Rob wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2017 1:44 pm
Excellent - never heard the actual album but it was certainly one of the better 'Oo compilations - for some reason a lot of the later compilations ignored the wonderful tracks "The Kids are Alright" and "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" - the latter was especially important IMHO in the development of their sound.
Seems a fair few albums featured impages of the consequences of urban renewal, which appears to have been a big deal at the time - its like the fairly desolate introduction to 'Whatever happened to the likely lads?"
It's the best Who compilation. Period. The tracks you've mentioned are inexcusable omissions. My favourite Who album by a mile though I do have a soft spot for A Quick One, The Who Sell Out, Live at Leeds and the BBC sessions. I've avoided Tommy and Quadraphonia like the plague! My favourite track? 'I Can See For Miles' by miles ;)
I probably like 'The Who Sell Out' best - even most of the bonus tracks are very good. 'Live at Leeds' is outstanding although I like the similar Isle of Wight CD too - Townshend seems to play looser freer guitar on some of the latter's rock tracks but the singing on the full rendition of Tommy is often very out of tune. A Quick One is a fun listen - especially Moon's tracks but I reckon Run, Run, Run is the hardcore successor to My Generation!!
Agreed that Tommy is overrated - it is at times very good on the first disc of the album but the second is pretty rough, as if the music took second place to the fairly garbled story. Quadraphenia is pretty good at times because it rocks out hard on some tracks - e.g. 5.15 - but yeah it is also quite bloated, shouty and indulgent.
Ah the Likely Lads! Another one that passed me by alas......I remember a friend of mine loved the series. He told me about an episode that featured MOTD I think which made me laugh because it's exactly what I do! You know the one where they do their best to avoid hearing the final score. That night they gather round the tv to watch the highlights only to discover it was cancelled :)
Yeah know that episode well - then there's the fiendish guy who tries to tell them the score! lol If you have satellite, its quite often repeated on the Yesterday channel.
The IOW set is a good one too. Run, Run, Run is a sensational track! The guitar solo sounds like he threw the guitar down the stairs. Brilliant!
Forgot about the fiendish guy :) Must definitely have a look....
I've been absolutely entranced by this album from Memphis-born Julien Baker. Stark, minimalist, haunting songs that are obsessing and transfixing me right now. The album was originally released independently two years ago when she was 19 but is now gaining more widespread exposure and much-deserved recognition following its re-release on Matador. Her masterpiece is Rejoice, which speaks multitudes of the hopelessness and anguish of an earlier life where she was gripped by alcohol and drug addictions and beset by depression. The final verse is exceptional, a passionate prayer for redemption to her God delivered with a transformative force that begins quietly and plangently but builds to a primal roar of cathartic intensity.
"But I think there's a God and he hears either way when I rejoice and complain
Lift my voice that I was made
And somebody's listening with the ghosts of my friends when I pray
Asking, why did you let them leave and then make me stay?
You know my name and all of my hideous mistakes
But I rejoice, I rejoice, I rejoice"
Really, I cannot say enough good things about her. She is an exceptional talent. Put this album on repeat and allow these songs to take hold of you and resonate within you.
And finally, the emotional vulnerability that she brings to this impassioned, deeply heartfelt version of Death Cab For Cutie's Photobooth is something to behold. In her very personal, unaffected, intimate way with the song, she reminds me very strongly of the first time I heard St. Vincent, singing a cover of Jackson Browne's These Days better than Browne ever sang it, exploring nuances left untapped in Brown's own performances, and, in the process, making the song her own.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
Julie Byrne's second album, Not Even Happiness, is an understated, reflective, slow-burning beauty, possessed of a reserved delicacy and limpid grace that richly repays sustained, attentive listening. Perhaps the standout track is the closing "I Live Now As A Singer", that sets aside the template of intricate fingerpicked guitar in favour of a lush ambient wash that keenly evokes a sense of the artist coming to terms with herself following a time of great emotional upheaval.
"Blue palms glide in the light of a red moon
The Catalinas brought me to the West
And yes, I've broke down, asking for forgiveness
When I was not close to forgiving myself
And I have dragged my life across the country
And wondered if travel led me anywhere
There's a passion in me, just does not long for those things
Tell me how'd it feel for you to be in love"
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
Just an addendum to the above note on Julien Baker.
