music

if memory serves me right i bought my first king crimson record on a bit of a whim.
it was a double album and it was cheap. 'a young person's guide to king crimson' was a compilation, a best of if you will, of king crimson. i don't think i had ever heard them, or of them. as i say it was cheap, it was a double and i was building my record collection, taking chances.
with this one i scored a big fat bull’s-eye.
as four sides of vinyl demonstrated there were many phases in the career of king crimson – the two constants were great music and robert fripp.
fripp’s guitar was very precise almost mathematical, it seared through the music. it was lovely. fripp was able to surround himself with quality musicians and together they created the unique sounds that were the various incarnations of king crimson.
i have never seen king crimson live. i have seen robert fripp live once when he toured with one of his, many, side projects: the league of gentlemen. it was at the famous marquee club. i was down the front. fripp was, as ever, perched on a stool, he was playing up a storm, his leg kicking out in time with the beat. several time he nearly caught me in the head. the other time i saw fripp was at a ‘strangegirls’ gig, featuring his wife, toyah. i wanted to go up to him and thank him for all the years of musical pleasure he had given me but i decided that he was out to see his missus strut her stuff so it was probably not the right thing to do. so i didn’t.
there was a time when i had to sit while the ex’s kid had to practice violin. she wanted him to be able to play an instrument. like all kids who are forced into something he wasn’t as excited about it as she was. strangely i was the one who had to sit through his practice (her argument being she took him to the violin teacher always beat out my argument of ‘it was your idea’). the similarity between ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ and ‘ba ba black sheep’ is terrifying when you are trying to tell the little mite that his performance was wonderful only to realise by the quiver of lips that he had been playing the other one. anyway in order to encourage the kid into playing the violin i used to play some of my albums and tell him ‘listen to that violin playing’ in an attempt to make it as cool as possible. it didn’t work. though he did grow up to play guitar in a nirvana influenced band (him and a million other emo kids) so perhaps it wasn't a total waste.
fripp and crimson still produce some fine fine music, yet there is something very special about those first few king crimson albums.
so let me just take this moment to thank robert fripp for all the musical pleasure he has given me and then you can enjoy the thrill of king crimson live performing ‘easy money’.