Love That Squerd
(An insider's account of Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft seminar)

Sunday, February 9:
"To be honest, I wasn't real surprised about getting in," wrote Tom Griesgraber -- of the San Diego-based sonic jazz band Agent 22 - in his email to me. Griesgraber had just been accepted into Robert Fripp's (King Crimson) renowned guitar seminar called Guitar Craft.
"I know that sounds horribly cocky, but the course said it was open to all levels of experience and the reality is, I've spent a lot of time studying music. . . ."
Guitar Craft costs $1050.00, which includes meals, board, and classes for six days.
"The seminar runs from February 11 to the 17th at some ranch outside of Santa Barbara," continued Griesgraber. "They won't give driving directions yet. It's all a bit hush. They said to bring a sleeping bag, warm, loose clothes, and rubber or plastic sandals. They described accommodations as, 'Adequate, but not necessarily comfortable.'"
       Peculiar rumors of the goings-on at Guitar Craft (GC) have surrounded Fripp's seminars for years. Fripp is often described as a strange and intense person.
       "I heard students were only given one bowl of oatmeal a day," said Griesgraber in his letter, "and that they distribute ripe fruit to the audiences at shows, and they only let you sleep four hours a day. I also heard about sitting alone in a room with Fripp while he silently stares at you."
Applications to the seminar were received, via email, by a pair of GC registrars who forwarded them to Robert Fripp.
       "I addressed the application to 'Mister Fripp,' detailed my guitar background, dropped the names of the California Guitar Trio guys, and voila."
       The California Guitar Trio is a Los Angeles-based progressive, acoustic guitar trio. Griesgraber knows them from having opened several of their shows. All three members of CGT (Bert Lams, Hideyo Moriya, and Paul Richards) are high-level graduates of Guitar Craft, having attended Fripp's advanced seminars at his manor in the British countryside.
       "I heard about Guitar Craft from them," said Griesgraber. "Anyway, The GC people say not to play your guitar for a week before the program starts. So I better get my playing time in now. I'll call you when I get back."

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Monday, February 18:
       "The first bit of good news," says Griesgraber in the email he sent after he completed the Guitar Craft seminar, "was that the one-bowl-of-oatmeal-a-day thing seemed to be a myth. "We did, however, only get vegetarian food. I ended up in a cabin full of fifteen guys in bunk beds. On the first night, Fripp instructed us to 'Stay in the program,' predicting that we'd be annoyed by the living arrangements. Between the snoring and the late night aromas caused by fifteen non-vegetarians living on beets, oatmeal, and beans, I thought seriously about sleeping in my car on a few nights."
       The seminar was held at St. Vincent De Paul -- a Catholic ranch for underprivileged children in the mountains outside of Santa Barbara. Two large buildings were used as a dining hall and meeting area and four smaller cabins were for sleeping. The cabins were heated, the meeting room and dining hall were not.        "I was freezing the whole time," says Griesgraber. "There was about a half mile hike to the showers along an unlit, poorly paved road. I got into the habit of showering at midnight just to make sure I could get hot water."
       Griesgraber notes that there were about sixty guitarists from all over North America in attendance, most of whom were male. There were only about nine female students.
       "The whole thing was an intense mix of music and awareness and discipline training," Griesgraber recounts. "We had to get up at 6:15 every morning for what Fripp called, a Sitting. Fripp led us through it one afternoon. It was exactly thirty minutes of silence. He sat on the floor cross-legged and described how he was tracing his awareness through all the major parts of his body. He cautioned not to focus on organs, just flesh and bone. I think this is probably where the story about him just staring at you silently in a room came from.
       "We did it every morning in silence. It also happened randomly at dinner. The whole group might be sitting in the dining hall eating away, when you'd notice things getting quiet. A look up at Fripp (who sat at his own table) would show him not eating and staring quietly out at the room. That was the cue, I guess, and we would all stop eating and quiet down -- usually for exactly thirty minutes. It was so quiet that if you so much as swallowed, it seemed to reverberate around the room.
       "What was the food like?" I ask.
       "Fripp coined a term for Guitar Craft food. It's called "Squerd." He actually posted a page-long definition of it."

