Discipline by King Crimson | Hacker News Reader

Discipline by King Crimson

loudersound.com

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Ah, when I was a teenager, this was (and still is) one of my favorite albums. A band changes direction completely, creates something totally new and loses the interest of their old fans. There are three albums that somewhat relate to each other, where an artist or a band changed their direction completely and created something the fans hated first, finding their audience much later.

King Crimson: Discipline. A mixture of quirky pop which at the first listen sounds simple, but when you dig into it turns into something completely different. Nice tight package of brilliant tracks, played by extremely talented musicians. Math music you can hum in the shower. The band kind of disappointed their old fans coming from the album Red to this one. I like both albums a lot.

Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden. Pop megastars got all the studio time they wanted. Instead of creating another mega hit after The Colour of Spring, they hired tens of musicians, turned off all lights from the studio and sampled the mistakes and off-takes together creating a new genre, which was later known as post rock. You kind of sink into their world when listening to this, finding new things even after decades of listening. 20 years later Radiohead did a similar change of direction and got really popular. The record company sued Talk Talk for their album in the 80's.

Miles Davis: On the Corner. Oh how the jazz audience hated this album. Miles wanted to get the young black audience, and created a funky kraut masterpiece of an album. Cut from tape by the mighty Teo Macero, it sets a standard of sampling used by the hip hop artists a decade later. As all the other albums I mentioned here, put some good headphones on and it's crazy how you can sink into the music. Repetitive in a similar way as Discipline, but instead of looking into pop and post punk, this one takes its influence from funk, krautrock and jazz.

If you have a mind that can appreciate any of these albums, the others will tickle the same cells in your brain.

U2 "Achtung Baby" is a pretty big redefinition of their musical expression compared to albums released in the 2nd half of 80's

1991 to be precise.

Amazing album, I remember the shock of listening to this album on my Walkman. It made you stop in your tracks.

Wonderful album, but I’m not sure it was a departure from previous work.

Opeth: Heritage. I didn't start listening to Opeth until long after this album was released, so I was extremely happy to hear the diversity of their catalog (which to me, isn't as drastic as others seem to feel about it).

Opeth made metal interesting for me again and definitely stretches what many folks would generally thing about it.

I had already had, and mostly lost, interest in metal. Then I discovered Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects. Sounds like Opeth is a band I should check out!

Nice, sounds a bit like 'djent'. Ever heard of Animals as Leaders? You might enjoy that, too.

I’ve heard of but haven’t listened. Thank you for the recommendation!

Discipline was the KC album that first "clicked" with me. Listened the hell out of that in high school, as well as Thrak and of course, ITCOTCK.

Didn't deep dive into Talk Talk until a few years ago, but so happy I have. Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock are both stunningly beautiful albums.

I recommend reading the book from the studio engineer (Phill Brown) who worked on The Spirit of Eden, Laughing Stock and Mark Hollis' solo album:

Are We Still Rolling?: Studios, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll - One Man's Journey Recording Classic Albums

There are three chapters only for these three albums, that open up the process and how crazy it all was to make. The whole group suffered from depression and PTSD when the sessions of Laughing Stock were over.

And yes, Laughing Stock might be my all time favorite album.

Edit: There's also a great talk with the engineer of Laughihg Stock on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tqGekATrWg

Those three are some of my absolute favourites. I feel like I listen more to Laughing Stock these days than Spirit of Eden simply because I think I know every last nuance of SoE from repeated listening. I love the solo album but weirdly never listen to it that often. Possibly because I always end up listening to Laughing Stock first. It is most definitely the weirdest of the three. I feel like the others demand your full attention to appreciate, but Laughing Stock makes me want out to get out a corkboard to fully understand it.

So sad that Hollis quit the business. I understand that he was completely fine with doing so, but I feel like we missed out on a lot.

I recommend reading the book. The hard fights with the record company, mad and rough studio sessions that went on for months, big financial losses and law suites that followed all the albums were not fun. The record company tried to destroy Laughing Stock from their lists completely, and they almost buried his solo album too.

R.I.P. Mark Hollis.

P.S. Check out a band called 'O'Rang. It's from ex. Talk Talk members Lee Harris and Paul Webb. Or Bark Psychosis, that has Harris on drums in their second album, if you're up for more music in the style of Laughing Stock.

Of course it is an incommensurable loss.

