Customer Reviews

Cheerful Insanity of Giles Giles & Fripp

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Yes, I'm a huge fan of Crimson and Fripp and all the various cohorts and offshoots of the past 30 years, and this great album is where it all began. For a long time this was an expensive out of print collectors item. I originally taped it off the radio (WCVT - Towson St. University - RIP)back in 1980, when a fabulous DJ and great friend (Rod Misey)did his Sunday night music special and had a guest on the show who owned the album which was played in it's entirety and discussed on the air. I think I still have the cassette somewhere. I finally got a Japanese import CD of this in 1990, but unfortunately that doesn't have the bonus cuts that are on this version. This is excellent late 60's psychedelic pop, sometimes similar to the early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd, but with a jazzy tinge. Fripp's guitar is already in top form and shows the shapes of things to come in '69 when he and Mike Giles added some guys named Lake and McDonald and became we all know who. One of the coolest things about this record is it's lovely and very British sense of humor in the in between song bits, "The Saga Of Rodney Toady" (on side one of the original vinyl). And the "I know a man and his name is George" segments (side two) get a chuckle.

I'm kind of suprised by some of the negative comments posted regarding this little miracle of audio archiving. I mean, come on, what did you guys expect? This album bombed when it was first released, and there is a good reason for that -- it is not music for just anybody. In fact, unless you are on drugs or seriously mental, this album is really just for King Crimsonites and Frippofiles who will listen to anything with his mark on it.

To a certain extent, Fripp carried the baggage of this album's miserable reception straight through his early King Crimson period; one can feel him releasing the angst and frustration on the Court of the Crimson King album all the way through Red, the last of the early KC records. To a certain extent, all of the fantastic, intoxicating negative energy that made those early LPs so interesting can be traced right back to the Cheerful Insanity album. You have to remember when evaluating it that this actually was their idea of solid entertainment ... what WERE they thinking?

"North Meadow" is actually my favorite track on the disc these days, and combines a nice pastoral Jonathan King-ish folk ditty with what is actually some serious Fripp noodling at the end with a solo that anticipated, IMHO, Larks' Tongues in Aspic's Easy Money. The Saga of Rodney Toady seems to be an effort by Fripp to come to terms with his own childhood obesity [well documented in interviews I have on file] in a most English way -- by laughing at it, and himself. We hear hints at Fripp's damaged self esteem, his frsutration/fascination with sex, and his complete contempt for the staid, everyday British people who made his life miserable. The fact that they/he decided to use the Rodney Toady story as a framing device for their songs speaks to the "concept oriented" nature that would define later works like In the Wake of Poseidon and Lizard.

The second 'song' on the CD, Newly-Weds, is worth the money alone for the CD because of one fact: Robert Fripp sings the lead vocal. He can barely hold a note, but you can tell that the guy was trying, and as such whenever I listen to the album I strain for that unique, mid-lands Fripp accent singing backup vocals. Imagine that: Bob Fripp singing. Ha ha ha.

One in a Million was their first single from the LP, and you can understand the confusion it created when released during the beginning of summer 1968 when the world was in turmoil, Vietnam was raging, hippies and protesting was becoming a way of life ... and here come these three British maniacs, singing a song about conservative moral values. Other bands of the day sang songs of protest and social change, but Gile Giles and Fripp celebrate the life of a middle class, middle aged man who's insured for a couple of thousand, and he's almost due for a pension. Sound ridiculous? It is, and just as out of step with the fashionable counterculture of the time as "In the Court of the Crimson King" was a year later. Robert Fripp has very little use for the fashionably hip, and while One in a Million may be amongst the oddest songs he produced it is quite in step with his low key, midlands conservatism.

The next track, Call Tomorrow, is a deceptively bleak sounding dirge that has some hilarious lyrics about a little tryst gone horribly wrong. That idea is also present in Digging My Lawn, a free form jazz riffed ditty that suggests some of the craziness that would later turn up on the Lizard album. Little Children gives us an early look at what would later become introspective mellotron fueled syrup like Exiles, Fallen Angel and I Talk to the Wind.

