Sunday 7 May 2023

King Crimson – "Earthbound" (Island Records – HELP 6) 1972


Dreadfully lacking in inspiration,one has resorted to making topical references to that rather weird Coronation event of King Charles the third. So i typed "King" into the search box on my iTunes and out of the hundreds of replies from what i assume is some kind of artificial intelligence, I have selected King Crimson's "Earthbound" as a medium to air various bitter observations about celebrity status and how a constitutional monarch is way preferable to the awful heads of state that other systems provide,even if they don't have sausage fingers.
Yes Chuck the Third has crimson sausage fingers,or King Crimson Sausage Fingers, not dissimilar to Doctor Zoidberg of Futurama's facial arrangement. Is our King......yes i say 'Our',... really an intelligent crustacean from a planet in the goldilocks zone orbiting a near-by star, or ,as other more dubious members of the so-called counter-culture would have it....a Lizard. He was anointed with the Holy-Oil(????),ironically all while 'Just Stop Oil protesters were being dragged away as if they were in Moscow;all this behind a screen to prevent us seeing his lizard form, or his pink exoskeleton.
I'll put myself out on a limb by claiming that he is 'Probably' Human,.....possibly?

Doctor Zoidberg
King Charles III

Not only was it a vast TV audience that were allowed inside The Court of the Crimson King to witness lots of inexplicable christian nuttiness from millennia ago.There oozed also, a scraping,if that's the correct collective noun,of Celebrities made up the majority of the witless witnesses.We used to have Sir Lancelot,but now we got Sir Kier Starmer. In a thousand years time ,when we will all look like Dr Zoidberg and live in undersea caves cowering from the lethal solar winds and Third World War era half-life plutonium deposits; Our ancestors will decipher what records remain, using a charred copy of Hello magazine as their rosetta stone,to gleefully discover that Lionel Ritchie was actually there and not a myth, and tales of altruistic folk heroes who gave their own blood to the poor,Ant and Dec,will be proved to be possibly true.
There's more!?.....Dame Joan Armatrading was there, as was professional royal turd fly Stephen Fry...but wait...here's the best one.....Nick Cave?????.....What was he gonna do there?.....croon Junkyard King on the Stone of Scone? Yep Punk is certainly dead.
He desperately explains himself here...if you're interested.

It gets worse....the patronising Woke by numbers flavour of the proceedings tended to stick in one's cynical throat like the inescapable glotal stop in my east midlands accent.
They Don't mean it.....of course they don't mean it....but they feel they have to mean it.....so we get Woke by numbers in words and song.Its what psychopaths do...imitate the emotions thay don't have,then carry on killing, or being the CEO of a multinational.
There was the obligatory "we're not Racist us ,Gospel choir, representatives of even sillier relgions than Christianity, with Humanism and Atheism notable by their absence,as was, indeed...GOD?
It certainly wasn't 'Starless' but it was certainly "Bible Black".......I'm soooo clever ain't I ?
I still found myself watching it though.
However, the 1972 version of King Crimson seemed to fit the bill.Similarities with the Crimson King, in a place stuffed with 21st Century Schiziod men,a 21st century Zoidberg man,....not to mention that Charles, Camilla and Diana were "Three of a Perfect Pair"......the British army,instead of preparing for the looming war,marched perfectly to the "Beat", and showed great "Discipline"..something we rarely see in these "Islands"......leaving the guests to enjoy their "Larks Tongues In Aspic" with chips and mushy peas...see where I'm going with this? Yup, king Crimson album wordplay,...play it with your mates when you're reeeeeaaaaallllly bored.. They did an album called "Lizard" as well,featuring some peerless Mellotron play,referencing the royals' Lizard DNA. Something that Harry Hewitt isn't burdened with,because his real sperm donor wasn't a royal, and his mother a Spencer of good English stock.
Despite Charles being anointed as a living God,he will have to come to terms with being Earthbound.
And we will have to come to terms with Crimson's second best official live album,that wasn't accepted for release in the "USA" because it was too raw and noisy.
There's plenty of ferocious Sax abuse, recorded well into the "Red" by Mel Collins on this one,and none of those nice gentle tunes from their early days.It seems Fripp and the chaps may have been exposed to post-1970 Soft Machine,before Bruford and Wetton joined to create the classic prog power trio they became.
God Save the King...Crimson!?

This is Fun isn't it?...which classic period Crimson album did I NOT mention in the shite I wrote above?.....answers on a postcard addressed to Mad Vlad,number 1X, Secret Siberian Bunker (The one the CIA knows allll about),unoccupied Russia.Must be postmarked before the end of the world.

TRACKLIST:

21st Century Schizoid Man 11:45
Peoria 7:30
The Sailor's Tale 4:45
Earthbound 7:08
Groon 15:30


17 comments:

mandolinny said...

