The King Crimson studio album poll

Now I'm confused. I just read that when Fripp re-released USA as part of the 30th/40th Anniversary editions, since all the performances bar one had been from Asbury Park, he just decided to add "Fracture" and "Starless" from that show to the reissue and replace said performance ("Schizoid Man") to make it a complete Asbury Park show. So what's different about it from the Collectors Club edition you heard, Sparkle Motion? The mixes? The Presence of Eddie Jobson?

I've always wondered how Eddie Jobson overdubbed his parts on USA. I mean, it's a live album.

IIRC David Cross originally played on the USA album, but was overdubbed by Jobson due to a record company issue. You see this on a few 70's and 80's-era live albums where one performer is under a different contract and has to be overdubbed.

My instinct tells me that can't be true, as Cross is all over the record. But then, w/o looking at my vinyl, I can't remember whether he's credited as a full member or as an additional performer.

To add to the confusion, I just dl'd the USA 30th Anniversary edition to hear the complete Asbury Park concert and..."Easy Money" still fades out.

Yeah, I've been doing some research and it looks like Cross does appear on a few of the tracks. Now I'm not really sure what happened - maybe Fripp felt like his playing was substandard on the others? Perhaps it wasn't recorded well? Not sure where I heard the record company thing but it seemed plausible as I have a few other live albums on which this happens.

I haven't done a proper A/B comparison between USA and the Asbury Park KCCC release...but the track "Asbury Park" sounds substantially different. For years my copy of USA was a vinyl rip bootleg, well before the 30th Anniversary releases (which RF relented to just putting USA & Earthbound out as they had been originally released, Easy Money fadeout and all). The sound on that boot was decent, but the 30th Anniversary edition was cleaned up to the point where Cross' playing was more pronounced--this is the version I included on V.3 of the comp set.
The newer one is all the more exposed, I don't know if it's a matter of mixing, or editing, or both. Jobson only appears on USA on 3 tracks: LTIA II, Schizoid Man, and Lament. In any event I can say that the sound is killer on the Asbury Park complete show, and the band is incredibly tight. It's really a shame they didn't make more music after Red.

Wow, this new Lizard is actually pretty good

I had not previously heard ANY of that guitar in "Indoor Games" and I've heard the album like 20 times

They really did an awesome job with this

Just picked up the David Cross solo album "Exiles" (1997 I think...?) - it's actually kind of good. Not really what you'd expect from a violinist's solo album - it's actually quite heavy, with a good dose of Fripp and some other guitarists. It does have a remake of "Exiles" with Wetton, which is decent (but has some weird techno shit in it that doesn't really take), and has Pete Hammill on a couple of tracks. My first impression is that it's at least as good as anything Crimson released from the 90's on. Though there really isn't much of an "identity" here. Anyway just thought I'd let you guys know.

I don't remember much from it. I did listen to an earlier one from the 80s called Memos From Purgatory--it had some typical era-specific production touches, but wasn't bad overall.
You know, the Larks Tongues group are all still around--maybe they should give it another go...

Wetton has openly questioned whether he has the energy at 60 or whatever to play like that anymore. And Bruford sounds Fripp'd out.

Btw, was just reading these old pieces from the NME by Ian MacDonald in 1973 on Fripp's incorrigible sexual appetites (and apparently, prowess!). They have to be read to be believed -- and are kind of mind-blowing for anyone who's followed Fripp over the years and feels like they've pinned him down.

Fripp's incorrigible sexual appetites (and apparently, prowess!).

whaaaaaaa?!

doesn't he make a comment during one of the live albums like "a lot of lovely breasts in the club tonight" ?

"Ladies of the Road" was kind of about this

On the Denver live record mentioned upthread, Fripp introduces "Ladies of the Road" and wryly alludes to its subject matter -- when one of the band members hints at Fripp's contemporaneous exploits, Fripp's says simply: "This is a song of reminiscence."

He's always seemed so disinterested in lyrics that I figured he just put music to whatever words Sinfield, Palmer-James and Belew threw out there, regardless of subject matter. I knew he wasn't chaste in the early days of KC -- I read that he got treated for groupie-clap sometime in, uh, 1969? -- but "incorrigible sexual appetites" is a bit of a surprise.

xp -- well I'll be.

Well, you have to remember that 1969-1974 was THE time to form a progressive rock band if you were searching for groupies. I can only imagine how many of them followed ELP around in their prime!!

Like - even Steve Howe probably got some attention

this is cracking me up

This thread is about take a turn into pictures of Prog Beefcake, I can feel it

He's just always seemed like the kind of guy who managed to get out of his clothes once a year or less, and there were always tears afterward. Now I'm imagining the cops in Bredonborough getting nightly calls about the screams coming from Bobby 'n' Toyah's place.

