Discipline - The return of King Crimson, 1981

The shock of the new - that's how it felt to behold the reformed King Crimson in 1981.

My ticket for the Discipline show and a recording of it

Six years previously, Robert Fripp had called a halt to the band, which by then was just a three piece, with John Wetton on bass and vocals and Bill Bruford on drums.

They had recorded the album Red, which had been one of their most commercially successful albums, and completed a US tour, when Fripp pulled the plug, to Wetton and Bruford's disappointment.

They were at the peak of their popularity, but that was part of the problem for Fripp. They had become like a conventional rock band and he didn't want that. The closer they got to the mainstream, the less comfortable he became.

In 1975, Fripp enrolled at the International Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne House in Gloucestershire. Students at the IACE underwent an intensive training in the techniques that founder John Bennett had learned from G.I. Gurdjieff. 

Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness - and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep" - but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way". 

In this interview, Fripp talks about his search for meaning and direction, having ditched his music career. Notably, he refers to his approach of setting a goal for a specific period as "the drive to 1981", calling it his "personal discipline".

By the end of 1976, Fripp had 'recovered' (in his words) from the IACE experience and, once back into his stride musically, he wasn't idle. He continued his occasional collaborations with Brian Eno and became David Bowie's go-to guitarist for the albums from Heroes to Scary Monsters (1977-80).

In 1981, news came through that Fripp had a new band. Me and three bandmates, all big Crimson fans, bought tickets for the first gig in London, May 1981 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Haymarket.

Tony Levin and Chapman Stick

They were called Discipline - no doubt inspired by the IACE experience. Only Bruford remained from previous configurations of KC. We had no idea what to expect, but we hoped they would play some old stuff. We certainly didn't expect it was going to be a life-changing experience, in the sense that this new band was making music from the future, such that their influence endures into KC’s music to this day.

So Discipline started off the concert playing a new track (called Discipline as it turned out) and the first thing that struck me was the rhythm, a hypnotic pulse driven by Bruford's electronic drums, but with a distinctive bass. 

Belew and elephant noises

Those of us who had seen Peter Gabriel live around this time would have seen Tony Levin playing his Chapman Stick, an odd looking bass instrument. Levin is the acknowledged master of the instrument.

Then all hell broke loose! The band launched into Thela Hun Ginjeet. [check it out!] We were pinned back by the dual onslaught of Fripp and new lead guitarist Adrian Belew producing all manner of sonic fireworks. Bruford attacking his kit with staccato rolls, Levin slapping at his bass.

Each new track had an distinct edge, from the "this is a dangerous place" storyline of Thela Hun Ginjeet to the sheer shimmering beauty of Matte Kudesai, or the interstellar soundscape of The Sheltering Sky. Belew was not only an amazing stunt guitar player - as he had proved with Frank Zappa and Talking Heads - he was an excellent vocalist too. Zappa's song City of Tiny Lights is a good example, and with Crimson he excelled on Matte Kudesai.

They played some old too. Red was tucked into the set early on and they played Larks Tongues In Aspic part 2 as an encore. The clip of Larks Tongues here gives you an idea of the energy they brought to the old material. But it was the new ones that really had us gripped. Like Elephant Talk, a bizarre but compelling statement of the new Crimson.

Soon afterwards, an almost inevitable name-change, from Discipline back to King Crimson, took the band into a highly successful period, artistically and commercially, that has sustained right up to the latest line-up, which still owes much to the inventiveness of the 1980s version.

Everyone has their favourite period of Crimson and there have been so many different phases. But 40 years on from this particular gig, I can still remember how we were blown away by this new music.

Here they are, playing in Germany in 1982

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See also on this blog:

The Yes Album - 50 years old and still sounding great

Todd Rundgren's 'A Wizard, A True Star' - my all-time favourite record

The Tubes - how they conquered London, 1977

There's a lot to like in the 'ZAPPA' movie

Zappa/Mothers - One Size Fits All, reviewed in Sounds 1975

Fans of Frank Zappa's early and mid 1970s albums rate 'One Size Fits All' as one of several career high points. Featuring some of the band's stage favourites from the period, including Inca Roads, Florentine Pogen and Andy, it is a consistently excellent record musically, with outstanding contributions from his core group members at the time - George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Chester Thompson and Napoleon Murphy Brock.

Here is Pete Makowski's review from the weekly UK music paper Sounds from June 1975, when the album was released. Not particularly detailed or illuminating, but it does reflect the widespread acceptance of the album, one of his most enduring recordings.

Some Zappa purists dismiss the mid-70s material (the trilogy of Overnite Sensation, Apostrophe and One Size Fits All) because it marks the closest Zappa ever came to the mainstream. But their accessibility is entirely due to the quality of the songwriting and the playing on these records.