What strikes me about Baker is how much of her work is suffused with her faith. She is quite passionate and open in her interviews about her love of music and literature but also how vitally important that her faith is to her well-being. The penultimate song on her album, Vessels, speaks directly to that transformative sense of private devotion that exists far beyond shallow religiosity but which represents an oasis of calm for Baker. The theme here is the abnegation of self and its earthly trappings and offering oneself up - naked, defenceless, completely unguarded - before God in a wish for absolution for one's transgressions. The one song that Vessels directly recalls is Judee Sill's The Kiss, a song similarly unapologetic about a wish to be enraptured, to have one's tears wiped away in a divine act of absolution. On the surface, Vessels is the most elusive and cryptic song on the album but rewards patient study because this is an extraordinary set of lyrics for a 19 year old, rendered all the more powerful by their delivery in a live environment, where the intimacy of the performance is highlighted by Baker's diminutive physical stature, earnestly phrasing the words with the utmost care yet always appearing to stumble as if she were suddenly struck by and inwardly wounded by their implicit message.
"Tell me in thin paper about your love
Breath like thick water lives in my lungs
My skin is full of black ink, in your white clothes
For so much I think, little I know
Pull off my armor, knees bruised and naked
Peel back my skin, call out my name
Vessel of brightness, come make me blind
This present darkness is swallowed by light
And my skeleton is a house for my eyes,
Purchased with a bleeding side"
Listening to Vessels and The Kiss makes me think of Peter Hammill's masterpiece, The Lie, an agnostic's response to Bernini's rendering in marble of St. Teresa's ecstatic transfiguration. In this song, Hammill is a puzzled onlooker, intrigued and fascinated by the image - "The silent corner haunts my shadow prayers/Ice-cold statue, rapture divine/Unconscious eyes, the open mouth/The wound of love/The lie" - but, in the final analysis, cannot allow his mind to slip the cog of reason and embace the unknowable Other. The important difference with Baker and Sill is the sufferings they have endured through their own respective dark nights of the soul which makes them more receptive to (and dependent upon) the concept of a forgiving, compassionate God.
This would be an extraordinary way to end the album, powerfully with a message of hope. But Baker has sequenced the album so that the final track is the bleak Go Home. There are direct references here to the darkest time of her life when she was crippled by addictions to alcohol and drugs, inhalants and painkillers. There is an overwhelming sense here of self-disgust and an incipient weariness and an awareness of the hopelessness of her predicament. There is no hope for redemption here, but simply a longing for oblivion. The longing to "go home" does not represent a desire for a blessed afterlife, but shares with Nick Drake's horrific Black Eyed Dog, an overriding sense of exhaustion and an impatience for self-annihilation - "I'm growing old and I wanna go home/I'm growing old and I don't wanna know". Where Drake wails of the rapacious hellhound and the yawning blankness of the void, Baker speaks of a desire to "make her insides clean with kitchen bleach" and craves a physical nullification that will purify her soul and wash her clean. It is a more startling conclusion to the album than Vessels might have been and is perhaps a frightening realisation that her redemptive wishes might simply be self-delusory but also an acknowledgement that the glimpses of divine grace that Vessels promises are fleeting, and that she may well be unworthy of absolution.
In short, this is fantastically rewarding album that offers up more rewards with each listen, but the emotional core of the album firmly resides in the concluding triptych of songs which gradually chisel their fearful message to the listener's heart.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
I've been digesting Radical Action (subtitled To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind), a live record of King Crimson's recent activity. It comes in the form of three audio CDs (with applause and extraneous live noises omitted) and a visual document in the form of a Blu-Ray disc or two DVDs.
The most surprising thing about this Crimson line-up was the the employment of three drummers who take pride of place at the front of the stage. What this brings to the mix is a denser, more saturated tonal density to the bottom end as well as a sense of enhanced rhythmic freedom. Listening to the music, you get a real sense of three individual musicians listening to each other and feeding off each others' musical ideas. This rhythmic component has been such a success that the upcoming US tour will showcase a double quartet and a fourth drummer.
However, there is a real sense of ensemble at work here with every member of the band actively listening to and responding to little motifs and riffs that emerge and begin to percolate during the performances. It is not freely improvised, of course, because the basic song structures are adhered to, but the organic nature of music-making in the moment is tangible and has had a liberating effect on the musicians and the sense of joy they exhibit to this listener is thrilling.