Guitar Craft Definition of Squerd: "A category of food found on many, if not all, Guitar Craft courses.
[It] commonly takes the form of a glutinous mass with uniform color and consistency, of indeterminate and
indeterminable origins.
There are currently two categories of squerd: savoury and dessert.
The colours of 'savoury squerd' tend toward brown and green, indicating the healthy origins of the fundamental
ingredients: these must be vegetable. Sometimes, however, the colors are brighter; for example, orange (swede)
or scarlet-purple (beetroot). These more demonstrative colours may sometimes be compromised by the inclusion
of less exciting vegetables, colorwise, in the composite-squerd conglutination. In which case, the default colour
tends towards brown. . . . One is not sure that [dessert squerd] is any good for us at all. But by the time [it] has
been served, usually few care."
-RF

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     "Fripp's technique is amazing," says Griesgraber. "He developed a tuning he calls 'New Standard Tuning.' It is used by Guitar Craft, California Guitar Trio, and all Crafties everywhere. . . It's very different from standard tuning, or as he calls it 'Old Standard Tuning.'
     "He had about four pages of writing on the dining room wall just describing how to pick. I think it was a reprint of an old magazine article. [Fripp used to write a column for Guitar Player magazine]. The gist was, you start with your hand straight out . . . . then bend all four fingers back from the second knuckle till the tips are parallel to the arm. The thumb comes straight down onto the pick, with its knuckle flat. The pick is essentially held by the thumb and the entire first section of the first finger (not just the tip of the first finger as is probably most common).
     "He doesn't even call picking 'down' and 'up,' but rather 'release' and 'return.' The idea being, you let gravity drop your wrist to pick. The 'up' pick is simply bringing your wrist back to its normal position (return). Very efficient. Very effortless. Very Fripp."
Sometimes Fripp and the other instructors led the Crafties through an exercise they called "circulations": All sixty or so guitarists sat in a circle around the room and played one randomly picked note then passed it from player to player around the room.
       "It sounds simple, but the effect is unlike anything I've heard," says Griesgraber.
       Toward the end of the course, Fripp randomly set up groups of two to eight guitar players. Each group had to compose a piece and perform it that night.
       "At lunch, he cautioned us that, in the past, audiences had been equipped with over-ripe fruit. 'Great,' I thought, 'looks like that rumor is dead on.'
       "At 9:00pm we started the show. Sure enough, heckling from the veteran students, instructors, and staff was in full swing. It started with them removing a single chair from our stage setup. Just before my group started, somebody turned on a metronome near my feet. It totally unnerved me. Our piece was in ¾ time and the metronome was in 4/4.
       "After four pretty serious groups and a ton of tension in the air, the fifth group set up and this hefty guy announced their band by saying, 'We're Blast O' Crap. This song is called, 'Here Comes My Ass.'"
       "The place lost it. I could never have imagined seeing Fripp laugh so hard. It totally broke down all the tension of the evening. From that point on, the hecklers were in full swing: They threw peanuts all over the place, set off alarm clocks, and shined flashlights on [the musicians'] hands and faces . . . ."
       Toward the end of the seminar, Fripp allowed each of the Crafties to meet with him individually, for ten minutes.
       "I jumped at the chance," declares Griesgraber. "I went to his little cabin, without a guitar, and asked about the music business. Fripp said being a professional musician sucks and never stops sucking. . . . He's had a hard time with a big lawsuit and music critics have been rough on him. . . . Paul Richards [California Guitar Trio] told me about reviews with phrases like, 'Who killed Bobby Fripp's puppy' and another that described Fripp as a 'Fly that's been buzzing around the music industry for years.'"
       Paul Richards, who was on the staff at the Santa Barbara Guitar Craft, has an online diary about this recent seminar. [http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/diary-PaulRichards.shtml]. I asked Richards how the various levels of Guitar Craft are determined.
"The whole level thing is somewhat ambiguous," he answered. "The level one and level two courses are usually a couple of weeks long. When I took level three in 1987, it lasted three months - and almost a year for level four. The year-long level four, which I attended at Fripp's home, cost 3000 dollars. . . . I think room and board was another 2000 dollars.
My level five was, for the most part, touring with Robert Fripp's League of Crafty Guitarists. We did a show at the Bacchanal in 1988. In fact, it was a critic at the San Diego Reader who wrote that quote about Robert being a fly buzzing around the music industry . . . . I don't remember who wrote it, but he must have had a bone to pick with Robert because he was pretty harsh."

EJD
7/02