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True to his insistence that King Crimson music could not be solely defined by the players, the music is not chronological, nor is “21st Century Schizoid Man” included at all. Side one manages to encompass “Epitaph”, an “abridged” “Cadence And Cascade”, and “Ladies Of The Road”, ending with the ultra-rare Giles, Giles And Fripp take of “I Talk To The Wind”, featuring Fairport Convention’s Judy Dyble on vocals—the only woman ever to perform on a Crimson album. Side two consists of exactly two songs: the title track from Red and that album’s stellar “Starless”.
Side three juggles two different lineups, going from “Book Of Saturday” and “The Night Watch” back to “Peace” and the single version of “Cat Food” from the second album, and tossing in the rare “Groon” B-side before picking up the last two minutes of “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, Part One”. Side four offers the first two minutes of “Moonchild” (a.k.a. the song portion) and the Bruford-less “Trio” before closing with “The Court Of The Crimson King”, unabridged.
Fripp would go on to use the Young Person’s Guide nomenclature for similar archival digs in the decades to come, and most of these tracks would continue to feature on same. As it is, A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson itself has never been reissued on CD outside of Japan, where seemingly everything emerges sometime, though the music is readily available numerous places, and cheaper.
King Crimson A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson (1976)—4
Current CD availability: none
It was reissued on CD in Japan.
ReplyDeletenoted and adjusted!
DeleteI have the Japanese release. Two booklets, one a reproduction of the original. The other is Japanese text. There is also a reproduction of the the then current KC family tree.
ReplyDeleteAs with a lot of people, this was my first exposure to any KC beyond their first album. (The only KC song that I can remember for sure hearing on the radio is “Heartbeat”). Fripp, wisely, stuck to the melodic side of the band’s repertoire, as opposed to its more dissonant, jazzy side. That’s one reason why “21st Century Schizoid Man” was left out. On the other hand, we do get a small taste of the outer edge with “Cat Food”, the end of “LTiA, Part One” and especially “Groon”.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of “Cat Food”, that was one of the few times KC, amazingly enough, KC exhibited a sense of humor, along with the ultra-sleazy (yet witty) “Ladies of the Road”. Meanwhile, “Red” and “Starless” indicate how utterly heavy the band could be. The demo for “I Talk to the Wind” is interesting from a historical point of view, but Judy Dyble had a beautiful voice, so it’s also quite listenable.
Fripp did an excellent job of putting this together. It also indicates that he broke up the band just in time, because he avoided hitting the wall that most other prog bands would hit by the time this compilation came out. It’s too bad that this release is gone. Assembling a playlist in this sequence would be a good way for a newbie to get an introduction to what the 1st phase of KC was all about.