Genesis

@ Wiki
Genesis are an English progressive rock band formed in 1967. With approximately 150 million albums sold worldwide, Genesis are one of the top 30 highest-selling recording artists of all time. Genesis has won the Grammy Award, and its members have included Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, both of whom achieved success as solo artists.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Genesis evolved from a 1960s-style pop band, with moody, simple guitar-driven melodies, to a progressive art rock band, with complex song structures, elaborate instrumentation, and theatrical concerts —with twenty-three minute songs such as "Supper's Ready" and the 1974 concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway— to a more pop oriented sound. Genesis's change of musical direction to accessible music with melodic hooks gave them their first #1 album in the United Kingdom, Duke, and their only #1 single in the United States, "Invisible Touch".

Initially fronted by Peter Gabriel, Genesis has changed personnel several times. Collins (previously the band's drummer) became lead singer in 1975. In 1996, Collins was replaced by former Stiltskin singer Ray Wilson for the 1997 album Calling All Stations. Due to the commercial failure of the album, the band announced an indefinite hiatus. On 18 October 2006, the BBC announced that members of Genesis, including Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, had agreed to reunite for a world tour and were exploring the possibility of recording new material.

The band's origin lies in the late 1960s, when founding members Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks were students at Charterhouse School. The original line-up consisted of Gabriel (vocals), Anthony Phillips (guitar), Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (bass & guitar), and Chris Stewart (drums).

Genesis recorded their first album, 1969's From Genesis to Revelation, after being spotted and named by Jonathan King, an alumnus of their school and a songwriter and record producer who had a hit single at the time called "Everyone's Gone to the Moon". King supposedly named the band Genesis because they were the first serious band he had worked with —the genesis of his career. He later recalled "I named them Genesis because I thought it was a good name...it suggested the beginning of a new sound and a new feeling".

The album was released by Decca Records. During the sessions, drummer Stewart left the band and was replaced by John Silver. The band recorded a series of songs reflecting the light pop style of the Bee Gees, of whom King was very fond. King assembled the tracks as a concept album, and layered string arrangements into the arrangements during production. Genesis's first single, "The Silent Sun" (sample (help·info)), was released in February 1968. The album sold poorly, however, on advice from King, the band decided to make a career out of music. To this day, King claims responsibility for the band's subsequent success. It was he who introduced them to eventual label boss Tony Stratton Smith. King still holds the rights to the songs on the From Genesis to Revelation album, and has re-released the album many times, under a variety of names including In The Beginning, Where the Sour Turns To Sweet, Rock Roots: Genesis, ...And The Word Was, and most recently The Genesis of Genesis, in addition to the original title.

Genesis recruited a new drummer, John Mayhew, it is interesting to note that, during a show with the band Smile, Gabriel offered the job of drummer in the band to Roger Taylor (later of Queen fame),[6] and played occasional gigs before securing a new deal with Charisma Records.[7] The band built a following through live performances, and became known for hypnotic melodies that were often dark and haunting. Phillips left the band in 1970 following the release of Trespass, due mainly to ill health and stage fright.[8] The departure of Phillips traumatised both Banks and Rutherford, as Phillips had been a founding member and a primary force behind the band turning professional. There was doubt over whether Genesis could go on without him.[9]

Eventually, the remaining members renewed their commitment to Genesis, and decided to replace drummer John Mayhew. Trespass set the format for Genesis albums throughout the '70s. The album consisted of lengthy, sometimes operatic pieces, as well as occasional very short, humorous numbers that typified the style of such progressive rock acts as King Crimson, Yes, and Gentle Giant. Trespass includes elaborate arrangements and time signature changes —key elements in subsequent albums. A key factor in their songwriting was that they would not write pentatonically, as most bands of their time were doing. This was a conscious decision continued by the band for years to come. Trespass features the nine-minute "The Knife", which Gabriel —a believer in nonviolence having been influenced by a book on Mahatma Gandhi— wrote showing "how all violent revolutions inevitably end up with a dictator in power".[8]

Phil Collins joined Genesis on 4 August 1970, having impressed the other members with his drumming skills during an audition at Gabriel's parents' house. The band continued as a four-piece before playing shows with guitarist Mick Barnard. As the members felt Barnard was not up to their caliber of musicianship, they sought a more suitable replacement for Phillips.[9] Late in 1970, Steve Hackett, formerly of Quiet World, placed an advertisement for a band in Melody Maker. Hackett went to see Genesis in concert and enjoyed the type of music they were playing. The band liked the tone of the advertisement, and after a meeting at his parents' apartment, hired Hackett immediately. ->>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

'And The Word Was ... GENESIS'

by John Tracy

Today Genesis are one of the biggest disc and box office drawers in the world. Despite a multitude of personnel changes, good times and bad times, they have assumed the mantle of superstars - members of that elite who truly justify the grandiose tag. One typical example of their latter day universal popularity being the remarkable million plus applications received for tickets to view one early Eighties tour itinerary; unfortunately, the applicants were chasing just 68,000 seats. But it wasn't always that way. Here we afford the opportunity to treasure forever a slice of musical history: the very first recordings produced by a Genesis line-up in the late Sixties...

It was the traditional Charterhouse Public School which brought together our protagonists. Originally a Carthusian monastery in London's Clerkenwell district, it was heavily bombed in 1940 and partially restored eleven years later. After 1611 it enjoyed the bizarre double existence of being used as a hospital for elderly men and acting as a school for fourty boys simultaneously. From this irregular beginning, it developed into one of England's premier educational establishments, moving to Godalming, Surrey, in 1872.

The five original members of Genesis all attended the institute, namely Michael Rutherford (born 2/10/1950; Bass, Gtr., Vocals); Anthony Phillips (Gtr., Vocals); Peter Gabriel (13/2/1950; Vocals, Flute); Tony Banks (27/3/1950; Keyboards, Vocals) and Chris Stewart (Drums). They rose from the ashes of two eariler school outfits: The Anon (Rutherford/Phillips), which also featured bassist Rivers Job (Rutherford handled Rhythm Gtr.), drummer Rob Tyrell and vocalist Richard MacPhail, who re-entered the picture in September '69 when he assumed the position of road manager for the band, and The Garden Wall, which accommodated the other three in a very loose set-up. Their only notable appearance being an end of term concert in which the trio were expanded by Job and Phillips.

With the farewell school concert of December 1966 sounding the death-knell for The Anon, Genesis could have be said to have officially existed from January the following year, but Mike and Anthony originally set out to develop their songwriting, with a view to recording their efforts and hopefully obtaining a thumbs-up from a record company. Concurrently, Messrs. Gabriel and Banks were attempting a similar course of action.

The first demonstration tape of the two duo's scribbled efforts was commenced one Thursday, using a crude and tiny home-made studio belonging to a mutual friend. Initially, Rutherford and Phillips had requested Banks' keyboards talents for the session; in 1978 Tony explained to biographer Armando Gallo and researcher Pete Frame: "Basically, it was Mike and Ant recording their songs, and I was asked along to play keyboards. Peter arrived on the second day and we persuaded Ant, who had been doing the vocals, that Peter had a better voice - so after that, he did the singing." Six tracks, five Rutherford/Phillips outings: 'Try A Little Sadness', 'That's Me', 'Listen On 5', 'Don't Wash Your Back' and an instrumental, 'Patricia'. Additionally, the Gabriel/Banks partnership included their first ever collaboration 'She's Beautiful', later modified to become 'The Serpent'. =>>>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

Bruce Eder @ Allmusic
One of the most successful rock acts of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Genesis enjoyed a longevity exceeded only by the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, in the process providing a launching pad for the superstardom of members Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. The group had its roots in the Garden Wall, a band founded by 15 year olds Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks in 1965 at Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, where fellow students Michael Rutherford and Anthony Phillips were members of another group called Anon. The two groups initially merged out of expediency as the older members of each graduated; Gabriel, Banks, Rutherford, Phillips, and drummer Chris Stewart soon joined together as the New Anon, and recorded a six-song demo featuring songs primarily written by Rutherford and Phillips.

