RIP Greg Lake - "I Believe In Father Christmas" (1974)

Man, another one bites the dust in an evergrowing list of dead rock stars in 2016!

We just found out that Greg Lake passed away at the age of 69.

We'll always love Greg Lake for his work on that first King Crimson record, as well as most of the stuff he did with prog rock juggernauts, Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  (Especially the early stuff... no thank you Love Beach!)

Plus, 'tis the season... we've always been suckers for his prog rock lite take on the holidays on this song penned by Lake and Peter Sinfield, whose credits include penning lyrics ELP, as well as for those first four Crimson records! 

RIP Greg Lake... oh what a lucky man you was!

Prog Rock Saturday: Larks Tongue in Aspic

King Crimson - "Larks' Tongue in Aspic" (1973) - Island

Hello Friends,

There is one king to rule them all and that king's name is King Crimson!

Larks' Tongue in Aspic, the fifth record by the British progressive rock band King Crimson, might be one of the heaviest and darkest prog rock albums we've heard.  

We've been listening to it over and over again and with each listen it continues to almost hypnotically captivate our attention and thoroughly amaze us!  (Well, one of us! Sorry Tiki T!)

This album marks the third version of the Crimson lineup.  In addition to mainstay and guitarist Robert Fripp, the record features new members John Wetton (bass guitar & vocals), David Cross (violin & mellotron), Bill Bruford (drums) and Jamie Muir (percussion).

Like a great jazz combo, every member's presence is felt.  There's nothing wasted and nothing extraneous.  Fripp, the quiet genius, masterminds it all using his guitar to produce sounds like we've never heard before.  Wetton comes off like a confident frontman, a hunkier version of Greg Lake.  Cross's violin & mellotron parts are understated, almost sad and spooky-sounding, providing the perfect foil for Fripp's heavy and alien guitar sounds.

Bill Bruford, fresh off his tenure with Yes, provides some heavy, jazz-inspired polyrhythmic drumming but the real surprise is Jamie Muir as the additional percussionist! He's banging & blowing pretty much anything he can get his hands on: cymbals, drums, thumb pianos, pieces of sheet metal, whistles, etc.  It all makes for some really interesting and layered soundscapes that are simultaneously abrasive, mesmirizing & exotic. Its like if Black Sabbath and Martin Denny got together and played a concert on Saturn!

The instrumental "Larks' Tongue in Aspic Parts One & Two" provides bookends to the album.

It starts out like some prog-rock Moldau with fluttering strings, bird calls and a genteel buildup then out of nowhere... HOLY SHIT... 

After melting our minds with that 13+ minute epic, we're treated to the gentle 3 minute ballad, "Book of Saturday" featuring Wetton's vocals accompanied by guitar and violin (and some backward tracking!)

Side One's closer "Exiles" sounds the most like something that might be found on their incredible debut album, In the Court of the King Crimson. Like that album's "Epitaph", its another "quiet" song (by Crimson standards) featuring fluttering violins, weaving mellotrons, an acoustic guitar picked in an almost medieval style and Wetton doing his best Greg Lake impersonation.  There's even a somewhat "bluesy" section in the middle of the song ("But Lord I had to go, My trail was laid too slow behind me") that actually reminds us more than a little of Genesis-era Gabriel.

Listening to "Exiles" you can sort of hear the groundwork for everything that a band like Sigur Ros would start doing over 20 years later.  Who knew that King Crimson was one of the first post-rock bands?

"Easy Money" gets the party started on Side Two.  Its also the closest the album would have to a radio friendly-sounding single.  

The ominous, nightmare-inducing instrumental "The Talking Drum" is the record's weirdest and most avant-garde track.  More soundscape than song, its like soundtrack music from a Science Fiction epic that will be made at some point in the future (when movies aren't projected onto a screen, but instead are injected directly into our central nervous systems so we can become fully immersed in the cinematic experience!) 

"The Talking Drum" leads right into "Larks' Tongue in Aspic, part 2"-- picking up, sort of, where Part One left off.  Rather than being a piece that builds in movements, Part Two is pretty much based around a repeated, driving riff that mutates in and out of itself for seven minutes. Its heavy, dark and unforgiving.  It sounds a little like something Yes would have recorded if at the time they were possessed by demons. 

And speaking of demons, if the devil had a playlist this record would probably be on it!