I must recommend to check lesser known pearls in the past productions: live recordings, BBC radio sessions. Some may have missed a few gifts.

I'll add MGMT to the mix. Their first album Oracular Spectacular gave us a few well-known pop hits, but their next albums Congratulations and Little Dark Age veered deep into psych rock and totally alienated the pop fans. The new albums are totally unsuited for casual listening and are probably best enjoyed with some scheduled substances.

I find it so interesting how their self titled album has just been zapped from everyone's minds. The other day somebody said to me that every single album they've made has been fantastic, so I brought up the self titled and they'd never heard of it! Same with you I assume.

I think most people who are really into the band prefer the B side of OS and consider Congratulations their magnum opus.

lol I had the exact same thought, MGMT is the truly alienating album.

I'd suggest Ministry's first album With Sympathy full of 80s synth-pop followed by everything else. I found Ministry with Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste, and then dutifully went searching for the previous albums. When I found Sympathy, I thought something surely must have gone wrong at the plant making the CDs.

Thanks! Both Spirit of Eden and On the Corner are among my favorite albums for basically the reasons you outlined, so now I’m intrigued by the shift between Red and Discipline!

The interesting thing here is that Red is a brilliant brilliant album. An absolute banger.

And so is Discipline, but people realized that only later and hated it at first. It is totally different from Red.

I hadn't listened to On the Corner before. Yea, I'm a sad Miles fine. Thank you so much, what a great album.

Honestly - you should really just go through their discography in full sometime. There are a lot of great tracks off In Court of the Crimson King (I Talk to the Wind being a favourite of mine) along with Red (Starless being one I'd highlight). It's a band that sort of faded into obscurity IMO - being muscled out by bigger names from that era like Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd, all of which are definitely worth listening too, but King Crimson has got something special.

I talk to the Wind is amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing. Thanks for reminding this exists. It has been years since I listened to their music

The Discipline and 2000’s era KC are probably my least favorite. My preference is for the 70’s Wetton-fronted version and 95’s Thrak.

Part of me feels like 80’s Crimson was riding changes in music, rather than driving them. Another part applauds them for discarding the familiar and continuing to evolve.

Some of my standout favorites from the Discipline era are “Frame by Frame”, “Three of a Perfect Pair”. And everything Tony Levin does is incredible.

Epitaph on the same album gets more relevant every day.

Knowledge is a deadly friend When no one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind I see Is in the hands of fools.

Pete Sinfield's lyrics. He did a solo album in 1973. I think I still have my copy. You might enjoy it.

He's still alive, btw.

Aren't we all 21st Century schizoid men (and women)?

Providence, from Red, speaks to me, it's the story of life evolving from the chaos of the universe, existing briefly in something of a musically recognisable pattern, and then devolving back into the chaos from whence it came.

Telling the story of life in the solar system in an 8-minute span.

I discovered I talk to the Wind this past year and fell in love with it as well. Great track.

"Exiles" if you like KC ballads. It's a slow burn, but Fripp's solo at the end is almost the definition of making a guitar cry.

They tend to have a more abrasive, avant-garde and heavier sound than their prog peers. Big influence on metal and avant-prog bands for that reason. Still, quite understated.

talking about classic crimson... maybe some love for lizard? my room-mate at the time described it as "musicians walking around the studio dropping their instruments." and while it has it's challenging bits, i still love it dearly.

I remember seeing them in Edinburgh in the 70s. People were arriving late and chatting. Robert Fripp folded his arms and stood their silently for several minutes, looking at the audience as if they were vermin. Everyone went quiet and looked around at each other in embarrassment. Then, once you could have heard a pin drop, they started playing. Great.

You could see some amazing bands back then - I saw Beefheart three times.

I had a similar experience seeing them in Oslo a few years ago. They were incredibly strict about disruptions and people using devices. It came across entirely as a "don't be selfish and ruin the experience for others", and it was amazing. No talking, just music. It's the best concert I've ever been to. At the end they said to the audience "we would like to take some pictures of you guys, and of course you can now do the same". And we did.

I wish more artists had this attitude, as I no longer go to any "normal" concerts. Half the audience is drunk, and half the audience is having a conversation in the middle of a song. (The first part is fine, but it tends to exasperate the latter)

Of course, some music groups/performances are more suited for a "let's party"-attitude where this doesn't apply.