The Charterhouse connection worked in their favor when ex-student, recording artist, and producer Jonathan King heard the tape and arranged for the group to continue working in the studio, developing their sound. It was also King who renamed the band Genesis. In December of 1967 the group had its first formal recording sessions. Their debut single, "The Silent Sun," was released in February of 1968 without attracting much notice from the public. A second single, "A Winter's Tale," followed just about the time that Chris Stewart quit -- his replacement, John Silver, joined just in time to participate in the group's first LP sessions that summer. King later added orchestral accompaniment to the band's tracks, in order to make them sound even more like the Moody Blues, and the resulting album, entitled From Genesis to Revelation, was released in March of 1969.

Music seemed to be shaping up as a brief digression in the lives of the members as they graduated from Charterhouse that summer. The group felt strongly enough about their work, however, that they decided to try it as a professional band; it was around this time that Silver exited, replaced by John Mayhew. They got their first paying gig in September of 1969, and spent the next several months working out new material. Genesis soon became one of the first groups signed to the fledgling Charisma label, and they recorded their second album, Trespass, that spring. Following its completion, the unit went through major personnel changes as Phillips, who had developed crippling stage fright, was forced to leave the lineup in July of 1970, followed by Mayhew.

Enter Phil Collins, a onetime child actor turned drummer and former member of Hickory and Flaming Youth. The group's lineup was completed with the addition of guitarist Steve Hackett, a former member of Quiet World; his presence and that of Collins toughened up the group's sound, which became apparent immediately upon the release of their next album, Nursery Cryme. The theatrical attributes of Gabriel's singing fit in well with the group's live performances during this period as he began to make ever more extensive use of masks, makeup, and props in concert, telling framing stories in order to set up their increasingly complicated songs. When presented amid the group's very strong playing, this aspect of Gabriel's work turned Genesis' performances into multimedia events.

Foxtrot, issued in the fall of 1972, was the flash point in Genesis' history, and not just on commercial terms. The writing, especially on "Supper's Ready," was as sophisticated as anything in progressive rock, and the lyrics were complex, serious, and clever, a far cry from the usual overblown words attached to most prog rock. Genesis' live performances by now were practically legend, and in response to the demand, in August of 1973 Charisma released Genesis Live, an album assembled from shows in Leicester and Manchester originally taped for an American radio broadcast. 1973 also saw the release of Selling England by the Pound, the group's most sophisticated album to date.

The release of the ambitious double LP The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in late 1974 marked the culmination of the group's early history; in May of 1975, following a show in France, Gabriel announced that he was leaving Genesis, owing to personal reasons. The group tried auditioning potential replacements, but it became clear that the remaining members all preferred that drummer Collins take over the role of lead singer. The band returned to the studio as an official quartet in October of 1975 to begin work on their new album: the resulting Trick of the Tail made number three in England and number 31 in America, the best chart showing up to that time for a Genesis album. Its success completely confounded critics and fans who'd been unable to conceive of Genesis without Peter Gabriel.

The group seemed to be on its way to bigger success than it ever had during Gabriel's tenure, as 1977's Wind and Wuthering became another smash. But then Hackett announced that he was leaving on the eve of the release of a new double live album, Seconds Out; he was replaced on the subsequent American and European tours by Daryl Steurmor, but there was no permanent replacement in the studio. In 1978, Genesis released And Then There Were Three, which abandoned any efforts at progressive rock in favor of a softer, much more accessible, and less ambitious pop sound. After a flurry of solo projects, the group reconvened for 1980's Duke, which became their first chart-topper in England while rising to number 11 in America.

The continued changes in their sound helped turn Genesis into an arena-scale act: Abacab, released in late 1981, was another smash, and 1983's self-titled Genesis furthered the group's record of British chart-toppers and American Top Ten hits, becoming their second million-selling U.S. album while also yielding their first American Top Ten single, "That's All." Two years later, the group outdid themselves with the release of their most commercially successful album to date, Invisible Touch, which went platinum several times over in America. Its release coincided with the biggest tour in their history, a string of sold-out arena shows that cast the group in the same league as concert stalwarts like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. Their 1991 album We Can't Dance debuted at number one in England and got to number four in America; it was Collins' last album with the group, and with new vocalist Ray Wilson, formerly of the group Stiltskin, Genesis resurfaced in 1997 with Calling All Stations, which recalled their art rock roots. Neither the critics nor the fans warmed to the album -- it sold poorly and the tour was equally unsuccessful. Coming on the heels of the disappointing Calling All Stations, the long-awaited box-set retrospective Genesis Archives, Vol. 1: 1967-1975 was even more welcome. Containing nothing but unreleased material and rarities from previously unavailable on CD, the set was released to surprisingly strong reviews in the summer of 1998. A second volume, containing unreleased material from the Phil Collins era, Genesis Archives, Vol. 2: 1976-1992, followed in 2000. ->>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

J.D. Considine @ Rolling Stone
Like Rodney Dangerfield, Genesis has had a hard time getting respect. In the early '70s, when the group specialized in ambitious, theatrical story-songs, it attracted an avid cult following but was largely ignored by the rock press and public at large. Later in the decade, lead singer Peter Gabriel was finally recognized as a major talent -- but only after he'd left the band, who were at this point being derided as middlebrow throwbacks still in thrall to the pomposities of art rock. Even in the early '80s, when Genesis did finally shed its art-rock inclinations and move toward pop, becoming international stars in the process, the press was unimpressed, dismissing the group as easy-listening lightweights. By the '90s, even the solo success of members Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford was being held against the group, by then one of the best-known rock acts in the world.

All of which, to be honest, has been grossly unfair to the group. Granted, Genesis has made its share of mediocre albums -- perhaps even more than its share, considering how long the band has been around. But bad albums? None to speak of.

In fact, the worst that can be said of the group's early albums is that they sound dated, almost quaint. From Genesis to Revelation seems laughably "mod" at points -- for instance, the jazzy, bongo-spiked intro to "The Serpent" -- but that hardly takes away from the genuinely tuneful quality of the songs. Genesis was hardly a band when this was recorded, however, and it isn't until Trespass that we get any real sense of what this band has to offer. Unfortunately, it's something of a mixed bag. At their best, the lyrics are grippingly mythic, but too often Gabriel's wordplay loses its way in a forest of puns and self-conscious allusions; likewise the music, although often potently melodic and making nice of use of Tony Banks' semi orchestral approach to keyboards, is frequently sidetracked by too-busy arrangements and needlessly ornate embellishments.

That was pretty much the pattern for the band's early albums, though. Nursery Cryme, for instance, offers Grimm play with Mother Goose tales in the 10-minute "Musical Box," while Foxtrot concludes with the marathon "Supper's Ready," an ambitious, inscrutable 23-minute suite built around such titles as "Apocalypse in 9/8 (co-starring the delicious talents of Gabble Ratchet)." Stilted as this stuff sometimes sounded in the studio, it did have an edge in concert; indeed, the performances on Genesis Live are enough to make even the most skeptical listener reconsider the value of "The Return of the Giant Hogweed." But "edge" wasn't really what this band was looking for, and so Selling England by the Pound continues Genesis' journey into the conceptual, flanking blissfully melodic material such as "I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe)" with the self-consciously clever "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" and its ilk. No wonder, then, that the group's masterpiece move -- an intensely abstruse double album entitled The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway -- is both brilliant and overblown, with moments of genuine majesty and long stretches of pointless obscurantism.

Gabriel left at this point, and Genesis auditioned hundreds of singers before finally deciding on Collins, who had been drumming with the group since Trespass (and who, in fact, had already sung lead on "More Fool Me," from Selling En gland). It was a canny choice, for Collins, though obviously possessing a voice of his own, sounded enough like Gabriel to ensure a smooth transition for the band. Even so, it isn't Collins' voice that makes A Trick of the Tail a turning point for the band -- it's the writing. Instead of showcasing the band's cleverness, this album puts the emphasis on the music, unveiling an unexpected gift for close-harmony singing in "Entangled." Wind and Wuthering expands the band's musical palette still further; typical is the droll clockwork effect that crops up during an instrumental segment of "One for the Vine." More telling, though, is the ballad "Your Own Special Way," a gorgeously lilting love song that seems a harbinger of the band's pop-friendly future.