RATING: 4.5 you make my life and times a book of (Prog Rock) Saturdays out of 5

Prog Rock Saturday: Starless and Bible Black

King Crimson - "Starless and Bible Black" (1974) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

We're going back to the court of the crimson king tonight on Vinyl in the Valley with King Crimson's 1974 LP, Starless and Bible Black.  It's their sixth LP and features Robert Fripp (guitar & mellotron), John Wetton (bass & vocals), David Cross (not the comedian!) (violin & keyboards) and prog drummer extraordinaire, Bill Bruford.  Lyrics were written by Richard Palmer-James, who was a founding member of the band, Supertramp.

An speaking of lyrics... with an opening lyric like, "Health-food faggot with a bartered bride / Likes to comb his hair with a dipper ride",  the record wastes no time in kicking things off on the spazzy and abrasive, "The Great Deceiver"-- which actually sounds like a vague update of "21st Century Schizoid Man."  Loud-Quiet-Loud, King Crimson-style.     

Things come back down to Earth (relatively speaking) and quiet down a bit with "Lament"-- the closest thing the record has to a ballad.  (A ballad written in the future by a race of alien-robots, perhaps!  This ain't no wedding song!) Whether playing long, elaborate solos or quiet chords, Robert Fripp's guitar always seems to sound more like a power tool than a six-stringed instrument. The way this song builds isn't too different from something from an early EL&P album like Tarkus.  Its almost as if the vocals are in competition with the rest of the instrumentation.  

"We'll Let You Know" is an instrumental featuring some more industrial-sounding guitars, some fancy bass work and some weird, out-of-kilter drums.  This song is either being played by some real virtuosos or a bunch of six year olds broke into the studio and started fucking around.

"The Night Watch" is probably the album's apex and the track that is most reminiscent of the stuff on their awesome debut record.  If you've got 7 minutes to spare, here's a live performance of the song from 1974...

Next up is the quiet instrumental "Trio" which features some more great mellotron, guitar & violin interplay.  King Crimson always seem to be at their best when it sounds like their playing at some alternate-universe Renaissance Faire.

Side One closes with "The Mincer", with its under-the-current, driving drumbeat and noodling guitar noise actually reminds us, at first, of the opening measures of "Bela Lugosi's Dead".

Side Two contains two instrumental tracks, the nine-minute, mostly improvised title track and the eleven-minute, "Fracture".  Not much can really be said about these two.  Progressive space-jazz?  I think I need something a little stronger than this red wine that I've been drinking to fully appreciate what the hell is going on here.  If tonight really was starless and bible black and you're forced to listen to this record in total darkness, I think you'd be pretty terrified. 

FUN FACTS: The name of this album was inspired by the opening lines of the Dylan Thomas play, "Under Milk Wood"- a play about the dreams of the inhabitants of a fictional Welsh fishing town.  Ray Davies also cited the Dylan Thomas work as an influence to the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society.  Neat!

RATING: 4 cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary out of 5

Prog Rock Saturday: In the Court of the Crimson King

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

Summer's here kids and we all know what that means!  Its time for Prog Rock Saturdays at "Vinyl in the Valley"!  


And what a way to start things off with King Crimson's debut, the incomparable In the Court of the Crimson King.  


The opener, "21st Century Schizoid Man" is a heavy metal, prog-rock masterpiece.  From Robert Fripp's chainsaw-sounding guitars, to Greg Lake's distorted vocal, with lyrics like "politicians funeral pyre / innocents raped with napalm fire", the song is a futuristic epic thinly veiled as a Vietnam-era protest song.  What a way to kick things off!


Immediately following the shit storm of "Schizoid Man" is the genteel and harmonious (and flute-filled!), "I Talk To The WInd" that morphs into the the wailing and mellotron-heavy, "Epitaph" which sounds like the soundtrack to some apocalyptic spaghetti western!   


Time to flip!

PROG ROCK SATURDAYS HAVE RETURNED!

At the close of our last Vinyl in the Valley staff meeting, I was given the fortunate task of advising you all that....PROG ROCK SATURDAYS ARE BACK!

Yes friends, back by popular demand, starting this Saturday we'll be blowing the dust off of some fine pieces of progressive music and spinning them into the wee hours. 

We'll be delving into the abyss of late 60s and 70s innovation and savoring some of England's strangest musical offerings!

King Crimson! Yes! Early Pink Floyd! Early Genesis with Peter Gabriel!

I know, I know. You can hardly contain yourself, right?

I'm not going to pretend that this is some of the sexiest shit in the world, but it's definitely worth a listen!

And I'll be behind the bar concocting equally weird drinks to wet your proggy whistle!

So join us this Saturday in the Court of the Crimson King!

XO,
Tiki T.