The contributions of Mel Collins should not be underestimated., most notably his baritone sax work on Pictures of a City and 21st Century Schizod Man, imparting a sense of savagery to the occasion. The recruitment of singer/guitarist Jakko Jakszyk surprised many Crimson fans who expected Adrian Belew to return. Jakszyk is not the equal of Belew as a guitarist (although he is a competent one who I am sure has enjoyed the tutelage of Fripp) but his vocal contributions are the main reasons why he was chosen. Fripp evidently had a English vocal sound in mind and Jakszyk sounds uncannily like an amalgam of Greg Lake and John Wetton, recalling the former's purity and and the latter's coarseness (and, believe me, I mean that a a compliment).
Most of all, it is a treat to see Fripp playing so much guitar. After so many years seemingly content to allow Belew to take the lead and subsume himself into the role of bandeader, he steps forward and takes a more active role. The man's demeanour has not changed, sitting ramrod still, quietly observing the other musicians, intently listening on his headphones, barely breaking a sweat during his solos. Other guitarists play faster than Fripp but none match his tonal purity, clarity of mind and willingness to surprise and startle the listener with a sense of gleeful perversity. Listening to his music in my youth was a revelation - initally I grappled with it and many is the late night I spent, labouring over it, persevering with it, gradually sensing the pulse at the heart of the music - thereby opening my ears to the possibility of a musical life beyond the backbeat. I've been lost to it ever since.
What most impresses is the sense of immense pride that Fripp has in this particular incarnation of Crimson. He has described it as the finest ever and there is a beautiful shot at the end of the performance on the DVD when he bows his head quietly and kisses his guitar.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
That was great reading. At least I learned something new!
Re Crimson live: Brilliant to see Robert doing his stuff. Beautiful but typical Fripp tone. Mesmerising watching him. As regarded Jakszyk I feel not only does he not look the part but his voice leaves me cold. Anyway I always felt Crimson do it better without the vocals. But then again I couldn't imagine their back catalogue without vocals either. I only really sit up when the fripperies start rolling out of the speakers along with the ancient mellotrons and jazzy stuff they used to do. Collins contribution to Islands is exemplary to pick one album at random.....Just my opinion.
This is what I'm listening to at the moment. Based on a massive review I checked it out and I was blown away by Eric's amazing performance. I can get it on vinyl and I probably will eventually. In the meantime I converted the YouTube 2 hour set below to audio only and that will do me until then......
Julian Cope
CREAM— GRANDE BALLROOM OCTOBER 1967
Almost a year to the date prior to the recording of The MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” at the same venue, this performance by Cream must have been one shock and two awes to the Detroit audience that stumbled out of that hallowed hall once the smoke finally cleared. For this recording holds the highest peak of creative fire of the group (and especially Clapton) live or studio; then, now and forever.
How do I know? Well, I spent a great deal of time as a teenager listening to Cream. Lots of it, and brother: ALL of it. Live and in the studio. Even “Wrapping Paper,” “Anyone For Tennis?” and “The Coffee Song” AND usually at top volume at night while skipping over the blues covers. The Martin Sharp sleeve designs for “Disraeli Gears” and “Wheels Of Fire” were probably as much to blame as the guitar on those records, which seemed to negotiate every arrangement that surrounded it by ESP alone.
The oddest thing of all is how the artist formerly known as Gawd has gotten away with decades of releasing bland solo albums as though just being Clapton was enough of an excuse. But if Gawd is love and love is blind, then it would seem to follow that Clapton must have been artistically blind (or at least deaf) for the past half a century, which is no way to carry on with a career but a strong indication that a ‘successful’ one somehow demands it.
But back in late 1967, Clapton was an entirely different animal and the sounds he needled forth were, to my teenaged mind, wildly mesmerising. Especially on “Disraeli Gears” which was where the confidence of his playing, his rhythmic intuition, perfect hand vibrato, weird kazoo tone on “SWLABR,” “We’re Going Wrong,” Outside Woman Blues,” the wah-wah on “Tales of Brave Ulysses” all resonated with me in the biggest way possible. (Conversely, there were several unsuccessful patches I’d avoid like “Blue Condition,” “Take It Back” and the other music hall throwaway that thought it was closing the album like “Something Happened To Me Yesterday”...only didn’t.)
All of this was greatly reinforced by constant viewing of the inner sleeves that came with albums on the London/Deram label that featured colour reproductions of selections of their back catalogue. Many looked promising. Especially those by Ten Years After and Savoy Brown that hung alongside “Between The Buttons” and “In Search of the Lost Chord” as they collectively appeared more like the after-effect of a 12 inch square of blotter acid than mere four-colour offset printing. Even the John Mayall albums looked deeply trippy, so I reasoned that these electric blues monsters were actually psychedelic just by virtue of their sleeves looking like the epitome of terrifying, visionary LSD experiences laid bare. So it seemed to follow that the music within would yield a likewise transcendental glimpse of something that was going to convey excitement, truth, wonder or even better: weirdness on a scale I could not yet conceive.
