Music heads - never take your eye off BBC4

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Caveat

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...because if you did so last Friday, and if like me are a bit of a prog aficionado, you have already missed a full night of Genesis, ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull et al in another installment of their so-called britannia series - great stuff.

This Friday, is synth britannia so back to the 80s (and hopefully a bit earlier too)

 
Caveat said:
... Genesis, ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Jethro Tull ...
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Missed them on the telly unfortunately.

Its scary to think I've seen those bands live, as well as various precursors to ELP, e.g. Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster, The Nice, The Crazy World of Arfur Brahn, etc.
 
Awfah himself featured highly on the show too. Some of The Nice too. Probably the most incestuous genre it has to be said.

You have seen King Crimson?

I don't like live music very much but KC are stiil a band, among only a handful that I would love to see. Had a chance to see Fripp in a solo gig in Dublin a few years ago but his idiosyncratic sound system/set-up went on the blink so the show was cancelled.
 
Caveat said:
...
You have seen King Crimson? ...
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It'd be more accurate to say that when I lived in England I saw a bunch of guys including Fripp and assorted musos from the 178,423 (known) former KC members rip it up at a concert. That was in the 70's, any earlier and I'd be unable to account for my whereabouts.
 


On the show, Bill Bruford (who was surprisingly down to earth), commented on Fripp's dictatorial stance, zen-like avant garde approach and his notorious reputation for perfection. He started by saying something like "all you have probably heard about King Crimson is true." And went on:

In Yes we could have endless discussions about whether the next chord should be an F sharp augmented ninth or diminished fifth or whatever. In King Crimson very little was actually said. You were just supposed to know.

 
Put it this way, the accent/demeanour etc of Phil Collins (seemingly one of the few non public school boys in the mix) was conspicuous in it's blokeishness!
 
I blame Jonathan King who was at a private school (public school in England, go figure) with most of them (well maybe one or two). A lot of them were from comfortably-off backgrounds and unlike the "swingin' sixties" bands they had formal musical training, hence as you pointed out, the almost incestuous relationships the bands and musicians had - they seemed most comfortable amongst their peers. Watching them perform, the audience was almost secondary and a bit like jazz musicians, their focus was primarily internal to the band.

One exception was a very young Mr Wakeman who even smiles of this very poor ancient clip - http://www.last.fm/music/Yes/_/America

This might explain my earlier comment - http://www.billbruford.com/
 

Yeah, very true.

One exception was a very young Mr Wakeman who even smiles of this very poor ancient clip - http://www.last.fm/music/Yes/_/America
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Yes, should have mentioned Rick in the same breath as Phil. He spoke about his parents almost having to starve to send him to piano lessons.


This might explain my earlier comment - http://www.billbruford.com/
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Of course. D'oh!
 
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