The basic track for the opener, Inca Roads, was taken from the recording of a 'TV special' in Los Angeles, the video of which reveals just how tight and well-rehearsed the band were, as all Zappa's bands were!

The solo on the album is lifted from a show in Helsinki during the 1974 tour of Europe. This was typical of Zappa, who recorded pretty much everything and rarely let a good performance go to waste.

There's one story told by drummer John Guerin (who appears on the Hot Rats album track 'It Must be A Camel', and also on the Apostrophe' album).

Guerin didn't recall playing on the Apostrophe sessions - that's cos he didn't. Zappa had liked the drums at another recording session and simply isolated them to create a new song, which turned out to be ExcentrifugalForz.

The 74/75 band featured on One Size Fits All

Having at least two gifted vocalists in the band, Brock and Duke, allowed FZ to craft songs that were not only technically challenging for the musicians, but were also exceptionally tuneful.

The quality of the material on One Size Fits All is such that several of the tunes were a staple part of the Zappa stage show for many years. Even now, Dweezil and his band Zappa Plays Zappa, will feature songs like Florentine Pogen in their set.

Guerin told Modern Drummer magazine: "Frank was a genius in the editing room. For instance, on the Hot Rats album, we let the tape run most of the time. There was no music, he just directed different feelings, or we’d establish a groove and he’d cut it off. Then, a few months later, an album with actual songs would come out. That was the beauty of his editing.”

On One Size Fits All, the track Sofa #2 features a lyric in German, the translation for which is typically bizarre:

I am the heaven
I am the water
Ich bin der Dreck unter deinen Walzen  (I am the dirt beneath your rollers)
(Oh no, whip it on me, honey!)
Ich bin dein geheimer Schmutz (I am your secret smut)
Und verlorenes Metallgeld (And lost metal money)
(Metallgeld)
Ich bin deine Ritze (I am your cracks)
Ich bin deine Ritze und Schlitze  (I am your cracks & crannies)

I am the clouds
I am embroidered
Ich bin der Autor aller Felgen  (I am the author of all tucks)
Und Damast Paspeln  (And damask piping)
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette  (I am The Chrome Dinette)
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette  (I am The Chrome Dinette)
Ich bin Eier aller Arten  (I am eggs of all persuasions)

Ich bin alle Tage und Nachte  (I am all days and nights)
Ich bin alle Tage und Nachte  (I am all days and nights)

Ich bin hier  (I am here)
Und du bist mein Sofa  (And you are my sofa)
Ich bin hier  (I am here)
Und du bist mein Sofa  (And you are my sofa)
Ich bin hier  (I am here)
Und du bist mein Sofa (And you are my sofa)

Yeah, my Sofa
Yeah-ha-hey

In the absence of the complete 1974 Roxy shows on Youtube, you should seek out the DVD entitled 'A Token of His Extreme' which contains the whole show. For fans of this period Zappa it is well worthwhile.

And if you haven't seen the 'classic albums' series edition about the Overnite Sensation and Apostrophe sessions, you should definitely check that out too. Here, Dweezil shows how FZ used subtle percussion effects to provide the magic 'eyebrows'.

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Also on this blog: 

There's a lot to like in the 'ZAPPA' movie

Alice Cooper - Back When He Was Genuinely Scary 

https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2021/04/alice-cooper-back-when-he-was-genuinely.html?m=0

 Frank Zappa and Lowell George

August 1970 and a new supergroup emerges - Balls

One can only imagine the excitement and the buzz in the music world in the summer of 1970 as the latest in a long line of 'super groups' announced itself in the music press. 

Denny Laine - pre-Wings but already a name in the music business from his time in the Moody Blues and his vocals on their first hit 'Go Now' - got together with two other 'names'. 

Well, not exactly legends, but both Trevor Burton and Alan White had made their mark. Burton was lead guitarist in The Move, who were still going in 1970 but now with new guy Jeff Lynne on guitar. 

Alan White - before he replaced Bill Bruford in Yes and before his joint smoking stint with Terry Reid in the Glastonbury Fayre film - was the third member. Quite rightly surmising that this was a bit of a laugh and it wouldn't go anywhere, they called themselves 'Balls'. 

Could have been worse, I suppose, had Laine decided he was the 'name' in the band - they could have been 'Denny Laine's Balls'. 

Anyway, they were right, it didn't go anywhere and Balls went their separate ways at the beginning of 1971.

Did someone film Hendrix recording Electric Ladyland?

I am reading the booklet that came with the Experience Hendrix mid 1990s CD reissue of Jimi's 1968 masterpiece Electric Ladyland.