This was a thesis that would be disproved time and time again, caused largely in part by purchasing that fateful copy of “Disraeli Gears.” It reached a crescendo a couple of years later when I was becoming hectored by a wad of Ten Years After albums that presented their secondhand sleeves to me in the used bins of Second Hand Rose’s on Sixth Avenue, New York City. What appeared before me was their entire Deram back catalogue minus the then-elusive “Stonedhenge” (which surfaced long after all the burnt fingers healed and I didn’t care anymore): “Ten Years After,” “Undead,” “Ssshh,” “Cricklewood Green” and “Watt” were all present and accounted for and as a group looked pretty impressive. I already had in my possession their last two albums on Columbia (hardly the place to begin or finish with Ten Years After but for $2.99 apiece how could you lose) as the direct result of Cream -- those perpetrators of initially blurring my distinctions between psychedelia and what was in essence amped-up, distended electric blues. They also caused me to weave a crooked path of exploration through Blind Faith, Traffic, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Electric Flag, John Mayall (up to 1970), Iron Butterfly (on Atco), Vanilla Fudge (ditto), Donovan (on Epic), Mountain (on nitrous oxide), both volumes of “Woodstock” as well as the soundtracks for “Easy Rider,” “Here We Go ‘Round The Mulberry Bush” and “Revolution.” I prudently decided to save Hendrix for that rainy day in the future when I had money because I knew beforehand he was gonna be one almighty headful so for the moment nothing would be spared in the lesser realms of the used album bins. “Grape Jam”? Oh, yeah. “Super Session”? Right here, please. “The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper”? Gimme! I even found the first Sopwith Camel album for next to nothing, so I felt well on my way down the road to psychedelic Rock enlightenment and quickly felt -- no, KNEW -- that weekends would never be the same.
Oh, but how they wouldn’t. Especially after that Friday afternoon when I tarried too long in front of that engorged Ten Years After section. Of special interest was their first, self-titled LP because it looked about as psychedelic as “Piper At The Gates of Dawn” and was obviously a tailor-made visual vibe of that album crossed with the moody, black background of “Fresh Cream” or my name is Robert “Hurricane” Stigwood. There was a ten-minute-plus track called “Help Me” that ended the album which the antiquated liner notes reported was recorded late one night in the studio in total darkness, so I assumed they were stoned when they did it. Besides, Alvin Lee was sporting the same Hendrix perm as Clapton and Syd so it MUST be psychedelic. With such overwhelming evidence as this, how could it not?
I bought them all and in that total last minute flush of over-confident excitement and impulse, scooped up both albums by Ginger Baker’s Air Force, entirely inspired by cursory glances at the superstar lineup and their loud, psychedelic “Wheels of Fire”-esque Martin Sharp visualisations. However, studying all those sleeves for the duration of the bus ride home along with its accompanying anticipatory buzz would remain the most gratifying moments of that day as the entire stack except for Ten Years After’s “Undead” quickly moved me to tears. Not out of an overwhelming connection to the music or experiencing some deeply moving contact high, but at my errant squandering of all that hard-scrounged cash on such a sad and dated pile of dreck whose basis for purchase relied on cover art and year of release alone. It was a hard lesson that would be re-learned several times over and followed by the familiar fallout of lack of funds, a fortnight of candy bar lunches and the rising suspicion that the great albums were just too few and far between.