I've been to more than a few concerts where the artists had to tell people to shut the hell up, usually with little effect I'm afraid. I don't expect people to stand in complete silence or never say a word, but standing there with a group chatting away like you're in a pub is just rude. If you want to chat in a pub with some background music then that's completely fair, but go to, well, a pub, instead of ruining the concert the rest of us want to see and paid for. Don't even get me started on people talking in movie theatres.

When I saw Van Der Graaf Generator on their first reunion tour there were many signs everywhere telling people that the band asked people not to smoke which was pretty much impossible to miss (you could still smoke inside). I still smoked back in those days, and felt it was only polite not to. It's not a like a concert is that long. This request was, of course widely ignored by many others.

I appreciate artists don't want to start a conflict with their audience, but I feel they could do with a bit more John Zorn attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a95ODn5k_1c

Phones. Nothing like being in the quiet part of a symphony when the T-Mobile jingle rudely interrupts.

Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer lampooned this brilliantly with "Wrong Number."

Forgetting to turn off a phone is annoying but something I can understand and have some patience for. If a concert has 500 people and and you forget just 0.2% of the time, then there will be at least one who will accidentally forget. It sucks but it happens, and most of the time the phone owner is just as annoyed as anyone else.

Standing around chatting is something else entirely. Standing around chatting after being told it's not appreciated is something I can only accurately describe in words I'll omit here for politeness.

Ha! It’s always a pleasure to see John Zorn and his spirit pop up in the wild. I’ve got great respect for him and his craft.

> They were incredibly strict about disruptions and people using devices.

That's Robert Fripp. Nobody else in the band gives a damn, and Adrian Belew has even joked about how people are welcome to take pictures at his shows.

On the other hand, back in the day Adrian would tell people to stop smoking in the hall, that it interfered with his singing, etc. Not an issue today, I'm sure.

Fripp's always been known for that. In 70's/80's he'd threaten to end a show over a camera or recorder. I don't know if he ever did.

I figure that's the Fripp package. I have more respect for his desire-for-control than say Gail Zappa.

Fripp has certainly been known to walk off shows, to the consternation of his bandmates, but I don't know how frequent it truly is. I was at a show in SF in 2000 where everyone just assumed that he'd walked off (he'd issued a stern warning about photography and people kept snapping pics), but I learned later that the show ending with the band walking off followed by Adrian doing the encore solo (in this case Three of a Perfect Pair, on acoustic-electric guitar, which was much more amazing than it sounds) was normal.

(setlists that are available online [0] for those shows are longer than I remember, which is interesting... my memory or someone else's is faulty... I remember Three of a Perfect Pair being the end)

[0] https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/king-crimson/2000/the-fillmor...

> At the end they said to the audience "we would like to take some pictures of you guys, and of course you can now do the same". And we did.

Okay see they said to us no pics because they were going to do that after the show but then just left. I figured that was just Fripp was messing with the audience - that he did that at every show. Now I feel special.

There are a few clubs in Brooklyn that enforce, with varying degrees of strictness, a no cell phone policy. It's quite nice, and you definitely see a lot more people engaged and dancing because of it.

As a concert goer, I don't have as big of an issue with talking - though I can imagine it must be frustrating to the musicians.

Absolutely. One thing I'll say about metal shows in small venues, the audience is usually too distracted and rowdy to pull out phones and hold them up obscuring the view for everyone. People tend to be more in the moment. With rock shows or anything else I see more phones and distraction.

Grew up listening to these guys (in fact, even in the womb I was at their concerts) and I would certainly say that their music has shaped who I am for the better.

It is absolutely bonkers that they (or, Fripp at least) are still playing music after 50 years and still touching the hearts of so many people.

A little bit off topic -- but we had a new consultant join our team and the only personal effect he brought with him was a grateful dead dancing bears mug. I have no idea what he does but we were able to connect over our love of good music and still today are good friends.

Sometimes I wonder what the effects of increasing cultural segmentation are going to be. When I was younger, people I met at parties or shows were way more likely to share multiple cultural touchstones with me. Broadcasts like Subterranean on MTV2 created a shared surface area for indie and alt kids, basically across the United States. Later, on local levels, last.fm concert listings made it easy to find my people. That's how I met my wife.

Now, I have no idea where to find people who share the same "cultural flavor" as me. I feel like everyone's interests have become so idiosyncratic that I can no longer stand any of my best friend's favorite music, movies, memes, etc. and vice versa.