I'm intrigued by this passage in the notes to the CD: 

"For 16 days in May 1968, an ABC-TV film crew followed the Experience to stage and studio. Shooting began at the Record Plant on May 3....The footage begins with scenes of a groupie sketching Jimi as he records Voodoo Chile. The scene cuts to the control room where Eddie (Kramer) tells an interviewer 'Jimi's music is here to stay'. Mike Jeffrey and Chas Chandler were also interviewed while Jimi was filmed writing lyrics."

I think I know a fair amount about film footage of Jimi, but I have never heard or seen anything related to this ABC footage. Surely, it it does exist, it would have seen the light of day by now. But if it didn't exist, how could the Experience Hendrix CD notes be referencing it? 

The latest extended release of the Classic Albums program, now made available by Experience Hendrix as 'At last...the beginning: the making of Electric Ladyland' offers some glimpses of the Record Plant sessions, visuals only, no sound.

The DVD is worth getting for the extra footage, most of which features engineer Eddie Kramer peeling back the layers of the backing tracks to show the detail and the unique vision that Jimi applied to the album. Some of this is just beautiful, especially the rhythm tracks behind 'Have you ever been...'

Another thing this extended episode reveals is that on the original acetate of the album, the 'white-coated men at CBS' had got the name of the album wrong. Many years before Kirsty MacColl turned it into a joke album title of her own, here it is, Electric Landlady!

Here's a clip from the original Classic Albums program, which contains brief footage from the Record Plant sessions at the very beginning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2gdC99R93A

 

Also on this blog:

Jimi Hendrix - Sunday Night At The Saville Theatre

Electric Ladyland - Genius At Work

Handel and Hendrix - Neighbours In London 

Hendrix - The Last Interview

A Marvin Gaye bargain from the early days of CD

File under: Before the record companies knew how to market their back catalogue in CD format.

Again, no idea how much this one is worth, but what a twofer? Arguably Marvin Gaye's finest albums on one CD!

Bought in the mid/late 80s for £5, this is a classic example of the early days of CD, when there really wasn't much choice in terms of available back catalogue to buy. The record companies were trying to figure out this new format and were unsure whether people would go out and buy music on CD they already owned on vinyl. So the back catalogue stuff was chucked out at discount prices and in packages like this.

Soon enough, they realised people were embracing CD as a format; packages like this one were swiftly withdrawn and the individual albums were marked up to £15.

Rediscovering old CDs - RCA's Bowie releases

Due to a change of living arrangements (working in Hong Kong for an extended period) I am revisiting my CD collection. Have to say these old David Bowie CDs sound much better than I thought they would.

Probably the only CDs I have of any monetary value are the five Bowie albums from the batch released in the mid 1980s, and then withdrawn by RCA after they lost the rights to the Bowie catalogue. I haven't played them for years, preferring the vinyl experience. Well I've just played the Ziggy CD and blow me, it sounds great!

That got me thinking: I wonder if their stock has risen, or whether they are just worthless bits of plastic, like most CDs. So I searched online and discovered there is no end of discussion on the relative merits of the German and Japanese RCA Bowies (Nerd fact: mine are the German versions ). Also, it turns out the RCAs have stood the test of time because subsequent versions have messed with the formula.

As one reviewer on Amazon commented, "the original RCA Bowie CDs from the 1980s were lambasted at the time as subpar, but actually did a pretty good job of staying faithful to the sound of the original LPs. They have held up very well in light of the reissues that followed: the anemic and overly bright Ryko reissues of the late `80s and the bloated, heavily compressed Virgin/EMI remasters of the late `90s, which remain the standard versions available today. 

Oh Gawd!

However, it was the 30th Anniversary edition of Ziggy Stardust that represented the nadir of all Bowie remasters: it sounded worse than even the '90s EMI remaster; worse yet, it actually removed portions of the music and reversed the stereo channels." Bowie himelf is on record as having said the recent CD remaster sounded 'weedy'.

OK, so while that makes the case for the original vinyl even stronger, it should at least make these RCA CDs more collectible.  From a quick scan of various blogs and online resellers, it appears each of the CDs is worth at least $100 (US) and perhaps more given they are in good condition.

But hey, it's not about the money! What pleases me the most is they actually sound really good. So until I can get back to using my record deck, it's time to rediscover the joys of CD.

Also on this blog:

The Day David Bowie Died - 10 Years Gone

Vegetable Man - where are you?

(NOTE: Since I wrote this, it has been announced that a new boxed set of early Floyd material is being made available, including Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream. All you need is a spare $550!)

Also please note that this blog post has been taken down twice by the service provider under threat of copyright infringement. So if the links don't work, that is why.
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In this age, when any well-known artist's every last demo and throw-away has been dredged up for completist fans to pore over, it remains astonishing to me that there was never an official release of Syd Barrett's last recordings as the leader of Pink Floyd. 