Keep in mind he did hang around with Eno a lot, that might explain it

sexy helmet
http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/189c806224f8fbf1670775d07b45876e/1667766.jpg

There are some real "out of character" moments on the GG&F album too. I have no idea what the guy is really like. Even the people who write about meeting him all share wildly different stories about what he's like in person.

xpost Why do you think he hung around Eno? Surprised they didn't put out an album called "Sloppy Seconds."

cool sweatshirt
http://progressiverock.com/sites/default/files/images/fripp_and_eno1975.jpg?1305249257

"No Pussyfooting" was meant to be taken quiet literally

From Robert Fripp: The Sexual Athlete, by Ian MacDonald:

"What," I enquired, fully expecting a swift back-down, "was the best lay you ever had?"

Fripp stroked his chin, reflectively. "There are about four chicks involved in that – not, in this case, simultaneously. I have to admit. However, return with me if you will to my earliest days as a rock musician. I used to get complaints from Greg (Lake). Not directly, but I used to hear about them.

"You see, we shared this flat which was basically one room divided into two by a thin cardboard screen. It was, as you can imagine, not fit to live in. Anyway, Greg used to complain about the gasps and screams coming from my side of the partition and, I must admit, his women used to get on my nerves too. No comment on Gregory, just his women – but I decided to move out.

"The ensuing period of my homelessness in 1969 was one of the most rewarding of my life. I was continually thrown on the mercies and generosities of tender maidens. Oh those lovely situations. It was quite awful in one way – but quite beautiful in another."

...

"Of course, when one is young one has all these delusions of being the great stud and one is not interested in a harmonious relationship of giving and taking. But, I'm happy to say, those days for me are now long past and I have spent many fulfiling hours, even on this very lawn upon which I now recline, not only copulating but involved in various other activities.

"In fact I was lying here naked one day, a young lady in attendance, when my next-door neighbour, the chairman of the Rural District Council, popped his head over yonder hedge to inform me that I had Dutch Elm Disease."

"Of course, when one is young one has all these delusions of being the great stud and one is not interested in a harmonious relationship of giving and taking. But, I'm happy to say, those days for me are now long past and I have spent many fulfiling hours, even on this very lawn upon which I now recline, not only copulating but involved in various other activities.

"In fact I was lying here naked one day, a young lady in attendance, when my next-door neighbour, the chairman of the Rural District Council, popped his head over yonder hedge to inform me that I had Dutch Elm Disease.

"But America is the place for numbers really. We've just done all the sunshine areas. Now sunshine, what ever it does to anyone else, has the most alarming repercussions within me. Things happen to my body. I undergo chemical changes.

"I find myself drooling, my tongue hanging out, my mouth snapping together involuntarily, twitchings – obsessive thoughts – the lewd imagination develops.

"In fact, I've never seen so many delightful young bodies, both quantity and quality, within such a short space of time as the last month in America. I was overwhelmed. By the end of the tour, I came back unfit for anything, completely exhausted on every level of my being. Oh! Oh!

"Nowadays I say to the rest of the lads: Take my name off the list, lads, put me on the reserve list – only to be called up in dire emergency. Then, after an afternoon in the sun by a swimming-pool with all these young bodies hanging in and out of bikinis, I say: Lads, you've got to put me back on the list. And I'll be called up to action. Oh! Oh! The battles that are fought throughout the Holiday-Inns of America! Delightful."

...

AND ENO? What of the man that the groupies of three continents have come to know as The Refreshing Experience?

"Yes," nods Fripp, his glazed expression returning. "We're both incorrigible womanizers, both wonderful examples of young Taurian virility. It may interest you to see a certain picture which will be the cover for our joint recording effort, The Transcendental Music Corporation, featuring us both in a state of undress.

"We were intending to have with us certain similarly unclad females – but, on reflection, decided that this was but a feeble excuse to gaze upon the works of the creator made manifest in the flesh.

"So we decided that it was a far nicer idea to have Eno and myself in the nude as a small way of saying thank you to those ladies who have done what they can in the past to enable us to develop as men – and, hopefully, as an invitation to all those ladies in the future who'd like to help us develop even further."

so many abundant lols in there i don't even know where to begin c/p-ing

nothing appeals to tender maidens like enduring homelessness!

oh! oh!

feel like interviewers should ask this question more often.
"What," I enquired, fully expecting a swift back-down, "was the best lay you ever had?"

that's the question they want to be asked, really

though he never really answers it, does he? how Frippian to take a simple question and drone on for twenty minutes without formulating an answer.

He'll take it all the way to Dutch elm disease, but won't answer the question! On one hand, kudos for protecting the identity of his most magnificent maiden; on the other hand, I don't even honestly want to know what's on the other hand.

Is he always this hilarious?

Yes! Well, he tries to be. Sometimes the dry wit is too dry.

how Frippian to take a simple question and drone on for twenty minutes without formulating an answer.

He loops a few notes then solos for a while -- interviewfrippertronics.

That dude is and always has been hilarious.