The Krukster is probably the most Crimson-esque piece on the disc, a psychedelic renditioning of Dante on Acid with Fripp creating a pre-guitar craft riff that reaches into the stratosphere at it's climax ala Schizoid Man, Pictures of the City and the rare Groon. Side one then concludes with their second "single", Thursday Morning, a song that was too filled with positive youthful energy to compete with acts like Steppenwolf and Jefferson Airplane, but still nicely showcases the Giles Giles and Fripp effect of breaking off into little set-pieces based upon classical music that would later turn up in Moonchild. It's actually quite a nice song, but again you can kind of understand why nobody bought it at the time.

Side two opens with perhaps the most bizarre cut on the disc, How Do The Know?, which if I am not mistaken has to do with the same anti-counterculturalism as One In a Million, but with a more obviously contemporary feel to the song ... this could have been one of the great psychedelic anthems of the time if it wasn't such a silly song, but you can still hear Fripp's resentment as being thought of as an "uncool" person when a young man. How do they know? Or more to the point, What do They Know?

The Elephant Song was their last effort at a single from the album, and no it has nothing to do with Discipline's Elephant Talk and yes it is the most ridiculous track on the CD. Fripp would later refer to the frenetic environment of a Circus on Lizard, but again I think this song is more related to Fripp's identity issues ... fat men, bearded ladies, staid British commoners who respond to things with the expression "Very, very nice!" are all metaphors for the target of the song's satire. But just what that is I haven't the foggiest clue. One thing I do know is that it's not about an elephant eating peanuts.

The Sun Is Shining is something I wish had been left off the CD, and is quite literally a party killer. Skip it; I am at a loss for why it was even recorded in the first place. Is it supposed to be a parody? Who knows. And what's up with the "I know a man and his name is George" routine that serves as the framing device for the second side? Maybe a few packets of grass too many found their way into the recording studios.

Suite #1 is where most Frippofiles and Crimsonites willl get their money. This piece's staccato bursts of Frippery point directly to the 6/8 bridge in Scizoid Man and what would eventually become Starless and Bible Black's Fracture. But even at this early age you can hear that Bob Fripp was perhaps the most startling guitar craftsman of his age, and the middle mellotron/harmony section is a nice anticipation of the sounds that would later turn up on Court of the Crimson King, The Devil's Triangle, and Exiles. Every guitar playing person I know who I have played this track for sit back after the final burst of notes and remark "Holy Mackeral!"

Now the version I have is an older Japanese import that concludes with the next track, Erudite Eyes, which is really the only 'contemporary late 60's guitar rock/psychedelia" piece on the album. The dreamy, perpecatious lyrics are nicely counterpointed by what is perhaps the most concise rendering of what Giles Giles and Fripp would have sounded like had they even gotten one gig. They did not. After the album disappeared they tried becoming a quintet with Ian MacDonald on woodwinds and with Fairport Convention's Judy Dyble singing, but it was of no use. The world just wasn't ready for a pastoral folk rock band with Robert Fripp on guitar no matter how it was to be packaged.

The result of the negative response the LP garnered in 1968 led to bigger and better things, though, and The Cheerful Insanity's glib optimism is directly contrasted by the "End of the Universe" gloom and doom of In The Court of the Crimson King. You can understand the pessimism of that classic album even more after hearing the boys play their heart out on this LP, who's first year's total sales amounted to 400 units. That's pretty bad, but it doesn't mean the music is.

Thankfully, carefully collected archives of the band were kept, and now a domestic version of the CD including some fascinating if even more obscure bonus tracks is availible for listeners who are willing to put their preconcieved notions of Crimsonalia aside and look at how Bobby Fripp, former school fat boy, became Robert Fripp, God of freak out metal/art guitar. It is a fascinating lesson in etymology, and one of the most entertaining albums he ever made.

This is an early entry in the Robert Fripp discography, and not one I would entirely dismiss. The album title about sums it all up, but there is some very respectable playing and amusing and catchy Beatlesque (the default for 1967) tunesmithing. One baroque-inspired guitar piece foreshadows Fripp's later - and much harder edged - FRACTURE. There are also some other early prog elements here wedged in between the pop songs.

I was shocked. Being a long haired high school kid in 1985, I took great pride in listening to a worn out, Atlantic Records pressing of In the Court of the Crimson King while the whole world seemed to bathe in Modanna, Wham, and Thriller. Quickly I was enveloped in all things Crimson, spending my paper route money up to what was then the end, Three of a Perfect Pair.

