King Crimson: A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson

So this is the album — also bought from Woking's Record Scene, marked down from £7.75 to £6.25, in the summer of 1981— led me to get the first Fairport Convention album. The link between the two is a track that, at the time, was only on The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson, but now there are two versions of it on The Brondesbury Tapes. I'm referring to I Talk to the Wind, a piece of hippy whimsy, that eventually ended up being sung by Greg Lake on the first King Crimson album, but was first sung by Judy Dyble… one of the singers on that Fairport Convention album. The other singer was a guy called Ian McDonald — but not the same Ian McDonald who was Judy Dyble's boyfriend at the time she sang I Talk to the Wind, and who also played on all recordings of the song, since he went on to join King Crimson (after splitting with Judy). I hope you're following all this: I only pieced it together just now, 28 years after buying the two records, with the help of Wikipedia. Judy released a solo album earlier this year, including performances by many old chums, including Robert Fripp, sole common denominator of all King Crimsons, but only one Ian McDonald.

But all of that is a footnote to my introduction as a young person to the ways of Crimson. How well do I remember putting Starless, recorded onto cassette from this LP, on at break time in the Sixth Form Centre and having heartfelt protests to take it off PDQ!? Even the women serving the coffee, who normally retained a UN-peacekeeper distance from such disputes, made it clear they thought it was a step too far.

It's clear from just glancing at where the tracks originate from that the selection cares little for giving a 'representative' cross-section of the band's output up to 1974. Every track bar one from that first album is represented in some version. And Red, the 40th anniversary version of which arrived just yesterday and has yet to make it into the CD player, takes up one of the four sides. Meanwhile, Poseidon, Islands, Earthbound, Lizard and (shamefully) Lark's Tongues get only five short tracks between them.

If this selection were not sufficient evidence of the thumbprint of Fripp, the extensive band diary removes all shadow of a doubt. This was a real treasure — and the true guide — for me. It combines facts, personal observations, press clippings and colourful reviews. For every positive appraisal, an counterbalancing negative is also included. Hence this Time Out review of Red:

…immensely unbeautiful music to have nightmares by…Without wishing to dismiss in an offhand manner what is apparently a serious-minded band, all that can really be said is that this album is invaluable for those wishing to temporarily obliterate peace of mind from their lives or precipitate irreversible neural damage.

Until the arrival of Sid Smith's more or less authorised history of the band, the 'guide' was the most in-depth account there was.

On the back cover of this booklet, I have sellotaped my own press cutting from the 4 July 1981 issue of Sounds, titled "King's new clothes":

KING CRIMSON have re-formed with the line-up that toured Britain and Europe in May as Discipline, consisting of Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew guitars, Tony Levin bass and Bill Bruford drums.

Quite why the King Crimson name has been resuscitated, apart from the fact that both Fripp and Bruford used to be in the band, is something of a mystery, particularly when they will be releasing an album called Discipline on EG/Polydor in September, but the fact that tours of America and Japan are being set up may have something to do with it…

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Comments

[clive]

Apropos of nothing... I worked in Record Scene in Woking in the summer of 81 before going to uni. I probably sold you this album. :)

[David]

Wow! Was Record Scene the one in the shopping centre near the entrance to Sainsbury's? I guess it must have been (there weren't many record shops in Woking, and I was a loyal visitor to all of them).

So thank you, Clive, I enjoy the record, and it's still in good nick, three decades on.