicians’ (2000).

When a society moves on, even by one generation, and looks back with a measure of maturity & distance, how terrifying to see how thinking & agenda under discussion were being directed & shaped by our media & info channels. This is only one small example, within my own domain; one where people do not die as a result of egotistical, witless commentary and careless judgements made by characters pretending to an authority which, to be authentic, requires generosity of spirit, in addition to breadth of knowledge, wide experience & insight. It strikes me that both these writers dislike musicians. I wonder why that might be.

From Robert Fripp’s diary.