Indeed, after Seconds Out -- a concert double album apparently intended to prove that Collins and company could handle the band's back catalogue -- the band made a genuine pop breakthrough with . . . And Then There Were Three. With guitarist Steve Hackett gone, Genesis' studio lineup is reduced to just Collins, Banks, and Rutherford, and while that doesn't noticeably affect the band's instrumental mix, it does hone the playing so that there's less empty flash and wasted energy. At this point, the songs are the focus, and while that doesn't prevent the band from showing off any (note the odd-metered rhythms of "Down and Out"), it does add power to character songs such as "Say It's Alright Joe" and gave the band its first U.S. pop success, through the winsome, upbeat "Follow You, Follow Me." Duke and ABACAB further enhance the group's pop reputation -- the former through "Misunderstanding," a simple, poignant broken-heart song that brings Collins to the fore as a writer, and the latter through "No Reply at All," a surprisingly complex composition that leaves the band plenty of playing room yet maintains strong melodic content. Unfortunately, these pop-oriented efforts are followed by Three Sides Live, a double album that's mostly live and totally tedious.

It hardly mattered, though, for by this point the band's superstar status had been established beyond the shadow of a doubt, and both Genesis and Invisi-ble Touch merely seemed to confirm its popularity. And not without reason, either, as both are sublimely melodic, producing hits as effortless and idiosyncratic as "That's All" (from Genesis) and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" (from Invisible Touch). But We Can't Dance, despite its strong pop inclinations, finds the band trying to reclaim some of its old turf, a move that works surprisingly well, thanks to tuneful-but-extended numbers such as "Driving the Last Spike" and "Fading Lights."

Collins left Genesis after the We Can't Dance tour, and Genesis stalled for time by releasing two live albums -- one of "short" pop hits, the other of "long" art-rock chestnuts -- before finally deciding to move on without him. Scots singer Ray Wilson, formerly of the little-known prog-rock band Stiltskin, was drafted by Banks and Rutherford to take Collins' place. Had he come in after Foxtrot, Wilson would have made for a smooth transition, but given the pop expectations engendered by Collins' tenure, his succession was deemed a failure, and Genesis slipped quietly into oblivion. Not that interest in the band evaporated, and Genesis Archives, Vol. 1 offered an olive branch to older fans by bringing back both Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett to recut tracks from rare live recordings. Vol. 2 also relied mainly on live recordings, but without the advantage of reworked performances, it held only marginal interest. ->>>>>>>>>

From the 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

============ blogprock ============

Genesis Go "Platinum" Pop mega-group surveys thirty-year career, plans online bootleg series Andy Greene @ Rolling Stone Genesis sold 21.5 million albums in America during a thirty-year career, before quietly calling it quits in 1998, not long after frontman Phil Collins' departure. With the release of the new three-CD compilation, The Platinum Collection, Genesis trace their extensive journey from art rockers to hitmakers. The Platinum Collection moves backwards in time -- starting with the 1991 single "No Son of Mine" and ending with "The Knife," off of 1970's Trespass, the second album by the Peter Gabriel-fronted Genesis. "Originally, it went from beginning to end," says guitarist Mike Rutherford. "But, with the early albums' sound quality, it was a little tough for the listener. So we start with the better-sounding stuff and end with the earlier stuff." The band plans to dust off some early live recordings for release as a bootleg series, possibly through its Web site. "These are raw recordings, and I like that," Rutherford says. "If someone makes a mistake or messes up, it's just part of the evening." =>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================== 'Genesis After Gabriel - How Will They Survive?' Mick Houghton @ Circus Magazine, 1976 Mike Rutherford: "There was no animosity in the split, but people couldn't resist translating the lyrics to 'Squonk' as being about bad feelings between us and Pete." "The vehicle we had built as a co-op to serve our songwriting became our master and had cooped us up inside the success we had wanted. It affected the spirit and attitudes of the whole band. The music had not dried up and I still respect the other musicians, but our roles had set in hard. For any band, transferring the heart from idealistic enthusiasm to professionalism is a difficult operation." With that splendidly high falutin' statement to the press, Peter Gabriel, lead singer and visual focal point of Genesis, packed up his trunk of costumes, masks and makeup and quietly retired to the countryside last year. The rest of the group went into similar bucolic retirement. Only drummer Phil Collins remained at large, filling his with sessions and organizing his free-blowing jazz outfit, Brand X. Meanwhile, he reapedly assured journalists that Genesis would continue without Peter. Now those assurances have been confirmed by the release of their eighth album, 'A Trick of the Tail' (on Atlantic). The band where never really that certain of the future, though, as keyboardsman Tony Banks and bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford revealed recently to CIRCUS. After a few furtive glances to Tony following a request to rake over the ashes, Mike explained that Peter's departure last August came as no surprise. "Pete was actually going to leave the summer before 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' was completed, but we persuaded him to stay on. He decided finally last January so we had a whole six-month period on tour to get used to the idea. We thought about how we'd continue, but we were working so hard it was never uppermost in our minds. It was a gradual process so when it finally happened it was no dramatic shock." Tony took up the story: "At the end of the tour we took two months out to write and reassess the situation. Afterwords, we very nearly decided not to carry on. But once we started rehearsals, we realized that it was worth it. The music, even in that primitive form, was really nice." =>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================== Steve Hackett "First of all I would like to congratulate Tony, Mike and Phil for flying the flag once again. Good luck to them and I really hope they have a very successful tour. I was originally approached to discuss the possibility of a five piece which would have included Peter Gabriel and yours truly but since Peter’s schedule precludes this it makes sense for the other three to celebrate the brand in their ‘own special way’ as it were ...." =>>>>>>>>>>>>> =============================== Rockers Genesis plan reunion tour Phil Collins Collins left the band in 1996 to pursue solo projects Rock veterans Genesis are to reform, 10 years after frontman Phil Collins left. Collins, 55, with guitarist Mike Rutherford, 56, and keyboardist Tony Banks, 56, have agreed to take part in a major tour. Genesis sold over 130 million albums during the '70s and '80s, despite losing singer Peter Gabriel in 1975. A spokesman said specific details of the tour and "long term plans" including possible new material would be announced in the next few weeks. The group was formed by Rutherford, Banks and Gabriel at Charterhouse public school in the 1960s. Collins joined as drummer in 1970 and initially the band enjoyed cult success. They only hit the commercial big time with hits like I Can't Dance, Mama and Invisible Touch after Gabriel left. Collins had already voiced interest in a reunion before he announced his spilt from Orianne, his wife of six years, in March. =>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Wednesday, 18 October 2006, 17:08 GMT 18:08 UK =============================== Gabriel passes on Genesis reunion Former Genesis singer Peter Gabriel says he will not be joining his bandmates for an upcoming reunion tour. Gabriel, 56, was a founding member of the band, singing with them until 1975, when he left to pursue a solo career. "There were conversations and I decided not to be a part of it," Gabriel told BBC News. His replacement, former drummer Phil Collins, has confirmed he will take part in the reunion tour, which was announced earlier this week. "I'm very happy for them," said Gabriel. "It's not that I've ruled it out, but I've got some new material that I'll be working on." A spokesman for Genesis said specific details of the tour and "long term plans" including possible new material would be announced in the next few weeks. Cult success Genesis sold over 130 million albums during the 1970s and '80s, scoring hits with albums such as Nursery Cryme, Selling England By The Pound and Invisible Touch. They started out as a progressive rock band, but took a more commercial direction when Collins took over the vocal duties. The 1980s saw them score a run of top 40 singles, including Mama, That's All and In Too Deep. Collins quit the group in 1996, and was replaced by former Stiltskin singer Ray Wilson. He recorded one album, 1997's Calling All Stations, with remaining members Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks before the band was put on indefinite hiatus. =>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thursday, 19 October 2006, 16:18 GMT 17:18 UK =============================== The Genesis Discography Covering the years: 1967-1996 - "The scattered pages of a book by the sea..." (free download - pdf / zip) Edited by Scott McMahan, compiled by a cast of thousands who volunteered information. =>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Peter Gabriel

@ Wiki
Peter Brian Gabriel (born February 13, 1950, in Chobham, Surrey, England) is an English musician. He first came to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. More recently he has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. He has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts.

