giles , giles and fripp

I'm off to see the new(ish) seven man King Crimson next Tuesday, and very excited I am too.

 

So today's music takes me right back to where it all began. Nope, not In The Court Of The Crimson King, but to the year before that landmark album, when a peculiar little record was released. It was called The Cheerful Insanity Of Giles, Giles and Fripp.

Drummer Michael Giles and his bassist brother Peter Giles had been members of a number of Bournemouth area bands for some years and in the summer of 1967 decided to form their own group. They advertised locally for a singer who could also play keyboards. For reasons now lost in the mists of time Robert Fripp was hired - a non-singing guitarist. Undaunted by this, the group moved to London to seek their fortune. Renting a house in Brondesbury Road they recorded a huge number of excellent quality demos in their front room (thanks to the Giles brothers having a Revox that had been modified to allow complex overdubbing). Peter Giles reluctantly sang, but his very English delivery rather suits the very English subject matter of the humorous vignettes that GGF was writing. In early 1968 Deram Records signed the band and the album The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles And Fripp was swiftly recorded.

 

It's delightfully bonkers, surely the very definition of English whimsy. And terrifically good fun. It's all very dated now; in fact it was probably rather dated back in 1968 to be honest, but there's a peculiarly appealing quality about the whole album. Some of the songs are actually very good - "Thursday Morning" and "One In A Million" are quite Pepper-ish with a very McCartney-esque music hall feel and both were issued as singles. Some of the instrumental work is fiendishly complex - Fripp's guitar runs are incredible and his "Suite" even has some passages that would be re-used in "The Song Of The Gulls" on Crimson's Islands. 

 

And then there's the two narrative pieces - Peter Giles' "Just George" is merely silly wordplay, but Fripp's "Saga Of Rodney Toady" displays a Milligan-esque humour in both the writing and delivery. Fripp adds lots of odd pauses and stutters such as 'Rodney was so… ffffat and ugly'. I love the way Fripp tells of how girls would all run away when Rodney stepped onto the dancefloor, making him look 'even more foolish than Nature had intended…' 

 

Sadly, the singles extracted from the album proved to be smash flops, and the album sold poorly. However GGF forged on, adding a keyboard playing saxophonist / flautist - Ian Macdonald - who contributed to further home demos, as did his girlfriend, folk singer Judy Dyble. In 2001 some of these 1968 demos were issued as The Brondesbury Tapes.  There's a gorgeous version of "I Talk To The Wind" with Judy's lovely clear vocals, amongst many other very pretty tunes such as "Under The Sky". What's interesting to Crimson fans is that some of these demos were later adapted and expanded into King Crimson tracks - for example parts of "Passages Of Time" became the various "Peace" tracks on In The Wake Of Poseidon.

Judy Dyble soon dropped out but Ian's friend Peter Sinfield began helping out with the words. Then, at the end of 1968, Peter Giles decided to get a 'proper' job. Sinfield called in his friend Greg Lake, who could both sing and play bass. But with Lake in place it soon became clear to the remaining Giles and Fripp that the band had now morphed into something altogether different, and very different music was swiftly emerging. The whimsical wordplay of GGF had fallen by the wayside, in favour of something much heavier. Together the musicians came up with a new band name to reflect the new sound - King Crimson…