The one you omitted was In the Wake of Poseidon, recorded when Lake had given notice to run off (at the mouth) with Keith Emerson.

I got to meet and interview Fripp once, late '70s when he was recording with people like Daryl Hall and Debbie Harry. I asked him about Lizard, which I think is an undiscovered gem, and he professed to regard it too painful to talk about. But he was real proud of Islands. Go figure.

rev.b said...

I am reduced to referring to the ‘royals’ only by their titles, The Adulterer, The Paramour, The Bigot, The Pedophile, etc. It only makes sense to honor the event with the most grating least inspired official album King Crimson ever released . Well chosen.

Jonny Zchivago said...

Mandolinny, you win the prize.....a night out with Prince Andrew at the sex-trafficking refuge of your choice.

northfieldhat said...

King Charles the Turd

northfieldhat said...

There was a story that erupted in the states about someone seen in the stands in a bad disguise, with a mop of white hair and shaggy facial hair. Observers were sure it was someone easily recognized in a ridiculously bad disguise. Turns out it was Karl Jenkins, late of Soft Machine's last days. After hearing his music since Soft Machine, it is a bad disguise.

Jonny Zchivago said...

They were having a good laugh about this on morning TV.I had no idea what Karl Jenkins looked like,and didn't even place the name.They played some awful TV soundtrack and faux classical music,which he was responsible for.Terrible stuff. No-one mentioned Soft Machine.....as usual....or Nucleus,which he was in as well was he not?

Philip Johnson said...

"An extremely poorly-recorded live album," - NME Book of Rock, 1973.

Karl Jenkins is actually Sir Karl nowadays.

northfieldhat said...

Yes, Nucleus as well. He has only written what sounds like the worst
needle drop music ever since the 90's. I think he did it quite cynically
and that's why he hides under the hair and whiskers (although that is his original
soft machine hairstyle). That's what got him knighted. The pap.

parmalee said...

OH,man, Karl Jenkins. Whenever I hear that name I think of that first track from Seven--bad porn music. And not like whatisname's Larks Tongue ripoff for "Emmanuelle", or Klaus Schulze's weird porn jaunts, or even those Jean Rollins films shot in scenic southern France that make you think you're watching a weird "art" film til a bunch of people start having sex, but like straight-up 70's American porn. What a bastard. Moreover, Wyatt-less Softs is bad enough, but Hopper-less? Criminal.

Also, I never understood Fripp's disdain for Lizard. I always thought it was a fantastic album. More Tippett than Poseidon, crazy horns (which I always figured Tippett was more responsible for than Fripp--at least on side two), and even Jon Anderson when he was still singing about shining flying purple wolfhounds. What more could you want?

parmalee said...

Also, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Karl Jenkins was responsible for that putz ripping off the great Elton Dean's name.

mandolinny said...

Thanks, Jonny! But can I go to Uppsala instead?

I noticed how many players Soft Machine adopted from Ian Carr's Nucleus. But when they hired Jenkins it stopped being amusing. He'd have to stretch himself all out of shape just to rise to the level of "inconsequential."

dee_seejay said...

There's a lot of things i'll never understand about Fripp...like why he thinks those kitchen covers videos he makes with the missus are anything but tedious.. Bloody amazing at what he does with the Crimson though. The 80s Belew period was my fav I think. Seen the new Toby Amies Documentary 'In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50' (2022) perchance (same bloke who made 'The Man Whose Mind Exploded' [2012])? Very interesting I thought, focusing on the (i won't say madness, more eccentricity) of King Fripp of course, following them around on tour and featuring band members present and past, the latter saying unintentionally side-splitting things like "I still think he NEEDS me" (Belew). Thanks for this btw, very kind - pinkie:)

SlowLearner said...

"I FOUND MYSELF LOOKING AT THIS", This is the kind of expression we unfortunately have not in French. We are not able to be a different person than ourselves, and so when we listen to shit, we are not supposed to come in the room and just find ourselves listening to this shit. It's a pity I and myself are always the same (except for Rimbaud).

Jonny Zchivago said...

Rimbaud????....that bloke in Crass?..... or those Blokes in Crass.

Anonymous said...

Bloody Hell....what a load of bull-shit everything is.
Mr DIY or DIe? Do you have any Three Johns you want to donate to the poor?
Lovingly yours,
Drunk Bloke from Australia

Jonny Zchivago said...

Hey Drunk Bloke, it isn't just me then? We are drowning in a sea of bollocks.
I opened a radio show with "Teenage Nightingales To Wax" last year-ish,but not sure they fully fit the remit...... but i may scrape a bunch of ep's together purely for entertainment purposes of course.
NOt really that big a fan now, but was back in the day.
ps
what do you have to say about Nick Cave attending the coronation?

keep calm and poofter on said...

Breaking-Halfwit Harry and Meagain Sparkle just queefed after a paparazzi yelled this is MAGA country!