Gabriel founded Genesis in 1967 while a pupil at Charterhouse School with bandmates Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, and drummer Chris Stewart. The name of the band was suggested by fellow Charterhouse School alumnus, the pop music impresario Jonathan King who produced their first album From Genesis to Revelation.

A lover of soul music, Gabriel was influenced by many different sources in his way of singing, mainly Nina Simone, Gary Brooker of Procol Harum and Cat Stevens. He also played the flute on Stevens' Mona Bone Jakon album in 1970.

Genesis quickly became one of the most talked-about bands in England and eventually Italy, Belgium, Germany and other European countries, largely due to Gabriel's flamboyant stage presence, which involved numerous bizarre costume changes and comical, dreamlike stories told as the introduction to each song. The concerts made extensive use of black light with the normal stage lighting subdued or off. A backdrop of fluorescing white sheets and a comparatively sparse stage made the band into a set of silhouettes, with Gabriel's fluorescent costume and makeup the only other sources of light.

Among Gabriel's many famous costumes (which he developed partly as way of overcoming his stage fright) were "The Flower" (worn for "Supper's Ready", from Foxtrot), "Magog" (also worn for "Supper's Ready", from Foxtrot), "Britannia" (worn for "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight", from Selling England by the Pound), "The Old Man" (worn for "The Musical Box", from Nursery Cryme), "Rael" (worn throughout most of the performance of the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), and "The Slipperman" (worn during "The Colony of Slippermen", also from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway).

Backing vocals in Genesis during Gabriel's tenure in the band were usually handled by bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist/guitarist Tony Banks, and (most prominently) drummer Phil Collins, who (after a long search for a replacement) eventually became Genesis's lead singer after Gabriel left the band in 1975.

The breakup
Gabriel's departure from Genesis (which stunned fans of the group and left many commentators wondering if they could survive) was the result of a number of factors. His stature as the lead singer of the band, and the added attention garnered by his flamboyant stage personae, led to tensions within the band. Genesis had always operated more or less as a collective, and Gabriel's burgeoning public profile led to fears within the group that he was being unfairly singled out as the creative hub of the group.

Tensions were heightened by the ambitious album and tour of the concept work The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a Gabriel-created concept piece which saw him taking on the lion's share of the lyric writing. During the writing and recording of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel was approached by director William Friedkin, allegedly because Friedkin had found Gabriel's short story in the liner notes to Genesis Live interesting. Gabriel's interest in a film project with Friedkin was another contributing factor in his decision to leave Genesis. The decision to quit the band was made before the tour supporting The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but Gabriel stayed with the band until the conclusion of that tour.

The breaking point came with the difficult pregnancy of Gabriel's wife, Jill, and birth of their first child, Anna. When he opted to stay with his sick daughter and wife rather than go record and tour, the resentment from the rest of the band led Gabriel to conclude that he had to leave the band. "Solsbury Hill", Gabriel's debut single as a solo artist, was written about his departure.

Solo career
Gabriel famously refused to title any of his first four solo albums (they were all labelled Peter Gabriel using the same typeface, but different cover art), since he wanted them to be considered similar to concurrent issues of a magazine instead of individual works; they are usually differentiated by number in order of release, or sleeve design, I, II and III being referred to as Car, Scratch and Melt respectively, in reference to their cover artwork. His fourth solo album, also called Peter Gabriel in the UK, was titled Security in the U.S., at the behest of Geffen Records. Even after acquiescing to distinctive titles, he has continued to use words as short as possible to title his albums: So, Us, and Up. His most recent greatest hits compilation was called, simply, Hit.

The "untitled era"
Gabriel recorded his first solo album in 1976 and 1977 with producer Bob Ezrin, titled Peter Gabriel. His first solo success came with the single "Solsbury Hill", an autobiographical piece expressing his thoughts on leaving Genesis. In it, he sings, "My friends would think I was a nut...", alluding to his decision to begin a period of self-exploration and reflection, while he grew cabbages, played the piano for long hours, practiced yoga and biofeedback, and spent time with his family. Although mainly happy with the album, Peter Gabriel felt that the track "Here Comes the Flood" was over-produced. Sparser versions can be heard on Robert Fripp's Exposure, and on Gabriel's greatest hits compilation Shaking the Tree (1990).

Peter Gabriel worked with guitarist Robert Fripp (of King Crimson fame) as producer of his second solo LP, in 1978. That album was darker and more experimental, and yielded some fine recordings, but no major hits.

Gabriel's third album, released in 1980, arose as a collaboration with Steve Lillywhite, who also produced early albums by U2. It was notable for the hit singles "Games Without Frontiers" and "Biko", for Gabriel's new interest in world music (especially for percussion), and for its bold production, which made extensive use of recording tricks and sound effects. Gabriel's third album is generally credited as the first LP to use the now-famous "gated drum" sound, invented by engineer Hugh Padgham and Gabriel's old Genesis band-mate Phil Collins. Collins played drums on several tracks, including the opener, "Intruder", which featured the reverse-gated, cymbal-less drum kit sound which Collins would make famous on his single "In the Air Tonight" and through the rest of the 1980s. The massive, distinctive hollow sound arose through some experiments by Collins and Padgham. Gabriel had requested that his drummers use no cymbals in the album's sessions, and when he heard the result from Collins and Padgham, he asked Collins to play a simple pattern for several minutes, then built "Intruder" on it.

Arduous and occasionally damp recording sessions at his rural English estate in 1981 and 1982, with co-producer/engineer David Lord, resulted in Gabriel's fourth LP release (Security), on which Gabriel took more production responsibility. It was one of the first commercial albums recorded entirely to digital tape (using a Sony mobile truck), and featured the early, extremely expensive Fairlight CMI sampling computer. Gabriel combined a variety of sampled and deconstructed sounds with world-beat percussion and other unusual instrumentation to create a radically new, emotionally charged soundscape. Furthermore, the sleeve art consisted of inscrutable, video-based imagery. Despite the album's peculiar sound, odd appearance, and often disturbing themes, it sold well and had a hit single in "Shock the Monkey", which also became a groundbreaking music video.

Gabriel toured extensively for each of his albums, continuing the dramatic shows he began with Genesis, often involving elaborate stage props and acrobatics which had him suspended from gantries, distorting his face with Fresnel lenses and mirrors, and wearing unusual makeup. For one tour, his entire band shaved their heads. His 1982-83 tour included a section opening for David Bowie, where many audience members and critics thought that Gabriel as opener (especially with his elaborate makeup) overshadowed Bowie at the height of his popularity. Recordings of this tour were released as the double LP Plays Live The stage was set for Gabriel's critical and commercial breakout with his next studio release So which was in production for almost three years. During the recording and production of the album Gabriel found time to work on the film soundtrack for Alan Parker's 1984 feature Birdy, which consisted of new material as well as remixed instrumental tracks from his previous studio album. =>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

Stephen Thomas Erlewine @ Allmusic
As the leader of Genesis in the early '70s, Peter Gabriel helped move progressive rock to new levels of theatricality. In his solo career, Gabriel was no less ambitious, but he was more subtle in his methods. With his first eponymous solo album in 1977, he began exploring darker, more cerebral territory, incorporating avant-garde, electronic, and worldbeat influences into his music. The record, as well as its two similarly titled successors, established Gabriel as a critically acclaimed cult artist, and with 1982's Security, he began to move into the mainstream; "Shock the Monkey" became his first Top 40 hit, paving the way for his multi-platinum breakthrough So in 1986. Accompanied by a series of groundbreaking videos and the number one single "Sledgehammer," So became a multi-platinum hit, and Gabriel became an international star. Instead of capitalizing on his sudden success, he began to explore other interests, including recording soundtracks and running his company Real World. By the time he returned to pop with 1992's Us, his mass audience had faded away and he spent the remainder of the '90s working on multimedia projects for Real World.