For a long time, I tried to stay on the local pulse so that I could find an audience for my music. It got harder and harder. I then had two realizations... I heard some advice from some musician, "Dont focus on being in a band, focus on making music." That's exactly the error I had been making for the past 15 years. The other week, one of my friends played a solo noise set on a bill of pop punk and emo bands. I missed his set, but apparently out of about 150 kids, only one stayed inside to watch him. He was still buzzing just from playing. I realized, even if I set up a show in the middle of the desert and no one shows up, I could still make some sounds and wiggle around and catch a little ecstasy from the ether.

It is easy to find like minded people if you look in the right places, but yes the democratisation of music has made mainstream sources useless as a cultural touchstone. For many people, none of the mainstream areas have any emotional impact, you have to dig deeper. However, even if you dig a little bit, the ocean breaks and you basically drown in a momentous sludgy breadth of continuously churned "flavour of the month" artists. What you have to do then is REALLY dig deep, again, as you say, to the artists who have no intention of actually getting more than a few hundred listens, and are fuelled only by the love of both the creation process, listening process, and dancing process.

At one point, it was pretty much just the mainstream, and there was not much possibility to really create and release music other than that.

Then, DIY movements happened, and if you scratched under the surface you found "the underground".

Now, we have layers and layers. For example, look at modern techno. Most people do not even know what techno is at all, they may even imagine something completely off-base like deadmau5 or whatever. Already, deadmau5 exists on a layer of obscurity below a lot of mainstream music. However, dig slightly further, and you reach actual modern techno, which is a HUGE industry, literally fuelling a huge part of the Berlin economy, so we have this overblown "underground" scene which is now actually really mainstream. You have to keep digging many more layers before you reach the real underground. It can take years to penetrate this...it is just so specialised, segmented, and granulated. It makes me think of Terence McKenna's weird "novelty theory" stuff: the complexity of the scenes seems to be increasing and fragmenting exponentially in and out of itself.

Thankfully, the underground is always still there, as long as someone still wants to do it.

> It is absolutely bonkers that they (or, Fripp at least) are still playing music after 50 years and still touching the hearts of so many people.

And the current King Crimson line-up give absolutely killer concerts. Older things like Letters or Sailor's Tale have likely never sounded this good. Really hope this band lasts long enough to incorporate more from the Fripp-Sinfield era into their setlists.

Recent tour may have been the last in NA, well at least with this line up of triple drummers. They played "Pictures of a City" from "In the Wake of Poseidon" and I was stunned. So good.

Robert Fripp released a new playlist, in youtube[1], named Music For Quiet Moments. It is an instrumental album and quoting from the description:

` Robert Fripp's "Music for Quiet Moments" series. We will be releasing an ambient instrumental soundscape online every week for 50 weeks. Something to nourish us, and help us through these Uncertain Times. `

1. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbnpw-XH5DOFvCUsuoNNb...

I consider this (posting on YT) a huge change from his God Save The Queen days. He's still obsessed with control but offering free content is something he wouldn't have done then.

Adding for context: After GStQ shows, he'd sit on the edge of the stage and talk to the audience. He definitely connected with his fans. Yeah he's (openly) a control freak but he's no 'tone deaf' elitist.

edit: It occurs to me that Discipline could be a product of that controlling nature.

Shameless plug: I moderate the r/kingcrimson subreddit and I invite all of you to discuss King Crimson there.

I saw Belew give a lecture in 1986 and remember being just mesmerized by his “avant dobro”.

https://youtu.be/UD-GrAMUzO8

https://youtu.be/24DKSkOQzm8

https://www.fretboardjournal.com/features/adrian-belew-and-t...

Then there’s the whole Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch thing.

https://toyahwillcox.com/toyah-roberts-sunday-lunch/

WTF... and yet. Such intensely creative and talented people. Wha’s like them? Damn few.

Fripp and Toyah also appeared on the UK couples quiz show Mr and Mrs a few years ago. Quite the most unexpected appearance but also quite charming in its own way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64VGyoIyBgc

I saw Belew sometime probably 2009 in a solo show in near Cincinnati OH. Amazing player and his solo albums are top notch. Later caught one of the first Adrian Belew Power Trio shows in Springfield OH. It was him and Julie Slick on Bass and Eric Slick on drums, both I think from the school of rock in Philly. Check them out on bandcamp.

He's dropping a new album this year.

