Tag Archives: King Crimson
1969 ARCHIVE DIVE (PART 1)
As many readers know, we love anniversaries here at Vinyl Connection, especially the ones ending with a zero. One decade, two decades, three decades, four… And of course the half century! Over the past couple of years we have featured many albums from 1967 and 1968 and reckon it’s a tradition worth continuing. But because […]
FIRST WE TAKE VIENNA
Sometimes it can feel as if contemporary versions of ‘classic’ rock outfits are more like a tribute band than the real thing. Not so with King Crimson. Years ago, Robert Fripp made the memorable pronouncement that King Crimson exists when there is King Crimson music to be played. Seems that the need has never really abated. […]
TALK, IT’S ONLY TALK
I In 1974, Robert Fripp broke up the band he co-founded in late 1968, one of the most innovative and restless to achieve widespread success. King Crimson’s final release in this period was Red, arguably one of the band’s finest and most consistent and certainly one of my favourites. II In April 1981, Sounds magazine […]
AN EDGY GENTLEMAN (2)
The delay and decay guitar experiments Robert Fripp used as the foundation for God Save The Queen / Under Heavy Manners were recorded in 1979, with the album being released in January 1980. A couple of months later, Fripp started rehearsing a new band in—according to the back cover of the subsequent album—“a 14th century […]
THE KING HAS ABDICATED (1)
It was always worth checking out Allans sales. Although determinedly mainstream and totally in thrall to the hits of the day, the music shop occasionally ordered—and got stuck with—oddities, outliers and obscurities. These ended up in the SALE bins, usually at excellent prices. I loved those sales; you could take a punt of three or […]
REARVIEW MIRROR #1
Being an multi-part wander through the Vinyl Connection year in music JANUARY On vacation you often have to settle for charity shops for your crate-digging fix. Sometimes you’ll be lucky and the local Sunday market coincides with your time in a sea-side town, but not necessarily. Even if it does, chances are the solitary box […]
COMPACT COLLECTING
It’s not all vinyl! vinyl! vinyl! here at Vinyl Connection^. Half a lifetime of collecting Compact Discs has resulted in a well entrenched habit, meaning a steady trickle of the little silver coasters has entered VC Headquarter over the past twelve months. Here is a selection. King Crimson — Absent Lovers, Montreal 1984 [DGM 2007] […]
THE ROAD TO RESTRAINT
I remember seeing a striking cover on shelves in the mid-70s… a slender wrist rises up, clasping a silver ingot like a futuristic advertising photograph. The skin tones are dull, muted, as the shot is taken against a bright white light, a small bright rising star behind the argent rectangle. Behind, surrounding all, a deep […]
LASTING FIRSTS
Debut albums are a bit special. Often the result of a long gestation period that may well have begun in someone’s teenage bedroom, there is an exuberance and excitement to a first offering that combines confidence (“Look at me! Listen to my music!”) and nervousness (“Is it OK? Will anyone like me?”). Over the life of […]
UNCANNY MASTERPIECE
IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING A reflection in two parts by a grateful subject I Has there been a more spine tingling opening to an album than the beginning of In The Court Of The Crimson King? An interstellar wind approaches from the depths of nowhere, fades, then explodes into one of the […]