After all this time, why not let those fans who might be interested have a listen?

Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream were both readied for release in 1967, but were rejected by the record company for being too strange and uncommercial.
 
As anyone who has heard them will probably agree, they are indeed raw and somewhat unhinged, but so is 'I Am The Walrus' and that didn't do too badly. Syd's final songs for the Floyd are, regardless of their commercial appeal, an important part of the band's history, illustrating Syd’s state of mind as his excessive LSD intake tipped him over the edge.

The Pink Floyd, as they were known at first

The songs could only have been written by Barrett. Like his earlier material on The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, they reflect a peculiar attitude to the craft of songwriting. Even without the drugs, his songs were oddly formed, combining nursery rhyme lyrics, the 'psychedelic' sounds of the time and added bars where the lyrics didn't scan properly.

It worked - on that first album at least - because the band believed in Syd and encouraged producer Norman Smith to deliver on Syd's Edward Lear-on-acid vision. Meanwhile, The Beatles were in the studio along the corridor at Abbey Road recording their own psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

After the success of See Emily Play in 1967, the Floyd's management put pressure on Syd, as the principal songwriter, to come up with more hit singles. But Syd's perspective had been warped by his acid intake, and his idea of what would make a good single was a little challenging. 

Spiced with generous helpings of LSD, he wrote Vegetable Man. Was her referring to himself? Or was he just taking the piss out of the need to follow fashion?

In yellow shoes I get the blues
Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet
With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink
There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers
In my paisley shirt I look a jerk
And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight
But oh oh my haircut looks so bad
Vegetable man where are you?

So I've changed my gear, and I find my knees,
And I covered them up with the latest cut,
And my pants and socks all point in a box,
They don't make long of my nylon socks,
The watch, black watch
My watch with a black face
And a big pin, a little hole,
And all the lot is what I got,
It's what I wear, it's what you see,
It must be me, it's what I am,
Vegetable man

Syd was by this time, October 1967, losing his grip

Syd's increasingly erratic LSD-fuelled behaviour became intolerable for the rest of group. At one concert, it is said he mixed the oily hair ointment Brylcreem over his head to make it look like his head was melting under the stage lights.

Joe Boyd, who produced their first single, Arnold Layne, told how Syd passed him on the way into the UFO club one night, with eyes like impenetrable pools of blackness, a sign of just how far gone he was.

You can see the difference in his appearance in the second part of this See Emily Play clip (3 minutes in) where they are playing Apples and Oranges on the Dick Clark Show in the US. So the story goes, when they were taping one TV show in the US, he refused to move his mouth.

The writing was on the wall for the end of Syd's tenure, when EMI declined to release Vegetable Man or Scream Thy Last Scream as a single. It must have been clear to the band they could not carry on as they were. They were all still very young and inexperienced. More mature heads may have been more sympathetic to Syd, whose mental problems were all too real. 

They claim they didn't actually fire Syd and that bringing in Dave Gilmour wasn't an attempt to force him out. But after yet another night when he was unable or unwilling to perform, they just decided not to pick him up on the way to the next  gig, and that was the end of it.

And they moved on. It's possible the other members of Pink Floyd did not want to see Syd's last songs released. They are a document of one very talented man's descent into madness - as Gilmour said "never to return".

On the other hand, if it's acceptable to dredge up those last desperate recordings of Nick Drake, to reveal the dark despair of a song like Black-Eyed Dog, then I think it's equally valid for the world to hear Syd's last recordings with the Floyd, tracks that reveal not just his mental state, but the culmination of a musical journey.

For me anyway, there was an artistic statement being made here by Syd, however perverse. The band must have been in on it too, because both these tracks are essentially finished items. Acetates were made ready for the single's release. They also recorded a version of Vegetable Man for a BBC session in December 1967.

Syd post-Floyd, couldn't sustain his musical talent

There's no mistaking the psychotic whimsy here - it's the work of someone on the edge of madness; completely uncommercial and obviously for those close to Syd, too raw to be released, ever.

That's the strangest thing, though, for me. After all this time, when compilation after compilation was released, at great expense for the Floyd completists, the release of these tracks was never considered.

Really, no history of Pink Floyd could ever be complete until Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream take their rightful place in the collected works.

Psychedelic Light Show at UFO, 1967 

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Also On This Blog:

Wish You Were Here - A Flawed Diamond 

Pink Floyd On Tour - 1974 and 1977

Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains

March 1973 - 'Dark Side of the Moon' enters the charts

LIFE Magazine reports on the 'New Far-Out Beatles' - June 1967