King Crimson.1982In doing those Favorite Songs by Favorite Bands posts, J. Eric Smith picked King Crimson as his current favorite. The band didn’t make my list, because I don’t have enough of their albums. I do enjoy their music, in their various incarnations.
Meanwhile, this week is the first anniversary of the death of the legendary blogger Dustbury, a/k/a Charles G. Hill. I wrote about him here. “Charles was the person most likely to comment on a piece I wrote about music. He would add an anecdote or an obscure detail. Or write about it himself.”
I made some passing reference to the song Cat Food by King Crimson as one of my favorites. It’s on Eric’s list too, BTW. Chaz electronically chuckled at that obscure reference.
Unfortunately, the links I made to his blog don’t work anymore as his blog has closed. FORTUNATELY, it still lives on via the Wayback Machine.
Indiscipline. I had a boss who would look at the business he built. He’d say some of these lyrics:
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat-
(Actually, we ALL said THAT…)
The more I look at it
The more I like it
Heh, I do think it’s good
The fact is…
No matter how closely I study it
No matter how I take it apart
No matter how I’ll break it down
It remains consistent
I wish you were here to see it!
In the Court of the Crimson King I played a great deal in high school AND college, preferably very loudly
Yeah, another Rolling Stone list, this time of “progressive rock” albums that I own. I’m not sure what the term “prog rock” means, precisely, but I hope, now that Rush has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, that Emerson, Lake & Palmer; King Crimson; and especially Yes get in one of these years.
17. Mike Oldfield, ‘Tubular Bells’ (1973): 45 weeks on the charts, getting to #3
I never actually SAW the movie The Exorcist, yet I associate the album with the film’s foreboding theme. There’s so much more to the album.
My favorite part is that weird section “where ‘master of ceremonies’ Vivian Stanshall mock-pretentiously introduces an array of instruments — ‘glockenspiel!’ and ‘two slightly. . .distorted guitars’ — à la the Bonzo Dog Band,” which I think is a hoot. And Oldfield wasn’t even 20 yet!
12. Emerson, Lake and Palmer, ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ (1973): 47 weeks on the charts, getting to #11
That first ELP album, the one with Lucky Man, whose synthesizer I could replicate, I listened to A LOT in college. I haven’t heard this album in a while, though, as I have it on vinyl. For years, my secret fantasy was to have ELP play ‘Jerusalem’ at my former church, which has a fine organ.
10. Yes, ‘Fragile’ (1971): 46 weeks on the charts, getting to #4
I also listened to this album A LOT at college, probably once a week during my freshman year. It was/is hypnotic. I didn’t know, or particularly care, what the lyrics were.
7. Jethro Tull, ‘Thick as a Brick’ (1972), 46 weeks on the charts, getting to #1 for two weeks
This album I didn’t play very often, though I love that introductory narrative. Not nearly my favorite Tull album, as I preferred Aqualung and especially Songs from the Wood.
5. Yes, ‘Close to the Edge’ (1972), 32 weeks on the charts, getting to #3
Actually, I much prefer ‘Fragile’. This album consists of only three very long songs that were so exhausting to record that “when recording for the album finished, drummer Bill Bruford had grown tired of the band’s style and songwriting methods and left to join King Crimson.”
2. King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ (1969), 25 weeks on the charts, getting to #28
Now, THIS album I played a great deal in high school AND college, preferably very loudly. I especially loved the first song, and the title track, the two songs my friend put on a six-CD set of 1960s music.
I also related to the sentence in another song, “Confusion will be my epitaph.”
A few years ago, around Christmas, I heard Power by Kayne West, which samples the vocal from “Schizoid Man”; I thought was DREADFUL. The original version, incidentally, was dedicated to Spiro Agnew, Vice President of the US under President Richard Nixon.
1. Pink Floyd, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ (1973): 741 weeks on the charts!, only 1 week at #1
The group’s eighth LP was one of the best-selling albums worldwide, ever, with an estimated 50 million copies sold. It was on the Billboard charts from 1973 to 1988. It’s often considered one of the greatest albums of all time.
But I didn’t buy it right away. In fact, I may have purchased The Wall in 1980 or 1981 before finally picking up Dark Side. I liked the single Money (#13 in 1973) but was turned off by the album’s seemingly cultish admiration. But I DO like it.
As Rolling Stone noted: “From its sync-up with The Wizard of Oz (press play after the lion’s third roar) to the Flaming Lips and friends’ track-for-track covers project to Krusty the Clown’s lost Dark Side of the Moonpie to the endless hawking of the prism-and-rainbow logo, the album has endured as a pop-culture touchstone since its release.”
I own albums by FM, Electric Light Orchestra, Kansas, Renaissance, Supertramp, Genesis, and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but not the ones listed.
The truth is, that morning, the song I was REALLY singing was Windy by the Association.
Back on April 27, the Albany, NY area had a WIND advisory. I’m stubborn, though, since it was ostensibly warm enough to ride my bike to a certain point (by the school on Northern Boulevard for you locals). I needed the exercise, though I required gloves and a knit cap, because, as Jaquandor wrote about the winter: “Wind can pretty much render any set of weather circumstances unpleasant.” That piece came to mind during the sojourn.
How was it possible that I was ALWAYS riding into a headwind?
I get to my initial destination, waiting for a bus. It was trash day, and a piece of recycling had fallen out. Ever get a deli platter for a party? In the US, at least, the bottom section is usually black. As it started moving around, I decided to pick it up. It would move just out of my reach, as though someone had tied a string on it and was yanking it away in a minor comedy. I finally stepped on it, retrieved it, and placed it in the recycling bin.
By this time, the clear plastic top of the platter combo, much lighter in weight, was blown out of the recycling bin, and just took off, out into the street, against traffic, at about 12 miles per hour; I had no chance of retrieving it, but I marveled at its peculiar artistry.
On the way home, it wasn’t bad heading south, but heading west was very difficult. Usually, I just take lengthy stretches in each direction, but on that day, I’d zig down one street, and zag down another to avoid an extended ride into the wind. The distance was not much farther, but I got home, unusually exhausted.