(re: parent) Again with the DV's. WTHeck HN'rs?

> Wha’s like them? Damn few.

And they're aaall dead.

... You wan' some rye?

'Course you do.

This is one of those things where I initially learned of it from that same bit of (admittedly niche) pop culture, and didn't find out was much older until later on.

Also, I do occasionally drink rye whiskey and every time I pour one, this is what I think in my head.

I’m too drive to drunk.

“Discipline” is one of those albums that totally changed the way I thought about music.

When I was a kid I was really into classic prog rock (i.e. Yes, Genesis, ELP, etc.) and was mesmerized by Bill Bruford’s playing and technique on “Close to the Edge”, which led me to this incarnation of King Crimson.

One song in particular that really stuck out to me was “Thela Hun Ginjeet”, which includes a recording of Adrian Belew recounting an experience being heckled on the street, but until I read the Wikipedia page for the album I had no idea it was secretly recorded by Fripp and wasn’t scripted (including the maniacal laugh at the end). It blew my mind that they were able to create this soundscape that turned a recording of a totally sane Belew into what I thought was a paranoid schizophrenic.

Each song on the album stands on its own, and it’s probably my favorite in King Crimson’s discography.

A live performance of Thela Hun Ginjeet plus a description of how it came about is included in this submitted article.

This band is truly amazing and they just keep getting better. Their recent live albums from 2017-2018 are some of their best releases. I think HN would really appreciate the technical talent of this band.

Here's Danny Carey (Drummer from Tool) talking about this album and how the title track influenced his style. https://youtu.be/SsxSm1xCR-E?t=175 You can definitely hear how that song influenced Tool's signature sound years later.

Wow, I had never heard this album before and I started listening to the first song Elephant Talk before finishing the article. My first reaction was "this sounds a lot like Primus" and at the end of the article Primus was indeed mentioned as being influenced by this album.

Those first few notes of Discipline had the same effect on me but s/Primus/Tool.

Les Claypool's post Primus band covers a song from Discipline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml6LmIB-hvA

Primus / Les Claypool were also influenced by The Residents, another obscure band of inarguably talented musicians and artists creating art and music for a distinctly discerning and uncommon palate.

Gingerbread Man[0], as a visual and aural experience, is uniquely disturbing in a most enthralling fashion.

[0]: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=hr-I6-gxecg

Yes, for example Tool openly took inspiration from "Frame by frame" to write 7empest, for which they won a Grammy.

There are very few albums that I can say that I have a clear memory of listening to them for the first time. Discipline is one of them. It was spring break of my freshman year of college and the drummer in the band I was playing in asked me to keep his CD collection in my room over break because there were occasional break-ins to rooms of people gone for the week. I listened to a lot of music new to me, but the one that grabbed me by the throat was Discipline.

Over time, I became a bigger and bigger fan of Crimson. My favorite era was the 74–77 incarnation which shed a member with each album until it finally collapsed, although the current line-up which has focused entirely on live performance is just amazing. I regret not getting the chance to see them live, and suspect that between Covid and the aging of the band that I never will see them live, but it's a truly amazing group of musicians (albeit one whose membership has been unstable since the start. The 80s trilogy of albums was the longest run without a lineup change in the band's history.)

Indiscipline

The lyrics and the main groove of this song auto-play in my brain at least once a month. These words must resonate with other people here. They must.

> [Verse 1]

> I do remember one thing

> It took hours and hours but..

> By the time I was done with it

> I was so involved, I didn't know what to think

> I carried it around with me for days and days..

> Playing little games

> Like not looking at it for a whole day

> And then, looking at it

> To see if I still liked it

> I did

> [Verse 2]

> I repeat myself when under stress

> I repeat-

> 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!

> [Outro]

> I like it

Interestingly, it looks like King Crimson has recently officially uploaded the goods to YT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH3phKBbVLs

According to a piece I read about it back then, these words come from a letter to Adrian Belew from his wife about a piece of artwork she was creating. Very inspirational!

I love the latest live version of this song. Great drum work at the start of the song and the verses are more sung instead of spoken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpZxwe4SXY8

Glad to know I’m not the only one this happens to.

That's funny, I always thought it was "I repeat myself when I'm distressed"

I loved this album when it came out! (Just pulled it up on Spotify, it's been several years!)

This and Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair were continuously played back in those days.

