by King Crimson:
Reading through JustZen’s excellent articles on Zappa - I couldn’t help but notice a reference to King Crimson in his fave bands list and then - WOOSH! I was blown away by the very thought of it! Make vertical snake-like motions with your hands - arms stretched out in front of you - chanting “tiddle-liddle, tittle-liddle, tiddle-liddle” in a high pitched tone - just like those crackpots in Wayne’s World and let me take you back to a time before - when I was at college …
It’s way after midnight sometime in late June - after the exams have finished and I’m playing a late night game of poker with friends. Gathered around a smoky, lit-by-anglepoise-lamp kitchen table, I was the master of seven-card-stud - nobody could read my face right - and I cleaned ‘em all out - every time. And tonight was no exception.
In waltzes Paul “Senior” - a mature student (in his early forties and studying Economics) - obviously back from a pub - and noticably drunk. Very much so. He slumps down on the chair next to me and starts rolling a rizla - sprinkling the dregs out of a couple of dog-ends in the ash-tray. He tries to follow the game - but gets fed up after a few minutes and staggers out to the hallway and into his room. He returned a few minutes later with an audio-cassette - and politely asks me in slurred voice if I could play this in my ghetto-blaster hi-fi - which was on one side of the kitchen table quietly playing Infected by The The. I reluctantly agreed to do so. And then as it started … all of us playing poker just stopped playing. We were mesmerised by the music - pure rock, or was it jazz - whetever it was - it was mind-blowing. (Trust me - there was no funny stuff around). The volume was on max and we were transfixed.
The next morning I noticed that one of the speakers on my hi-fi had blown its high-frequency speaker. No music had ever done that before. It was “21st Century Schizoid Man” that had done it.
Posted by jag at August 30, 2003 02:49 PM“Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man.“
King Crimson (Robert Fripp and co.)