Then I went back to the beginning. I had to get my grandma to take me to New York City to get a white cover bootleg of the out of print, seemingly gone forever, Cheerful Insanity of Giles Giles and Fripp. CDs were an expensive luxury item in 1985, and the probability of a reissue for this album seemed rabbit hair slight. What a small world, that we never dreamed would change.

Was Cheerful Insanity a Crimson-ish assault. No. This album is as cheerful as it says. Charming English folk-jazz songs in service of a story about a fat guy, Rodney Toady. An adult fiction book record that sounded more like Fairport Convention (who I had no idea of--try and get THOSE albums in 1985 New Jersey) placed in a Currier and Ives postcard.

You would never know these were two of the guys about to attack the world with perhaps rock's most vicious assault to date circa 1969, "21st Century Schizoid Man." A year was a lifetime in 1960s music.

Even Fripp's playing is totally different. He had not yet started using the sustained leads, sounding here more like Django Rienhard than a guy about to invent prog and proto metal. Mike Giles, however, does work the magic you know. That broken-beat melodic style he brought to Crimson is in tact here, as is the excellent bass of brother Pete.

It is not Crimson. It is not even King. But it is royally good.

This is one of the craziest albums I've ever heard (and I've heard quite a few). But it is very interesting. Fans of King Crimson can get a piece of the beginings of the band, although their musical approach on this one is a bit different. Just like Pink Floyd in the Syd Barrett era, this is a less polished, more experimental work from a very "early version" of Crimson, still looking for their own place within the 60's crazy, creative and insane psychedelic music scene.

A fascinating pre-cursor (by only about a year's time) to the greatest art-rock statement ever, "In The Court Of The Crimson King". Robert Fripp and Michael Giles present a sneak peek at the upcoming work with the ethereally beautiful "Erudite Eyes", which features a "Moonchild" style melody which transforms into a loose prog-rock-jazz jam at the end. The upcoming collaboration with lyricist Pete Sinfield is also previewed in "Under The Sky". And, yes, there are the "silly" numbers such as "The Elephant Song" and "Digging My Lawn"... but they are as endearingly "English" as the slice-of-British-life ditties perpetuated from the Kinks and Moody Blues in the 60's all the way through Martin Newell and XTC in the present day! Recommended for fans of early Crimson (or even Dukes of Stratosphere!).

SOME GREAT PLAYING INTERWOVEN WITH SILLY SONGS.

This is some early work by some of the folks that later became King Crinsom. It's a collection of silly pop ditties. The music has a Glee Club quality. While this is not a comedy album, it is reminiscent of English comedy in the early sixties. I think of the Goon show (with Dudley Moore) when I hear this.

But, the playing by Giles on drum and Giles on bass is amazing. These guys are simply fantastic musicians melding jazz and rock styles. There some nice piano parts, some by Nicky Hopkins (later of Quicksilver and early Jerry Garcia Band). Fripp also has some nice guitar runs (but it is obvious that he is no match for the Giles's).

There are some good songs here, especially the bonus track, Under the Sky. But there is a much better version of this song on Pete Sinfield's solo album, Still.

Don't buy this expecting anything like King Crinsom. If you want a great album featuring the early King Crinsom personnel, check out McDonald and Giles. Also, check out 21st Century Schizoid Band, which includes Giles, Giles and MacDonald.

I'm a huge Syd Barrett follower, and I don't really hear the resemblance to Syd here, or I have to strain to hear it. It reminds me more of the Who's Tommy, only with Robert Fripp's style of guitar playing. I dare say Rodney Toady could beat Tommy in a fight, if Tommy didn't have his disciples and his holiday camp to fight for him. I haven't laughed so much in quite a while, and I've laughed a lot listening to this. The pauses in the narrative of Rodney Toady in mid-sentence are just so awkward and subtle and ingenious, for instance.

It's nothing like King Crimson, which makes one think that King Crimson may well be as Robert Fripp says a way of doing things rather than a band with Robert Fripp in it. Comparing this to something like King Crimson's Red is like comparing night to day, and it is in no way as deep, piercing and dramatic as In The Court Of the Crimson King.

This is so much fun. Of course, I was listening to this album as soon as I discovered King Crimson. I invite you to listen to Peter Sinfield's Illisions, and all the others related to K.C. This is a prelude to Mr. Fripp's continuing journey. Great fun indeed.

This is one of the greatest albums of all time. The musical arrangements are brilliant. The lyrics are cheeky and often play upon each other. Great for sipping wine and watching the sun set before bed.

cheers