"Who the f+*% are you?": The Unboxing of The Who

Robert Fripp & The Death of Gwen Stacy Soundtrack

A soundtrack for the blogpost I am currently working on.

Robert Fripp & The Death of Gwen Stacy Soundtrack:

1. I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges 1969
2. Baby’s On Fire - Brian Eno 1973
3. Love → Building on Fire - Talking Heads 1977
4. Heroes - David Bowie 1977
5. Here Comes The Flood - Peter Gabriel 1977
6. Marquee Moon - Television 1977
7. Warszawa - David Bowie 1977
8. Blank Generation - Richard Hell & The Voidoids 1977
9. Fade Away And Radiate - Blondie 1978
10. I Zimbra - Talking Heads 1979
11. North Star - Robert Fripp 1979
12. Under Heavy Manners - Robert Fripp 1980
13. Frame By Frame - King Crimson 1981

Robert Fripp & The Death of Gwen Stacy Timeline

Robert Fripp & The Death of Gwen Stacy Timeline

I've been working on this blogpost since the beginning of 2016. I decided to make a timeline to help me with the narrative. The highlighted words are links.

• 1949 October 29 - Gurdjieff dies in France
• 1971 - John G. Bennett founds the IACE
• 1973 February - Libyan Flight 114 shot down by Israel over the Sinai
• 1973 June & July - The Amazing Spider Man #121 and #122 "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" hits newsstands
• 1973 November - No Pussyfooting by Fripp & Eno released
• 1974 September 25 - King Crimson formally disbanded
• 1974 October - King Crimson’s Red released
• 1974 October - Fripp attends the 10 month long 5th course of IACE at Sherborne
• 1977 - Fripp joins Bowie & Eno in Berlin to record Heroes
• 1977 - Fripp and girlfriend Joanna Walton (a New York native) decamp to Hell’s Kitchen (later the Bowery)
• 1977 - Fripp records Sacred Songs with Daryl Hall. The album is not released until 1980
• 1978 May 7 - Robert Fripp & Blondie play at CBGB’s at a benefit for Johnny Blitz
• 1978 June 2 - Peter Gabriel’s second album released. It was intended to be part of a trilogy along with Daryl Hall’s Sacred Songs and Fripp’s Exposure
• 1978 August 31 - Disappearance of Musa al-Sadr in Libya
• 1978 September - Parallel Lines released, Fripp plays on Fade Away & Radiate
• 1978 December - An image from Fripp & Debbie Harry’s photo shoot for the unmade remake of Alphaville appears on the cover of Melody Maker
• 1979 - Fripp appears on The Boffomundo Show
• 1979 May 19 - Fripp appears on SNL with Linda Ronstadt and Phoebe Snow
• 1979 June - Exposure released featuring lyrics by Joanna Walton
• 1979 - U.S. places Libya on the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list
• 1980 January - God Save The Queen/Under Heavy Manners released
• 1980 December - Fripp meets Gilda Radner backstage at a Hall & Oates Christmas show. Radner is dating Hall at the time.
• 1981 April 30 - Discipline debuts at Moles Club in Bath, Somerset
• 1981 August - U.S. shoots down two Libyan planes
• 1981 September 22 - King Crimson releases Discipline
• 1982 - Fripp & Andy Summers release I Advance Masked
• 1984 April 17 - Yvonne Fletcher murdered outside the Libyan embassy in London
• 1985 October - Toyah & Fripp meet at a charity luncheon
• 1985 December 27 - Rome and Vienna airport attacks
• 1986 - Toyah & Fripp: The Lady or the Tiger? Released
• 1986 March - Gulf of Sidra incident
• 1986 April 5 - La Belle Discotheque bombing 1:45 a.m.
• 1986 April 15 - U.S. bombing raid of Libya
• 1986 May 16 - Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp get married
• 1987 - Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson get married
• 1988 December 21 - Pan Am Flight 103 bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland. Joanna Walton is killed along with 269 others
• 2001 January 31 - Megrahi found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment
• 2006 - Exposure re-released as a 24-bit 2-disc remaster
• 2009 August 20 - Megrahi released from a Scottish prison due to prostate cancer
• 2011 October 20 - Gaddafi captured and killed during the Battle of Sirte
• 2012 May 20 - Megrahi dies of prostate cancer.
• 2012 to Present - No one else has ever been charged in the Lockerbie Bombing, but the case is still open. Robert Fripp remains active as a musician in King Crimson. He and Toyah are happily married. Exposure has benefited from retrospective reviews and is considered to be the definitive Art Rock masterpiece to emerge out of NYC’s late 70’s New Wave music scene and it is a fitting tribute to Joanna Walton who provided most of the lyrics. Peter Parker still holds a place in his heart for Gwen Stacy.

