Music Arcades: King Crimson: Larks Tongues in Aspic

This is the third 'difficult mid-70s listening' album of the last fortnight (1, 2), and probably the best of the bench. I first heard it, and taped it, at school (I didn't get this CD copy until 2000, when it was a fiver in Fopp). Its impact was strong and immediate: I loved the way it went from the delicate percussion at the start to the heaviest of riffs in the first minute or two. This seemed to me like it was the genuinely progressive part of progressive rock.

YouTube has this live performance of this, complete with costumes of the period, showing how important Jamie Muir's approach to percussion was to the spirit of the band at the time. This was the only album he played on before he left the band.

I'm intrigued that Andrew Keeling has produced what looks like a beautiful CD-ROM guide to the album, with musical notation and analysis. I'm actually about half way through Sid Smith's book on King Crimson at the moment, and have just reached the point where they record this album (I've already learned that Andrew Keeling was actually invited to write an arrangement for an earlier King Crimson song when he was just 15). It's a very enjoyable read for a fan and Fripp-follower, and it might even prompt me to get Keeling's CD-ROM, even though I imagine I would only understand about a fifth of it. I didn't know that Robert Fripp had dabbled in Wicca witchcraft in the run-up to the recording of this album — the sun/moon design on the cover may relate to that or something tantric. His position as reluctant and passive-aggressive de facto leader of the band is even more complex than I imagined: he seems to have been a determined advocate of democracy within the band, but when he hated the results of that democracy (as he often did), it was never long before he inspired fellow band members to leave.

Another thing I learned: Jamie Muir left the band, not because of any friction with Fripp, but because of an inner calling he felt after being overwhelmed by the book Autobiography of a Yogi, which provided the template for Tales from the Topographic Oceans (notwithstanding Jon Anderson's engagement with the book being possibly less intense). Muir is quoted by Sid Smith:

I feel embarrassed even talking about it but after reading about two pages of this book, the tears just started pouring down my face and they just wouldn't stop. I didn't really know what was going on. I read a bit of that book each night before I went to bed and, every time I started reading it, I just started crying and crying. It was extremely bizarre and it went on for months. It felt like it was a flood just going through and washing my personality, my past and everything away.

With the benefit of a quarter of a century since I first heard it, I now see Larks' Tongues in Aspic as an interesting and valuable album, one in which I still hear new things on each listen, but I take more pleasure from Discipline.

Late last year, Andrew Collins included Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Parts 1 & 2 in a Radio 4 'Ten worst songs to have sex to' (Radio 4?! Has this plague of fatuous lists got so out of hand?). This was picked up by a few fans, who, as Robert Fripp recorded in his diary, pointed out that Part 2 was so blatantly sexual that it had been used on the soundtrack to Emmanuelle. I like Andrew Collins. He plays along with the game of his profession and thus gets drawn into some daft activities, but he rarely dodges criticism, so it wasn't surprising that he went on to post a defence and apology on the fan forum. He didn't go as far as admitting that he hadn't listened to the music for ages, but his response more or less implies that.