Following his departure from Genesis in 1976, Peter Gabriel began work on the first of three consecutive eponymously titled albums; each record was named Peter Gabriel, he said, as if they were editions of the same magazine. In 1977, his first solo album appeared and became a moderate success due to the single "Solsbury Hill." Another self-titled record followed in 1978, yet received comparatively weaker reviews. Gabriel's third eponymous album was his artistic breakthrough. Produced by Steve Lillywhite and released in 1980, the album established Gabriel as one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political -- "Biko," a song about a murdered antiapartheid activist, became one of the biggest protest anthems of the '80s. "Games Without Frontiers," with its eerie chorus, nearly reached the Top 40.

In 1982, Gabriel released Security, which was an even bigger success, earning positive reviews and going gold on the strength of the startling video for "Shock the Monkey." Just as his solo career was taking off, Gabriel participated in a one-shot Genesis reunion in order to finance his WOMAD -- World of Music, Arts and Dance -- Festival. WOMAD was designed to bring various world musics and customs to a Western audience, and it soon turned into an annual event, and a live double album was released that year to commemorate the event. As Gabriel worked on his fifth album, he contributed the soundtrack to Alan Parker's 1984 film Birdy. His score was highly praised and it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes that year. After founding Real World, Inc. -- a corporation devoted to developing bridges between technology and multiethnic arts -- in 1985, he completed his fifth album, So.

Released in 1986, So became Gabriel's commercial breakthrough, largely because his Stax homage "Sledgehammer" was blessed with an innovative video that combined stop-action animation with live action. So climbed to number two as "Sledgehammer" hit number one, with "Big Time" -- featuring a video very similar to "Sledgehammer" -- reaching the Top Ten and "In Your Eyes" hitting the Top 30. As So was riding high on the American and British charts, Gabriel co-headlined the first benefit tour for Amnesty International in 1986 with Sting and U2. Another Amnesty International Tour followed in 1988, and the following year, Gabriel released Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ, a collection of instrumentals used in Martin Scorsese's film. Passion was the furthest Gabriel delved into worldbeat, and the album was widely acclaimed, winning the Grammy Award in 1989 for Best New Age Performance. In 1990, he released the hits compilation Shaking the Tree.

Gabriel labored long on the pop-music follow-up to So, finally releasing Us in the spring of 1992. During the recording of Us, Gabriel went through a number of personal upheavals, including a painful divorce, and those tensions manifested themselves on Us, a much darker record than So. For various reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was released six years after its predecessor, Us wasn't as commercially successful as So, despite positive reviews. Only one single, the "Sledgehammer" knockoff "Steam," reached the Top 40, and the album stalled at platinum sales. In 1993, Gabriel embarked on the most ambitious WOMAD tour to date, touring the United States with a roster including Crowded House, James, and Sinéad O'Connor, with whom he had an on-off romantic relationship. The following year, he released the double-disc Secret World Live, which went gold. Later in 1994, he released the CD-ROM Xplora, one of many projects he developed with Real World. For the next three years, Gabriel concentrated on developing more multimedia projects for the company. =>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

J.D.Considine @ Rolling Stone
Over the course of his career, British rocker Peter Gabriel has metamorphosed from theatrical prog-rock cult artist to canny, multimedia pop star to worldly rock sage. It's been a dramatic change: Fans of sly, pop/funk singles like "Big Time" might actually find it hard to accept that their hero was also responsible for the baroque silliness that is "Moribund the Burgermeister."

Gabriel's first three solo albums -- each entitled Peter Gabriel, although the remastered versions are helpfully numbered 1, 2, and 3 -- were experiments in reinvention. The first Peter Gabriel (the cover of which finds our hero half-hidden behind a wet windshield) arrived three years after his last studio recording with Genesis, 1974's arty, ambitious The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Between the flabby dramatics of "Moribund the Burgermeister" and the forced whimsy of "Excuse Me," it was clear that Gabriel without Genesis wasn't all that different from Gabriel with. Yet the folky economy of "Solsbury Hill" and the understated majesty of "Here Comes the Flood" clearly pushed toward something else -- not mainstream pop, exactly, but something close.

The second Peter Gabriel (with the fingernails cover) moves closer to that new sound. Produced by King Crimson's Robert Fripp -- himself a prog-rock star hoping to remake himself to fit a postpunk world -- the album finds Gabriel trying to square his past with the (then) present. "D.I.Y.," his paean to self-produced punk, seems especially prescient in the post-Napster world, while the spare, abstract "Exposure" reveals an unexpected edge. Still, neither the Who-style pomp of "On the Air" nor the ham-fisted pathos of "Home Sweet Home" suggests that Gabriel was surrendering his old turf easily.

It's the third Peter Gabriel album (with the melting-face cover) that finally puts him on the proper path. Rather than being written on piano and having the ideas translated to band arrangements, the songs on this album were written using digital synthesis and drum loops. Suddenly, there's a new urgency to Gabriel's voice as he rides the rhythms of "Intruder" and "No Self Control," while the blissfully transcendent "Biko" and "Games Without Frontiers" hint at a pop future very different from the guitar-based world Gabriel came up in.

Security expands on those possibilities by adding world-music elements to the mix. Gabriel had already made moves toward African music in "Biko," which opened with a brief mbube chorale, but that bit of color is nowhere near as dramatic as the burst of percussion that the Ekome Dance Company provides in "The Rhythm of the Heat." It isn't simply exoticism that makes the song (or the similarly flavored "San Jacinto" and "The Family and the Fishing Net") so intriguing; it's the way Gabriel incorporates these rhythmic ideas into his melodic concepts, resulting in a kind of magic that's as applicable to the boisterously tuneful "Shock the Monkey" as the moody, mysterious "I Have the Touch."

Gabriel's internationalist musical strategy didn't translate particularly well to live performance, at least not by the evidence of Plays Live (although P.O.V., a 1990 concert video shot with a different band and repertoire, isn't quite so flat). But it does make excellent soundtrack source material. In fact, several selections on the all-instrumental Music From the Film "Birdy" are reworkings of tunes from Security and the third Peter Gabriel, transforming familiar melodies into emotionally evocative mood pieces.

With So, Gabriel finally figures out how to play these new tools as pop. Amazingly, he does so without compromising the ambition or adventurousness of his previous efforts. Although the hits "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" are pointedly funk-driven (and serve up a fair amount of sarcasm with their big-beat arrangements), the rest of the album shows how much Gabriel had gleaned from his world-music side project, the W.O.M.A.D. (World of Music, Arts, and Dance) Festival. There are allusions to Zimbabwean Shona mbira themes in Tony Levin's bassline for "Don't Give Up," and Senegalese mbalax singing (courtesy of Youssou N'Dour) spikes the final choruses to "In Your Eyes." Exotic touches, to be sure, but delivered in a context conventional enough to make them palatable to any pop fan.

Gabriel's second soundtrack album, Passion (composed for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ), is similarly world-music savvy, though it draws more from the Middle East than Africa. Unlike Birdy, it feels more like a genuine film score, covering a range of styles (from Gabrielesque prog rock to quasi-symphonic tone poems), and suggests that there are depths to Gabriel that his pop work barely hints at.

Shaking the Tree, by contrast, makes no such moves in that direction, offering only a representation of his big hits augmented by a fresh collaboration with Youssou N'Dour (the title tune) and a new version of "Here Comes the Flood." Us, which followed, did its best to pick up where So left off, mixing sophis-ticated funk-pop ("Steam," "Kiss That Frog") with issue-oriented art rock. In this case, however, the issues were more personal, focusing more on psychosexual drama than on social issues, which lent the whole project the fruity air of postanalytic revelation instead of pop-culture inspiration. None of that was audible in Secret World Live, however, which made the pop content seem more like the white funk it wanted to be, while rendering the artier fare all the more indigestible.

