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

DOWNLOAD from the court of the crimson sausages HERE!