Make no mistake, figuring out psychedelia on your own a decade after Altamont armed with only the perspective and funds of a teenager was one tricky business. But my road to Rock enlightenment was hardly some pre-determined straight line directed due north at the pantheonic, iconic and iconoclastic alone like some blood-engorged, cultural hypodermic (although that’s probably what it eventually boiled down to over the years.) No, it was more the succession of ridiculous and convoluted tragic-comedies shot through with so many blunted expectations, nonsensical reasons, stupid waste of time/money albums, missed opportunities and accepted hypes that only wound up honing my skill of reading Rock’n’Roll’s secret alphabets and overall strengthening my resolve in seeking out the real keys to the kingdom in the shape of Rock. I took my chances, paid my money and for some reason am not massively depressed about it. Actually, I’d have had it no other way for I learned a lot about life, people, discographies, record labels, producers, original pressings, what a UNIPAK was as well as the strange phenomenon that people in the early seventies had bought every Leon Russell and Joe Cocker album as if they were the second coming in vinyl form. And so forth. So let this advisory tale be a warning to you all...Although at this stage in the game, it’s a moot point because now interactive cyber technology allows for the free previewing of all of those albums that once whispered sweet anythings and entreaties into the ear of my youth like the most painted, red hot harlot of Babylon purring and cooing all dulcet: ‘Take me home and we’ll have LOTS of fun, just you and me...’ (Well, maybe not ALL of them, but it’s only because I don’t think time nor reissue schedules have been too kind to the likes of Pacific Gas & Electric, Cold Blood, Mother Earth or early Steve Miller Band.)
Where was I? (Oh, yeah. Cream.) I can’t fault “Disraeli Gears” for causing me to swan dive headfirst into shallow pools on occasion, because in the long run it did lead to far deeper waters and in the process helped the questing obsessive in love with an ideal that I am. With that said, I’m glad it eventually led to this live recording because it absolutely blows all of Cream’s legitimate recordings away and is at least some compensation for a fraction of the misspent time and funds of my youth.
I’m thankful that some hip soul had the foresight to record this final night of Cream’s first major American tour because by the time they returned to that Motor City venue two months later (and one final time the following year) their live shows had already changed into something far less raw and more studied. But first time around it was an eye- and ear-opening document of a night bathed in experimentation, improvisation and energy matched only by the volume through which it was channeled. Best of all, the Clapton-Bruce-Baker axis don’t just run through their set all slick and nailed down as they would for the rest of their latter day career as evidenced by “Wheels Of Fire,” “Goodbye” and both volumes of “Live Cream” -- documents of self-conscious performance leavened by the moderate use of amplification while the trio reined in the abandon to pull off merely competent improvisations. But here, they’re pushing their limits, the songs are given far more rigourous work outs and they hit exhilarating high points unlike anything ever allowed release by their record company. There’s far more variations, chances taken and with it; mistakes that don’t detract so much as wind up feeding into a greater reservoir of chances to be taken, with the improvisation’s topography flexible enough to constantly open up vistas, reveal newer horizons and allow for deeper exploration.
The recording was taken off the house mix featuring Clapton’s guitar clearly defined with sustain, indicating a performance at top volume. His amplification was comprised of four Marshall 4x12 cabinets with two 100 watt amplifiers which possessed a capacity to retain sustain and distortion effects at varying volumes simply because it was so loud. This extreme use of volume in turn helped to mutate Clapton’s stock blues riffs into something else entirely. It also allowed for a finer control of volume, tone and dynamics as well as the ability to rattle the rafters and pummel the punters so badly that on one occasion during Cream’s first American tour, it was reported the volume from their amplifiers ‘shook a lighting bridge free of its moorings.’
There was no real leader of the band although it’s pretty obvious Clapton was the lynchpin during the dark heat of the improvisational moment as his name is called out about fifty times over the din by Bruce and Baker during the performance. Here, Clapton is a clipper ship with naviguitar his only compass, charting a course throughout the shifting reefs of Bruce and Baker’s rocky shorelines that submerge and reappear as if trying to scuttle EC’s hull but his strong adherence to and guidance from the Three Kings Freddie, Albert and B.B. ensure a harrying, hairy but safe passage nonetheless. That’s not to say E the C don’t get shipwrecked a coupla times during his passage of several Capes of Good Horn, Good Hope and probably even better dope but he’s already refashioned a riff raft from junked blues vessels and reanimates it through roaring dual Marshall stacks: blessing it with several wavering, sustaining waves of his psychedelicised Gibson SG and he and his rhythm section cohorts are back on course, unexpectedly landing several hundred leagues above the sea and weathering entirely different circumstances until it’s time to head back into the ‘song.’ Whether it be “N.S.U.,” “Sweet Wine” or even the dreaded “Spoonful” there are enough moments of supreme heaviness that if one was to edit them together into a 30 minute suite...well, it would baffle most people you’d play it to.