Incidental Music on BBC Programmes

Incidental Music on BBC Programmes

Auntie Beeb has always had a knack for using fragments of songs in their programmes. They do this in such a way as to make the song wholly new while at the same time vaguely familiar which then sends the musicophile searching through the interwebs to find relief from the maddening earworm that is relentlessly burrowing into their brain. You’ve seen the questions - What is the song at 1:32? Please tell me what the song is that plays after the opening credits? Etc. etc.

I am going to concentrate on three programmes.

1. Philip K. Dick: A Day In The Afterlife - BBC Arena (1994)
2. The Canterbury Scene on Prog Rock Britannia (2008)
3. Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany - BBC 4 (2009)

Right? Let’s begin with a couple of starters then...

ITV Network, a competitor to the BBC, ran The South Bank Show between 1978 & 2010.

The South Bank Show opening titles

The music you hear is Variations on Paganini’s “24th Caprice” by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy  based on the novel by Douglas Adams, originally aired on the BBC in 1981 and used The Eagles song Journey of the Sorcerer from their 1975 album "One Of These Nights".

Okay, on to the mains…

Whoever chose the music for BBC Four - Arena must have been a fan of Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, particularly in the “Philip K. Dick: A Day In The Afterlife” episode.

Often mistaken for “Deep Blue Day” which you might be familiar with from this sequence in the 1996 film Trainspotting…

The music that plays over the title sequence of Arena is actually the title song from Eno’s 1975 album “Another Green World”.

“Deep Blue Day” is actually on the 1983 album “Apollo” Atmospheres & Soundtracks” of which seven songs were used in the 1989 documentary For All Mankind.  Another song from that same album was used quite liberally throughout the PKD Arena programme. The song An Ending (Ascent) is, in this humble blogger’s opinion, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever conceived.

I used it in the blogpost I wrote about the death of my mother.  

…

Moving on.

Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation In Three Movements had, as one of it’s movements, a segment on The Canterbury Scene.

The poem you hear from King Crimson Lyricist Pete Sinfield is from “The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen:

Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;

And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,

But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;

And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,

And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,

With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:

And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,

The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,

And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

The very first music you hear at the beginning of the programme is from Procol Harum’s 1968 album “Shine on Brightly”. In particular it’s the first movement in the five part epic “In Held ‘Twas In I” called “Glimpses of Nirvana”.

There are three other songs used in the Canterbury segment.

1. “Magic Man” by Caravan
2. “Impotence” by The Wilde Flowers - featuring Robert Wyatt on vocals.
3. "In A Silent Way" by Miles Davis starting at about 10:37.

Now for the pudding... 

Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany... Well lookee there, someone’s done it for me. They’ve gone and created a Spotify playlist of the songs used.

I would like to highlight a couple of pieces.

The music you here at the beginning of the doc is by the Krautrock band Popol Vuh and was used by Werner Herzog in his 1972 film Aguirre: The Wrath of God.

You can also hear an oft used piece of music by Wagner called  Götterdämmerung - Siegfried's death and Funeral march.

You might also recognize that same music from John Boorman's 1981 film "Excalibur".

In "The Enemy Of The World" which originally aired in six installments between December 1967 and January 1968, Bela Bartok's Music For Strings, Percussion and Celesta was used to great effect.

You might recognize it from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film of Stephen King's The Shining as well.

Well, that about wraps it up for now.

See you over the hill.

Pest Control

he killed roaches
for a living

big, juicy suckers

they didn't mind it so much

the killing

they were multitudinous
in number
and not
endangered 
in the slightest

the poison was
sweet to the taste
and left one
feeling warm
in the belly and inebriated
and serene

he was well known
to them

this gangly murderer

he mumbled
and smoked cigarettes
and his footfalls
resounded pleasantly

he was not a 
violent man
by nature

nevertheless,
he delivered death
like chinese take-out

ambivalently
he surveyed his
work

he flicked a 
carcass across
the floorboards
with his fingers
and then stood up 
and dropped
a yellow invoice
on the counter
near the 
microwave oven

he was hungry
and had decided
to stop by the
polish deli
on the corner

the coffee 
was lousy,
but the pierogies 
were excellent.