I remember repeatedly calling my local classic rock radio station requesting Frame by Frame. They never played it, unsurprisingly!

Another favorite from a few years before is Fripp's solo album Exposure [1]. Great vocals on some tracks by Darrell Hall of Hall and Oates. Changed my thinking about that guy! Also a wonderful version of Here Comes the Flood with Peter Gabriel, with great Frippertronics going on throughout. Great stuff!

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZA3qLXj8bA

The Fripp-produced Hall solo album Sacred Songs is a great listen as well.

re: Gabriel cover - Fripp (and Levin btw) played on his first.

"it is that way because that is the way it is..."

i absolutely love exposure and it's still on heavy rotation at chez criptid.

As a massive music nerd, I can think of very few bands who have played for over 50 years and keep on reinventing themselves.

Most bands decline over the years, but not King Crimson. That said, I have to say the double trio lineup is my favorite era of theirs.

The only other band that IMO comes close in keeping high quality for 50 years is probably Magma. The only difference is that they're mostly staying the same (not in a bad way, mind you), and not necessarily reinventing themselves. Instead they're just getting more refined.

Agreed. I think Rush is another band that transformed their sound a few times while maintaining high quality output.

I lean towards the Fripp/Wetton/Bruford/[Cross]/[Muir] lineup myself, although the current line-up is edging towards it, held back by the paucity of new songs more than anything else.

Discipline: never an end in itself, only a means to an end.

there's always this:

https://www.dgmlive.com/

this also recently published:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-king-crimson-resurr...

At the West Palm Beach Rock Festival in 1969 the original lineup was one of the bands that almost nobody there had ever heard of. But no-one had ever heard anything like it.

Jimi Hendrix also had some consideration for joining them but did not live long enough for real collaboration.

Greg Lake ended up in Emerson, Lake, & Palmer.

Jon Anderson appeared on some dates once they had regrouped.

When Wetton joined he was easily pulling his weight in a 5-piece, seemed a little nervous on their first American tour though.

In the three-piece lineup, each year Wetton came back literally twice as strong as before.

By the time he was in Asia, that was the time I can not forget the vocals shook the back rows of the indoor stadium as much or more than the bass, like I had never seen before or since.

I did not expect to see a Magma discussion on HN, haha. I saw them live back in 2015 and it was so surreal.

Yeah, the show I went to in 2017 (they played Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré and Theusz Hamtaahk in their entirety) was the best show I've been to since Mr. Bungle's California tour back in 1999.

Then I saw them 2 years later where they played a much extended version of De Futura (and other songs). Great, too, but as a smaller line-up.

Wow, Bungle's California tour is the stuff of legends. I've only seen videos but I still can't figure out how they managed to pull it off live. Never saw Bungle, but I did see Fantomas on the Suspended Animation tour, which was another one of those albums I have no clue how they managed to perform night after night.

Au contraire, I would not expect anything else but that there are Magma fans lurking on HN. :-P Some of us even have the necklace pendant to prove it!

None other than Jello Biafra introduced them at a concert at the Fillmore not too long ago, saying how much he dug them. Now THAT was not something I was prepared for!

Agreed! I saw Magma in Portland, OR on their 2016 tour. I remember how effortless they made everything look, all the songs seemed to blend in and out of each other, so surreal. It felt like I was watching some intergalactic opera/theater presentation, probably one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Wish I could understand Kobaïan...

I was a Bowie fan in the 70s and very excited about his work with Robert Fripp (for example, the e-bow line in Heroes). Then a musician friend introduced me to Fripp and Belew's King Crimson. The opening track, Elephant Talk, of this album (Discipline) is eye-opening.

You almost certainly know this, but others may not - Fripp & Eno's collaborations are well worth a listen.

Strongly second this, No Pussyfooting is an incredible album.

Not that many people recognized that Eno composed the the first little Windows startup tune for Microsoft's Windows 95.

Maybe one of the most often-played compositions for while there.

Repeated by probably more un-necessary restarts than users actually intended . . .

Discipline is also the name of a prog-rock band from Detroit Michigan. I've been lucky enough to see them live, and their 2 albums are great:

Push and Profit https://www.amazon.com/Push-Profit-Discipline/dp/B000260FRA/

Unfolded Like Staircase https://www.amazon.com/Unfolded-Like-Staircase-Discipline/dp...

Funnily enough, I listened to Discipline (the band) before listening to Discipline (the album).