Forming several months prior to The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream was the first Rock power trio. Like it or don’t (and I used to and do) everyone from Ash Ra Tempel to ZZ Top and in-between owe in varying degrees their musical reason for existence to Cream. They were the source of all metal: heavy, black, red and white all over and all its other 662 varieties. Their innovative and sound barrier-breaking noise grabbed everyone within earshot with its immediacy and power while the legitimacy of the three players (based on their respective tenures in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and The Graham Bond Organisation) was quickly assured, for in 1966 British cosmopolitan music quarters it was credibility of the most durable kind.
This recording is the crème de la cream of those earliest pioneers of Heavy who ventured forth past the border of musical terrain bearing the legend ‘here be dragons’ and struck deep into the new land simply called ROCK. And for all its many and obvious shortcomings, it still bears the hallmark of what can be done when everybody’s loose, on the same page, and just wants to “let one go.”
cybot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:49 pm
That was great reading. At least I learned something new!
Re Crimson live: Brilliant to see Robert doing his stuff. Beautiful but typical Fripp tone. Mesmerising watching him. As regarded Jakszyk I feel not only does he not look the part but his voice leaves me cold. Anyway I always felt Crimson do it better without the vocals. But then again I couldn't imagine their back catalogue without vocals either. I only really sit up when the fripperies start rolling out of the speakers along with the ancient mellotrons and jazzy stuff they used to do. Collins contribution to Islands is exemplary to pick one album at random.....Just my opinion.
Nice to hear from you again, Dermot. I do hope you are keeping well and a belated happy Easter to you. On the subject of Islands, my two favourite tracks from that undervalued album - The Letters and Sailors Tale - appear on Radical Action and are an undoubted highlight. There is a lot of unfinished business from the Lizard/Islands period (in the form of some very fine music that never got performed due to unstable line-ups and general dissent in the ranks) that I feel Fripp wants to address in these tours. One song that I wish Fripp would return to is Poseidon's Cat Food with its amazing lyrical imagery and incredible Keith Tippett piano solo - what might have been if he had stayed a little longer and contributed a little more but it was not to be, sadly.
Gryphon Diablo 300, dCS Rossini (with matching clock), Kharma Exquisite Mini, Ansuz C2, Finite Elemente Master Reference.
cybot wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:49 pm
That was great reading. At least I learned something new!
Re Crimson live: Brilliant to see Robert doing his stuff. Beautiful but typical Fripp tone. Mesmerising watching him. As regarded Jakszyk I feel not only does he not look the part but his voice leaves me cold. Anyway I always felt Crimson do it better without the vocals. But then again I couldn't imagine their back catalogue without vocals either. I only really sit up when the fripperies start rolling out of the speakers along with the ancient mellotrons and jazzy stuff they used to do. Collins contribution to Islands is exemplary to pick one album at random.....Just my opinion.
Nice to hear from you again, Dermot. I do hope you are keeping well and a belated happy Easter to you. On the subject of Islands, my two favourite tracks from that undervalued album - The Letters and Sailors Tale - appear on Radical Action and are an undoubted highlight. There is a lot of unfinished business from the Lizard/Islands period (in the form of some very fine music that never got performed due to unstable line-ups and general dissent in the ranks) that I feel Fripp wants to address in these tours. One song that I wish Fripp would return to is Poseidon's Cat Food with its amazing lyrical imagery and incredible Keith Tippett piano solo - what might have been if he had stayed a little longer and contributed a little more but it was not to be, sadly.
A belated happy Easter to you to you too Paul. Thankfully everything's grand here. Hope all is ok with yourself?
I laughed when you wrote '....unstable line-ups'. If you want to keep a band going for nearly 50 years break them up every five minutes or so! Just after finishing a Wire interview with Robert from Oct. 2014. I have a habit of tearing important (to me) stuff out of magazines and sticking them into Lp sleeves. They make great reading whilst listening! I envy the person who comes across my collection after I'm gone.
Anyway you mention Poseidon which, for some unaccountable reason, is my favourite Crimson Lp. Everything just seems to gel musically and sonically. I tend to not pay too much attention to lyrics but I'm sure they're on a whole other level. And, no, I simply cannot see Poseidon as just another ITCOTCK rerun. Maybe favourite is a too strong a word as I tend to look on whole band collections as one entity. A progression/digression of sorts which is exhilarating to behold after, say, forty years of listening/following their progress through the decades.
Dare I ask did you ever invest in the extended box sets like Red and Larks? Some journey to embark on I'd say.....
The Mandarin of Melanchloy vs The Inscrutable One. Stunningly inventive album which is a joy to listen to. Robert sends out hair parting shards of electricity from his guitar and.....both of them end up laughing :)