That, sadly, seems to have been the high-water mark for Gabriel. Eight years passed before he finally released a new album, and that turned out to be another Birdy-like soundtrack, Long Walk Home (from the film Rabbit-Proof Fence). Taken on its own, it not only complements the film's vision of the Western Australian outback, but reduces many of the major themes from his subsequent "commercial" release, Up, to a far more potent essence. Up, on the other hand, manages to make several of Gabriel's stylistic habits -- grandiloquent prog, slyly mannered funk -- seem less like strengths than tics, and (worse) with the tabloid TV-bashing "Barrie Williams Show" turns his gift for satire into an embarrassing and slow-arriving statement of the obvious. We deserve better -- and so does he.

After Up, Gabriel seems to have tried to make up for his slack productivity in the '90s by releasing numerous new albums. Sadly, he's done so without producing much in the way of new music. The misleadingly titled Hit offers only one new song ("Burn You Up, Burn You Down") while recapping much of Up and rounding the disc out with middling rarities plus a sprinkling of actual hits. It's hardly an improvement on Shaking the Tree. Simultaneously, he has been releasing concert recordings online through the "Encore Series" (www.themusic.com). There were 21 released from his 2003 tour, and several dozen more planned for his 2004 outing. It beats writing new songs, apparently. =>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

Peter Gabriel @ You Tube

King Crimson

@ Wiki
King Crimson are an influential English musical group founded by guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon) and drummer Michael Giles in 1969. Their dense musical style has typically been categorised as progressive rock, although it also has influences from jazz, classical, new wave, heavy metal and folk. Although King Crimson has garnered little radio or music video airplay, they have a devoted following.

Though its membership has fluctuated considerably during its lifetime, the band continues to perform and record music. Guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon) is said to have once noted that "King Crimson exists when King Crimson needs to exist". Fripp has been the only consistent member, although he has stated that he does not necessarily consider himself the band's leader. To him King Crimson "is a way of doing things", and the musical consistency that has persisted throughout the band's history, despite frequent rotation of its members, reflects this point of view.

The name King Crimson was coined by lyricist Peter Sinfield as a synonym for Beelzebub, prince of demons. According to Fripp, Beelzebub would be an anglicised form of the Arabic phrase "B'il Sabab", meaning "the man with an aim". However, the original name is understood to be from ba'al zebul, "Lord of the Seat". (The name was later popularly corrupted to ba'al zevel, "Lord of the Dungheap", and ba'al zevuv, "Lord of the Flies", because the god's statue was constantly covered in blood.)

Drummer Michael Giles and his bassist brother Peter, put out an advertisement for a singing organist. Robert Fripp (@amazon), a guitarist who didn't sing, responded to the ad. The improbable trio of Giles, Giles and Fripp was formed. They recorded one album together, the idiosyncratic "The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp."
(more...........)

============ blogprock ============

J.D. Considine @ Rolling Stone
Despite counting among its alumni members of Bad Company; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Foreigner; and Asia; King Crimson has never had much truck with the pop end of progressive rock. Instead, the ever-changing ensemble has preferred to haunt the artiest extremes of the prog-rock movement, producing music that can be abstruse, arcane, abrasive, and abstract -- but very rarely boring. As such, it casts a long shadow, not just over prog rock but also new wave, alt rock, and metal, echoing audibly in such acts as Gentle Giant, Talking Heads, Dream Theater, Tool, and Opeth.

King Crimson is, by and large, a creature of guitarist Robert Fripp (@amazon), but that's not quite the same thing as its being Fripp's band. Despite his reputa-tion as a less-than-democratic bandleader, Fripp has long recognized that Crimson's musical identity is more the product of collaboration than direction. The group started out as a collective operation, which should be evident from the chamber-music dynamics found in most of the playing on In the Court of the Crimson King (@allmusic). Although best remembered for the sci-fi fury of "21st Century Schizoid Man," the other songs find the band operating in the semiclassical mode favored by early art rockers; apart from occasional mellotron overkill and singer Greg Lake's pompons tendencies, the album remains quite listenable. That's not quite the case with In the Wake of Poseidon, on which the band's sound grows more complicated, with jazzy rhythms and knotty, dissonant instrumental lines flavoring "Pictures of a City" and "Cat Food," while lengthy, obtuse improvisa-tion dominates "The Devil's Triangle." Lizard pushes those elements even harder but with less success; apart from the "Bolero" segment of the 24-minute "Lizard," the improvisational sections inevitably degenerate into showy self-indulgence. Live, however, a lot of that fat was burned off in the heat of performance, and the Epitaph sets do an admirable job of documenting that intensity. Vol. 1, which captures the last performance before this lineup disbanded, is by far the strongest.

Fripp reformed Crimson a year later with a new rhythm section and singer Boz Burrell. This lineup debuts on Islands, but apart from "Ladies of the Road," which sets its groupie-adoration lyric to a lean, edgy blues, the songs rank among the group's most pretentious. Nor was this version of Crimson particularly long-lasting, as the other members abandoned ship a year later. (Earthbound, a mediocre live album featuring this lineup, was for years the only other document of this version of Crimson; it has since been augmented with the much-superior Ladies of the Road, which includes a whole disc of excerpted guitar and sax solos from various versions of "21st Century Schizoid Man").

The next incarnation of King Crimson was on many counts its best. In addition to boasting enormously capable players, this band -- violinist David Cross, bassist/vocalist John Wetton, drummer Bill Bruford, and percussionist Jamie Muir -- was disciplined enough to keep the improvisational passages sharp and lean and to make the actual songs seem tuneful and direct. As such, the incandescent Larks' Tongues in Aspic alternates between crisply played, dramatically paced instrumentals, like the two-part title tune, and quirky vocal numbers, such as "Book of Saturday" and the clankingly catchy "Easy Money." Never before had Crimson's music been so daring and focused. After such heights, Starless and Bible Black is a bit of a let down; while "The Great Deceiver" and "Starless and Bible Black" have their moments, the material is generally too fragmented to cohere. Red, however, quickly returns to form. With Cross and Muir gone, the chemistry between Fripp, Wetton, and Bruford is intensely dynamic, adding bite to works like "Fallen Angel" and the electrifying "Red." USA, a live album recorded with the Cross-Fripp-Wetton-Bruford lineup, was the first of many "official bootleg" recordings by this period Crimson. The Night Watch is the best of the lot, though there's also a lot of good stuff squirreled away on the four-CD set The Great Deceiver.

King Crimson called it quits again in 1975, but Fripp, never one to say never, brought the band back in 1981 with Discipline. Bruford and Fripp were the only carryovers from the previous incarnation; joining them were Peter Gabriel bassist Tony Levin and guitarist Adrian Belew. Even given Crimson's history of never downplaying its chops, this was a player's band in the truest sense of the term, and the quartet's jaw-dropping technique is more than obvious on such knottily rhythmic, harmonically demanding workouts as "Thela Hun Ginjeet," "Elephant Talk," and "Discipline." Beat, this crew's sophomore effort, is a little less rigorous, with Belew's melodic instincts adding a pop sheen to the snakily complex instrumental lines beneath "Neal and Jack and Me" and "Waiting Man." Three of a Perfect Pair introduces funk elements to the band's rhythmic repertoire and gives a nod to the band's past in "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part III." Then after a 1984 tour, vividly documented on Absent Lovers, King Crimson abdicated yet again.

Not that Fripp would ever fully retire the crown, of course. The next King Crimson emerged in 1994, in what Fripp had dubbed the "double trio" format with two guitarists, two bassists, and two drummers -- basically, the entire previous lineup plus bassist Trey Gunn and drummer Pat Mastelotto. VROOOM is simply an opening salvo, offering an early take on ideas that would be fleshed out more fully on THRAK; the former's principal charm is the fluidity of the intertwining group improvisations. THRAK, by contrast, is a more typical Crimson album, offering a couple of solid songs ("Dinosaur," "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream") and lots of edgily aggressive playing. Quirky uppercasing aside, THRaKaTTaK isn't especially interesting, as its in-depth exploration of synth technology turns the music into something resembling a high-concept sound-effects record. This isn't the most consistent Crimson, but it is extraordinarily well documented, thanks to such goofily titled live albums as B'Boom (spotty) and VROOOM VROOOM (which is long but boasts a few brilliant bits).