King Crimson fans should give Push and Profit a listen at the very least :)

- a person who has a Discipline tattoo on their right forearm

I remember seeing Frame by Frame on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ in 1982 [1] and being blown away by every aspect of it - and puzzled. What do the lyrics mean? Why would Fripp sit in the dark wearing a suit? Almost forty years on and the whole album still intrigues me, which I guess is one measure of greatness.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrXgcp01JaI

I've always thought that Robert Fripp is temperamentally a classical musician who plays rock music.

Agreed. I’d expand that a bit by saying

- he pays a lot of attention to the craft of guitar playing;

- he’s much less concerned with the projection of his personality and image than is typical.

He still wears a suit at most shows but he stands up now.

Are you sure? I’ve literally never seen any video of Fripp playing standing up?

He stood up all thru the Orlando show, 2 mos ago

And there's this: @ 2:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D57fYwyhajk - him w/ crafty guitarists

Wow! Thanks and that’s a great clip too. Some of the comments are hilarious - equally as astonished as I was.

Just about anything by King Crimson :)

"We were in a part of London that was a dangerous area" - apparently that incident occurred in Notting Hill Gate; that's hardly a rough neighbourhood. Parts of Notting Hill are definitely seedy, but I wouldn't be nervous waiting for a bus there at night.

And forty years ago, when this album was made?

London is considerably less violent all over than it was in those days. Casual violence was a part of my youth that I’m very happy my teenage kids would not recognize.

I think NYC and some other US cities are similarly less scary these days. Not all places, and not for all people, of course.

London was a lot more, ah, interesting, back then. There were certainly a lot more areas where it wasn't wise to walk around by yourself (that is, in areas where you didn't fit in). Still are, but it's nothing like as exciting as it used to be.

Soho in particular used to feel so alive; the vibe there sort of died around the time they licenced the sex shops/cleaned up the area.

I’m not as familiar with that particular area of London but I do know the city has changed massively since that album was recorded and a lot of areas that you simply wouldn’t walk alone at night have undergone gentrification. Brixton is a great example of that.

totally different back then, I suspect (just like Islington)

Well, I lived in the rougher parts of Notting Hill in the early 70's. I don't need to "suspect" anything. I lived around Westbourne Grove and Ladbroke Grove. Yes, that was very different from how it is now; then, it was hippie/druggie land.

But it wasn't dangerous. There were a lot of burglaries; people in poor neighbourhoods tend to rob their neighbours, for some reason. But I don't recall any shootings or stabbings. I didn't even know anyone who had been beaten up on the street. There was no racial tension, that I was aware of; black and white people lived as neighbours, all jumbled-up, and got on fine.

I also spent 15 years living in Islington; that was only rough on football nights, when racist supporters from out-of-town took over the streets and pubs. Gentrification of Islington amounted to not much more than rising house prices (I moved out of London forever in about 1996). Islington had rough estates that I would keep my kids away from; but I didn't have to helicopter them to school. They walked or took the public bus.

Islington's much more dangerous now. There are regular reports of rapes and murders, in parks and corners where I used to hang out with my kids. "Gentrification" is not synonymous with "crime reduction".

A lot of people I knew in the 80's punk scene would trash prog rock as being too polished (think YES' Relayer with a single track on a side). Yet we all loved Discipline (some secretly). Prog as it was, it was still raw power.

I've (so far) met Fripp, Levin, Jaksyzyk, and Mastellotto...all great dudes. Every iteration has something interesting to offer, and the combined talent pool really is staggering.

I met Bill Bruford. I attended one of his lectures, and I gave him a cymbal made to act like his mid-70s bent cymbal.

He was cordially dismayed. "But… it's not the one…" I meant well, though, and he asked me if I wanted him to have it. And yes, I did. So, ever the gentleman, he accepted this wrong and bad cymbal :)

You've got me beat by two. I actually first discovered Jakszyk around 2000 when I bought an album by Saro Cosentino because I wanted to hear more John Giblin bass playing. My favorite track was the one featuring Jakszyk and while I was tempted to dig deep in search of more work by him, I failed to follow through until the Jakszyk/Fripp/Collins album came out.

Jakko first came into my ear canal orbit with his strange but very listenable jazz-inflected Dizrythmia project (which also was around the same time I had heard Gavin Harrison on albums by Incognito, so the two of them together was novel), then his work with members of Japan...from there I just kept following.