Not to derail Fripp sex talk but after listening to the new Lizard again I had to really up my rating for it quite a bit. Totally changes the album around and makes it so much more powerful and disorienting than the muddy original mixes. Major props to Wilson for bringing so much of it out.

If you haven't read it already you'll find Wilson's comments of interest:

"One of the first things I said to Robert when we started talking about the 5.1 mixes was that I wanted to do Lizard because for me, that’s always been an album that was too big for stereo to contain. There’s so much going on in that record.

I’ve always felt that if presented in the right way, I could make a case for this being the most experimental rock record ever made. It’s extraordinary what they’re doing on this album. In terms of fusing free-jazz with progressive rock for me there’s almost no parallel and yet it seems to an album that is overlooked by jazz fans and progressive rock fans alike.

When I was doing the Battle of Glass Tears, there were sections of that where the solos are all blowing free jazz and on the master tapes there are multiple takes. To try and figure out that spaghetti took a lot of focus and attention. That’s definitely the hardest remix I’ve done so far because the master tapes were in such a terrible state. There appeared to be no logic about where things were on the tape. I mean it was as though they were trying to make an album with 48 tracks but they only had 16. It was very ambitious.

That solo at the end of Lizard (Prince Rupert’s Lament) is just one take. There’s no edits in there. That’s 2 1/2 minutes and the notes he’s pulling out - the feeling, the sustain, the emotion. I mean if I do a solo I’ll do about 50 takes and edit the best bits together and it might sound good at the end. But just to step up like that, without any effects - just a bit of distortion and echo. Amazing."

it was as though they were trying to make an album with 48 tracks but they only had 16

Yeah, that's very much the feeling I got.

I mention in my review that it is still not clear if the band really knew what they were doing on this album, and in some ways I think Robert's comments do echo that. It seems like he just turned everyone loose and just went with whatever transpired. That's what makes it different than the other KC records, there's very little (if any) restraint on it at all. But I do think this new mix makes everything work much better. The way all the music comes crashing down on "Happy Family" is one of the most powerful moments of the album and it sounds so much bigger here.

that solo at the end of 'lizard' is really amazing, very much akin with noisier, shorter solos like on Baby's on Fire, which it was roughly contemporaneous with. really overlooked part of the crimson catalog. I hated this album the first time I heard it for some reason, now I think it and Islands are missed jewels.

Agreed on all counts. One other thing that occurred to me was KC going into the studio really digging Miles Davis, but instead trying to latch onto Bitches Brew they start unpacking Miles +19 & Sketches of Spain. Further down the road of course, Fripp ultimately wanted to do what jazz could do but 'strictly in a rock context', which makes all the sense in the world.

I'd also like to hear the rest of this 40th anniversary series and redo this poll, I suspect the results will be somewhat different.

I would like to hear the remasters of Lizard and Red and really all of these, which ones have the best extra stuff? The Crimson King package is nice, and has extra stuff, like a DVD I've never watched. Maybe I should watch it.

Anyway, here is an early MTV Martha Quinn clip also featuring MQ joking about how Robert Fripp sits down, and how funny it is: "watch what it looks like, when he sits down in this couch -- he looks like the incredible shrinking Robert Fripp"
and then finally lots of frippertronic news and then she said he was a guitar genius but his couch was too large for him. (It's toward the end of 6, beginning of 7 min if you want to skip the B52s, which you do not)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Wa3QJLkFQ

good for her, but does anyone really care about the charts anymore?

I mean CAKE had a #1 album in 2011, and it didn't even really sell that well

whoops, I posted that in the wrong thread

Okay, I just heard the Islands remaster - nowhere near as good as the Lizard one, still kinda lukewarm on it.

The interesting thing is that there is a bonus track which is basically a section of the "Larks 1" jam with some sax on it.

I'm gonna listen to this on my way home.

I decided that I will revise my S&BB review when the 40th edition comes out in a month or two - I was harsher on it than I remembered, and some of the bonus material seems great. Dunno if I disliked it so much because I found it boring or if I just thought they could do so much better.

I may post on Islands later tonight.

Prob don't have it in me to do the whole thing tonight. But dl'd the 40th Anniversary of Islands -- and after a few A/Bs of the two, the stereo remix of the title track absolutely ruins the hushed atmospherics of the original. Too much Mellotron, but more importantly noise gates on the cornet solos that all but eliminates the hissy, analog tape atmosphere in the earlier mix where you could hear players shifting in their seats. That said, I bet this sounds incredible in 5.1 surround sound.

essentially my view on that album is that it would have turned out better had they just not tried to write songs at all. Boz is basically useless. I like "Formentera Lady" but would rather just hear a 40 minute jazz session from these guys.

can't believe anyone would hate on SB&B.

My crimson introduction in the mid 80's was basically: the 80's records, then Court (I was like, "WTF"), and then SB&B, which was the total lynchpin of the entire enterprise to my 14 year old ears. Relistened the other day, i still think it is a better album than Red.