Surprisingly, King Crimson didn't disband after this run; instead, it split into various fractals -- or, as Fripp spelled it, "fraKctals." These were four "projeKct" groups featuring various mutations on the last King Crimson, minus Bruford, who presumably got annoyed by the insertion of that stupid capital K. The ProjeKcts is a four-CD box documenting these outings, and while the playing is frequently astonishing, the general lack of a melodic anchor more often than not leaves the music adrift. (The Deception of the Thrush handily excerpts from the box for those merely interested in a taste.)

ConstruKction of Light marks the post-ProjeKct return of Crimson, now down to a quartet, due to Levin's departure. Again the playing is vigorous, but the writing is too stiff and self-conscious to be completely convincing; there are better versions of "Into the Frying Pan" and "ProzaKc Blues" on the live Heavy ConstruKction. The four returned to the studio for Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With, a VROOOM-style prequel to The Power to Believe. Each has its charms, with Happy showing more grit and raw aggression, while Believe showcases the band's subtlety and polish; but the writing is the band's best in years, particularly "Eyes Wide Open" and "Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With," which appear in different versions on both.

There are two King Crimson anthologies out, neither of which captures the entire span of the band's existence. The Compact King Crimson is perhaps too compact, as it draws only from In the Court of the Crimson King, Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. The boxed anthology Frame by Frame is considerably more inclusive, offering one disc's worth of music for each of the band's three periods of development, plus a fourth, live disc; The Abbreviated King Crimson reduces its bulk to a single, judiciously edited CD. Since forming his own Discipline label in the mid-'90s, Fripp has also launched a "collector's club" series, which has at this point released more than 20 albums of live recordings and esoterica (available online through www.disciplineglobalmobile.com).

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

============ blogprock ============

@ George Starostin
If prog rock ever lied at least a pair of miles away from your interests, you're simply bound to get at least a couple of King Crimson albums (and one of them certainly got to be In the Court of the Crimson King (@allmusic)), just because listening to a King Crimson album is like listening to the very soul of progressive rock. Here was a group that managed to get away with writing totally de-personalized music - music that didn't seem to come from anybody in particular and didn't belong to anyone in particular. If we're speaking of de-personalized music, Pink Floyd is usually the most obvious candidate that comes to mind. But Pink's lack of human identity was totally artificial, caused by Roger Waters' dislike of the musical press more than of anything else. The actual music was always highly personal, especially the later albums. Same goes for most of the Reverends of art and prog rock - Jon and Ian Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Greg Lake, all of these guys were great but, dang it, they were guys, with their own worlds and psychologies.
King Crimson, on the other hand, was a band in the pure sense of the word - despite its 'revolving door' structure. Come to think of it, definitely because of the revolvin' door structure! Robert Fripp was their musical 'director', but he wasn't much of a composer - his only principle seems to have always been that of putting the music before the composer. And this is the only moment that unites all of King Crimson - from the silly, lightweight pre-Crimson Giles, Giles & Fripp and right to their last crazy sonic experimentations of the Nineties. You might accuse King Crimson of pretentiousness, pomposity, complexity for the sake of complexity and everything, but 'self-indulgence' is the only of the standard epithets that sounds somewhat lame when applied to King Crimson music - because it has no 'self'. It's totally abstract, personality-free, soulless, if I might say so. Even Yes didn't go that far. Maybe it has something to do with jazz music as one of the band's strongest influences: I've always thought of middle and late period jazz as highly esoteric, 'restricted' music with little spiritual filler but a lot of undeserved gall, and the same can be really said of King Crimson. However, they're actually better - sometimes, because the band never felt itself as restricted as even the most professional and talented jazz players; King Crimson have changed quite a lot of images throughout their career.

Of course, there's also a bad side to this lack of face: much too often, the band engages in boring 'art for art' sequences, resulting in the fact that, along with some of the greatest rock moments, they are also responsible for some of its most unbearable ones: whereas Fripp always thrived to be at the front line and would soak in any new influences, he was, and still is, always famous for also disregarding the conventional rules of melody to such an extent that quite a solid batch of the band's catalog can only be accessible to real diehards. But at least their tenure is totally unique among prog rockers, and if you can't help hating art rock but would like to be able to cure yourself of your attitude, King Crimson is the best candidate for you. It's unfortunate that the band never really had any big financial success (as far as I know, their debut album is their only serious sell-out); on the other hand, it saved their music from being overplayed and you can't diss them like you diss your Dark Side Of The Moon - that is, the only reason being 'I'm sick to death of it'...
(more..........)

============ blogprock ============

============ blogprock ============

Bruce Eder @ Allmusic
If there is one group that embodies both the best and the worst aspects of progressive rock (from the standpoints of both its supporters and its detractors), it is King Crimson. During its first five years of existence, from 1969 through 1974, in a variety of different lineups, this band led by guitar/Mellotron virtuoso Robert Fripp broke lots of new ground in progressive rock, stretching both the language and structure of the music into realms of jazz and classical, all the while avoiding any of the pop or psychedelic sensibilities of the Moody Blues. The absence of those pop compromises, and the lack of an overt sense of humor, ultimately doomed King Crimson to nothing more than a large cult following, but made their albums among the most enduring and respectable of progressive rock relics.

King Crimson originally grew out of the remnants of an unsuccessful trio called Giles, Giles & Fripp. Michael Giles (drums, vocals), Peter Giles (bass, vocals), and Robert Fripp (guitar) had begun working together in late 1967, after playing in a variety of bands. Robert Fripp (born May 16, 1946, Dorset, England) had studied guitar in Bournemouth with a teacher named Don Strike, whose other students included a slightly younger Greg Lake. As a teenager, he'd played in a local band called the Ravens, whose lineup included vocalist Gordon Haskell, also a boyhood friend of Fripp's. From the spring of 1965 until the following spring, he and Haskell had been members of a group called the League of Gentlemen (the name taken from a very famous British crime-caper movie), and Fripp had also played guitar in the Majestic Dance Orchestra.

Michael Giles (born 1942, Bournemouth, Dorset, England) and Peter Giles had played with bandleader/brothers Dave and Gordon Dowland in a group called the Dowland Brothers from 1962 until 1964. More recently, they'd been part of a Bournemouth group called Trendsetters, Ltd., but had left that group in the summer of 1967 and were looking to put together a band of their own. They hooked up with Fripp in August of 1967, and by September the trio had journeyed to London in search of fame and fortune. Instead, they found an Italian singer for whom they played backup for a week before parting company.

At the time, British rock, and especially the London music scene, was in the process of evolving by leaps and bounds. The release of the Sgt. Pepper album in the summer of 1967, coupled with the ever druggier ambience both in everybody's songwriting and at the city's clubs, was causing a revolution in the sound of rock music. The totally unexpected success of what had been intended as a "stereo demonstration" record by the Moody Blues and the London Festival Orchestra, released by Decca Records' Deram imprint later that year, seemed to confirm that bands other than the Beatles could sell records of that type.
(more..........)