I saw KC open with Discipline in Orlando, a couple of months back. Levin was there with Fripp. The show was as good as you'd imagine.

I think a lot of the audience only knew their first album; some folks left when it got heavy. As for me, Discipline is one of my favorite albums by any band - followed by Starless.

My (adult) kids really liked that Fripp screwed with us by saying no pics because the band would pose when it was over - which they did not. Ha. Fripp being Fripp.

Y’all (the audience, obviously not you in particular) must’ve done something to piss the band off. When I went to see them (and this is well attested to at other shows on their last two tours), they definitely stood around taking pictures of the audience (Tony Levin is also really into photography), with Fripp walking off last. Having said that, Fripp saw someone behind me trying to take a picture during Schizoid Man and stopped playing, shook his head, and wagged his finger until he put the camera away.

Yes. I bought this on vinyl when it first came out. This was my first introduction to King Crimson. And surprisingly, when I bought Court of the Crimson King in college, I could hear the thread that connected their first album to the first album by them I ever bought. The more I listened to it, the more I took it apart, the more I broke it down, it remained consistent.

I still think it's good! I wish you were here to hear it!

Such a great band. I saw them in Los Angeles last month. Exquisite and energetic musicianship despite several of them being in their 70s now.

Agreed! I traveled to Milwaukee last month to catch them, and even though I was in the last row, you could see and feel Tony Levin's fingers.

With the see, was that perhaps the funk fingers (drum sticks strapped to his fingers) that he was using and not his actual fingers?

Orlando. Brought the (adult) kids. Ok. They brought me. Better than expected and my expectations were high.

I came to KC via Fripp because I'm a Brian Eno fan - 1980s.

And even tho ELP was a first love, Court is one of my least favorite KC albums (ref: Greg Lake, Pete Sinfield). I like it well enough just not as much the stuff with Bruford (Yes was another 1st lv).

sidebar: Leaned yesterday that Jon Anderson sung on a track on Lizards

Am I the only one who likes what King Crimson did until the 70s, and does not understand the direction they went with Discipline? I have tried listening to it and later albums, but I never got it. Anyone here can help me better appreciate King Crimson's music from the 80s on?

appreciation is a hard thing to come by. joke response, listen to Indiscipline on loop until you like it :D

King Crimson flowcharts are a fun source of amusement, if nothing else: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/4chanmusic/images/2/2d/K...

Reminds me of this diagram of the many schisms and reunions of Rhapsody of Fire: https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerMetal/comments/a378g5/just_in_...

Thank you, the flowcharts are really cool! :-D

I love that chart, thanks

There's plenty of music I "ought" to like based on my general music interest but don't really care all that much for, or even dislike. I don't really know what makes me really like or dislike a particular piece of music, but it's pretty common for things to just not resonate with me.

For what it's worth, I never really appreciated King Crimson beyond the 70s either. Don't ask me why; in any objective sense they're a fantastic band and I can definitely appreciate their music to that degree, but for one reason or the other it just doesn't truly resonate with me shrug

I don't think there's a frame of mind or rationalization that can make you appreciate an album more. Personally I think Discipline is alright but I prefer other albums, even THRAK which came later.

The interwoven guitars in "Frame by frame" is my absolute favorite bit of music.

”Tony had the Chapman Stick, which no one had used before”

Serious question: has anyone aside from King Crimson and acolytes used it since? I remember the hype in the 80s music magazines but it never seemed to break out. What happened?

Gordian Knot[0] did about 20 years ago :) They're former Death/Cynic[1] members.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMamvozbIJY [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot_(band)

Myung from Dream Theater also used it in the Falling Into Infinity album.

I'm buying one :) it's been on order for a little less than a year. mind you, I think I count as an acolyte, plus I'm not anyone :)

The thing is, I'd been looking at buying a Hohner Clavinet. And I'm not primarily a keyboard player, I was always a guitar player. And I just realized, 'hey… a Stick is a guitar player's clavi'. And so it is :)

http://stick.com/artists/artistwebsites/

If anyone is also interested in sorta psychedelic 70s progressive things, and likes a faster more punky slant, I would highly, highly recommend checking out Cardiacs. Their music is magical.

don't forget to look at belew's solo work from the 80s. lone rhino and twang bar king are two of my favourite albums from the era. think of discipline or beat without the discipline brought by fripp. like indiscipline run gloriously amok.

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