============ blogprock ============

@ Gibraltar Encyclopedia
King Crimson are one of the most influential and highly regarded of the long-lived prog bands. Through numerous line-up changes, their founder and guitarist, the ubiquitous and brilliant Robert Fripp, has crafted King Crimson's sound through quite distinct musical phases. Although the official classification for real KC-heads notes around seven identifiably different KC phases, the new listener can be given a good picture by pointing out three main phases in their musical output. Phase one consists of recordings up to and including Islands. Most of this period was characteristically defined by the lyrics and "spiritual guidance" of Peter Sinfield...a fair degree of high-brow social comment and mysticism. The music shows folk elements and ranges from chaotic improvisations with a seemingly huge amount of instruments (most of them Fripp on Mellotron) to beautiful acoustic songs with floating melodies. Fripp's later incredible and highly original guitar work is not too obvious in this phase but complements the music greatly when it appears. Many long, classicaly inspired pieces involving much Mellotron and occasionaly full orchestras make this phase sound more dated than later material but it all has a really timeless quality too (is that a contradiction?). Lizard is my favourite from this period and is probably the most ageless album I have. This period involved a lot of prog illumini on various albums ... Jon Anderson sings on Lizard, Greg Lake sings and plays on In the Wake ... etc. Phase Two involved Lark's Tongues up to and including Red. Much more modern sounding, many consider this Crimson's high point. Bill Bruford on percussion, John Wetton on vocals and David Cross on strings. Fripp's guitar rears its head properly on these recordings and you are treat to some of the most inspired and brilliantly original guitar work ever produced. There are a lot of long instrumental tracks that sound improvised but have a really tight structure...very loud distortion and strange modalities combine to provide a real challenge to the prog listener. Touching jazz ideas in places, folk in others and raw Fripp in most, Lark's Tongues is quite superb. Features percussion legend Jamie Muir, too. Most of Starless and Bible Black is live improvisation around Fripp themes with the audience dubbed out and this fact should be remembered when listening to the two amazing extended instrumentals on side two! Often descending into what sounds like "horror music" in these instrumentals, they come soaring up from the quiet passages with Wetton's bass and Fripp's screaming guitar together. Great stuff. Red shows a new development as the sound is tightened (Cross has left by now) and the characteristic Fripp guitar figures begin to emerge. Great percussion and a fantastic vocal track "Starless" on side two that incorporates Fripp's "one-note" solo section! This is often said to Crimson's most "metal" album but this is really misleading. It has absolutely nothing to do with "metal" as commonly perceived, it just has more guitar. A brilliant album. Phase three envelops Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair. Very different to the other material, this was the result of a regrouping that Fripp undertook many years after he had broken Crimson up after Red. He originally re-formed the group under the name "Discipline," then changed the name to King Crimson and made an album called Discipline. Confusing, eh? Anyway, this lineup had Bruford on percussion, Adrian Belew on vocals/guitar and the stick-master Tony Levin on stick-bass. Belew's influence made this phase a lot more "pop" oriented than had previously been the case and these three albums are probably the most acessible of the KC recordings. Fripp's guitar-work had fully matured and his obscure time signatures and Belew's sense of humour (and amazing guitar talent) made for a really heady mixture. Characterised by overlapping guitar lines played in different times so as to sound like weird delay effects and Levin's perfectly executed and mid-range stick lines, this phase is a real delight. Belew's voice was made for this type of material and it fits well. As usual, brillant (but more subdued) percussion from Bruford. Get some of this phase or miss out on Crimson at a creative height. In short, a legendary band in all their incarnations. Rarely has such diversity been containable under one name. Totally recommended. All of their back studio catalogue was re-mixed for CD by Fripp and Tony Arnold in 1989 and is now available; look for the "definitve edition" blurb on the case. Latest lineup is Fripp, Belew, Levin, Trey Gunn, Pat Mastalotto and Bruford.
(more..............)

============ blogprock ============

@ Rare Vinyl
Founded by guitarist Robert Fripp, during its first five years of existence King Crimson stretched both the language and structure of rock into realms of jazz and classical music, all the while avoiding pop and psychedelic sensibilities; the absence of mainstream compromises ultimately doomed the group to nothing more than a large cult following, but made their albums among the most enduring and respectable of the progressive rock era. King Crimson originally grew out of the remnants of an unsuccessful trio called GILES, GILES & FRIPP. The trio recorded their album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp, during the summer of 1968. Even as the album was in the works, however, the group's line-up was changing: Ian McDonald and Peter Sinfield joined late in 1968. This line-up recorded demos of "I Talk to the Wind" and "Under the Sky": Peter Giles exited the scene in November of 1968, and Fripp's childhood friend, vocalist/bassist Greg Lake, joined two days later.

The new roster of Fripp, Lake, McDonald, and Michael Giles - with Sinfield writing their lyrics - officially became King Crimson on January 13, 1969, deriving the name from Sinfield's lyrics for the song "Court of the Crimson King". In July of 1969, the group debuted in front of 650,000 people at a free concert in London's Hyde Park on a bill with the Rolling Stones; later that month King Crimson Released their first album In The Court Of The Crimson King was one of the most challenging albums of the entire fledgling progressive rock movement, but somehow it caught the public's collective ear at the right moment and hit n° 5 in England. At the peak of the LP's success the band broke up: McDonald and Giles decided to leave. Greg Lake soon decided to leave Crimson as well, but agreed to stay long enough to record vocals for the next album. Finally, a new album (In the Wake of Poseidon) were recorded early in 1970: essentially a Fripp-dominated retake of In the Court of the Crimson King, Lake sang on all but one of the songs, Fripp played mellotron and guitars, and a new singer, Gordon Haskell, debuted on "Cadence and Cascade". Fripp spent the month of August rehearsing a new King Crimson line-up, consisting of himself, Haskell (bass, vocals), saxman/flautist Mel Collins, and Andy McCullough (drums). This group, augmented by pianist Keith Tippett, guest vocalist Jon Anderson of Yes, and oboist/English horn virtuoso Marc Charig, recorded the next Crimson album, Lizard, in the fall of 1970, but Haskell and McCullough both walked out soon after it was finished.

In December of 1970, Ian Wallace joined on drums, and after auditioning several aspiring singers Fripp chose Boz Burrell as the group's new vocalist. The latest Crimson line-up emerged on stage in April of 1971. Sinfield split in December. Their new album is Islands. The band broke up in April of 1972. But in July of 1972 Fripp put together a new band consisting of drummer Bill Bruford, John Wetton on bass and vocals, David Cross on violin and mellotron, and Jamie Muir on percussion. This group recorded their debut album, Larks' Tongues in Aspic. Muir was out of the line-up in 1973. In January of 1974, King Crimson cut a new album, Starless and Bible Black. In July of 1974 exited. With King Crimson reduced to a trio, one more album, Red, was completed that summer with help from Cross, Mel Collins and Ian McDonald. Fripp disbanded the group on September 25, 1974. In June of 1975 a live album called USA was issued, followed four years later by Fripp's first solo album, Exposure. Finally, in April of 1981, Fripp formed a new group with Bruford, bassist Tony Levin, and guitarist/singer Adrian Belew. By the time their album was released in October of that year: the album was titled Discipline. This band toured and recorded regularly over the years. They splintered after two more albums, 1982's Beat and 1984's Three of a Perfect Pair. King Crimson remained silent for about a decade. Finally, in 1994, Fripp reunited with the Discipline-era lineup, augmenting the group with drummer/percussionist Pat Mastelotto and bassist/guitarist/Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn.

The EP VROOOM appeared late that year, setting the stage for a full-fledged comeback with 1995's Thrak. The album earned generally good reviews and re-established Crimson as a viable touring concern, although it took until 2000 for the band to come up with a new studio album (ConstruKction of Light) amidst a continuing stream of archive-clearing collections. In the five years between Thrak and ConstruKction of Light, the members of Crimson often fragmented the band into experimental subgroups dubbed ProjeKcts. The idea was to mix things up a bit and generate fresh musical ideas prior to the forthcoming album; in the meantime, drummer Bill Bruford and bassist Tony Levin left the band. Culled from the supporting European tour, the live box Heavy ConstruKction was released later in 2000.
(more..............)

============ blogprock ============

A British Rock Invasion Is Led By King Crimson; Midnight Opera Group Experiments With Jazz Cleo Laine's Songs Get Big Reception Urbie Green's Quintet Plays Danceable Jazz John S. Wilson

April 30, 1973, Monday
John Rockwellian Dovejohn Rockwell
Page 24, 1039 words

Displaying First Paragraph - The Union Jack was fluttering over the Academy of Music on 14th Street on Friday and Saturday, underlining the continued affluence of the British rock'n'roll scene. On the two evenings four British rock groups appeared. The headliner of Saturday's show was the latest version of King Crimson, which previously has had much trouble in court due to shifting personnel. =>>>>>>>>>>>

============ blogprock ============

Links:
The notes from A Young Person's Guide to King Crimson
King Crimson surfaces again, an article from The Daily Beacon.
The Two Sides of Adrian Belew.