Musical Guide to In The Wake of Poseidon by King Crimson and McDonald and Giles by McDonald and Giles

By Andrew Keeling

An informative, insightful guide to the secret mechanics that power the mysterious music of King Crimson. This guide takes you through all the complexities of the music, stripping away layer after layer to reveal the inner workings of the exquisite machinery of harmony, counterpoint and rhythm that, seemingly so effortlessly, go together to make: "In The Wake Of Poseidon".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Keeling
• Release date: Nov 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780956297761

Andrew Keeling

Andrew Keeling is a composer whose vocation only became fully apparent when he was 31. He has said, "I began to think that the musical and psychological pursuits of the first half of my life were insufficient to sustain into the second half of life. Composing presented itself as a solution to this dilemma." He had previously been a cathedral chorister, played as a multi-instrumentalist in various rock bands, and performed as a flute recitalist. Meeting such composers as Sir John Tavener, John Casken, Nicola LeFanu, Anthony Gilbert and Howard Skempton, and the result of embarking on a Jungian analysis in 1987, paved the way for his subsequent creative activities.Since the late 1980's he has written music for the likes of Opus 20, Het Trio, The Hilliard Ensemble, The Apollo Saxophone Quartet, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Evelyn Glennie, The Goldberg Ensemble, Fretwork, Virelai, Gothic Voices, Jacob Heringman, Matthew Wadsworth, Catherine King, Steven Wray, Alison Wells, Ian Mitchell and many others. Some of this music has appeared on CD releases by the Discipline Global Mobile, Riverrun, Burning Shed, Metier and UHR labels, as well as being performed and broadcast worldwide. It has also been published by Faber, Fretwork Editions, Staunch Music and Alto Publications in the UK and PRB Productions in the USA. He has written that, "Both compositionally and analytically, I wanted to reconcile certain features of the rock music I knew and liked with the things I'd assimilated from contemporary classical music."Since the late 1960's Keeling has been a keen advocate of the music of King Crimson, and in 1999 was invited to arrange new versions of the group's music, as well as the solo guitar Soundscapes, by Robert Fripp himself. Some of these have been performed, broadcast and recorded by The Metropole Orchestra of Amsterdam, the early music group Virelai and Contact Contemporary Music Ensemble. He has also written with former Fairport Convention vocalist Judy Dyble, former King Crimson/ELP lyricist Peter Sinfield and author/poet Alison Prince, and featured as an arranger for former Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span/ Albion Band founder member Ashley Hutchins, Ken Nicol (Steeleye Span and the Albion Band) and border-pipes player, Matt Seattle. In 2009 First Things, an album of his early acoustic songs, was recorded by Ken Nicol and released by MVS Recordings. Also as a flautist, together with former King Crimson violinist David Cross, he recorded and released English Sun, an album of nine improvisations, on Noisy Records.Andrew Keeling is also co-author, together with Mark Graham, of A Musical Guide to King Crimson, a series of books exploring the music of King Crimson and published by Spaceward Publications.In 1997 he was awarded the first PhD in Composition from the University of Manchester, and was subsequently a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.

Book preview

Musical Guide to In The Wake of Poseidon by King Crimson and McDonald and Giles by McDonald and Giles

By Andrew Keeling

Edited by Mark Graham

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 978-0-9562977-6-1

© Copyright Robert Fripp, Andrew Keeling, Mark Graham, 2010

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To my grandsons, Liam and Ben - two of tomorrow's people.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1

1. Background

2. The Music

3. Mapping The Album

4. Individual Pieces i) Peace ii) Pictures of a City iii) Cadence and Cascade iv) Catfood v) The Devil’s Triangle

5. In the Wake of Poseidon

6. Score - King Crimson's In The Wake Of Poseidon

7. In The Wake Of Poseidon As Hymn And Rock Anthem

8. Other Musical Concerns

9. Epilogue 1 - The Album In Context

Part 2

10. McDonald and Giles

11. Structure And Overview

12. Birdman

13. Differences and Similarities

14. Epilogue 2 - The Album In Context

Appendix 1. Interview with Michael Giles

Appendix 2. An Analysis of Lizard

Appendix 3. An Analysis of Islands

Glossary

Bibliographical Notes

Bibliography

Discography

Permissions

About The Author

Preface

In May 1970, on a sunny lunchtime after morning lessons, a friend and I ran into Oakham town-centre to Frank Plowman’s, a small record shop close to the railway station. I’d placed an order for the eagerly awaited follow-up to In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson after buying their Catfood/Groon single on my first visit to St. Annes-on-Sea. Then, while my parents were negotiating a new house purchase, I’d paid a visit to Bullough’s Music Centre in St. Annes Square to buy the record, and subsequently seen the band perform on BBC TV’s Top of the Pops. Back to Oakham. Walking through Plowman’s door, asking Mrs. Plowman if my order had arrived, she replying ‘Yes… I think it’s somewhere,’ my eye fell on the back-sleeve of a record lying on the counter. Never having seen it before I immediately exclaimed, ‘I think that’s it!’ It was my first encounter with the Twelve Archetypes artwork of In the Wake of Poseidon. Paying the money and then going to lunch, I rushed back to the student Common Room and played the album through from start to finish. The power and dramatic coda of Pictures of a City, the beauty of Cadence and Cascade, the majesty of the title-track, the extended version of Catfood (particularly the electronic manipulation following the glissando guitar middle section) and the strangeness of The Devil’s Triangle (familiar from Holst’s The Planets Suite) completely overwhelmed me. Add the stillness of the three Peace pieces and it might just be possible for a reader to get a sense of my response to this music. My father once said to me, ‘Of all the music you listen to King Crimson is by far the best.’ My dad was a builder and not a musician. In retrospect, he had a sense of structural ‘rightness’. There were now two King Crimson works to consider. I played the albums repeatedly, adding the McDonald and Giles album to the repertoire during the Christmas term following. I learnt the flute solos of I Talk to the Wind and Cadence and Cascade note for note, and listened hard to the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and instrumental detail. I got to know every nook and cranny of those albums. I’d talk to friends about them, but they didn’t really understand my enthusiasm for the music. For me, King Crimson became my primary point of reference. Everything I did subsequently owed something to those first two King Crimson albums and McDonald and Giles, followed by Lizard and Islands. Then came Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Discipline as well as Robert Fripp’s album, Exposure.

The purpose of this Musical Guide is to explore the musical and lyrical approaches employed by King Crimson on In The Wake Of Poseidon.

I recently performed with Rick Kemp, the bass player for Steeleye Span. Our conversation inevitably drifted to the time Rick joined King Crimson for a week of rehearsals. He told me that the experience of playing with the band in rehearsal nearly scared him to death. Although nothing much was said - the players were all very quiet - I had a sense that this music was incredible. I was too young and didn’t fully understand it. (1)

It has taken many people a full forty years to catch up with the music of King Crimson, and I hope this analysis goes in some small way to presenting the aims of the band at this particular time. I have also included an analysis of the McDonald and Giles album recorded and released in November 1970, following the summer release of Poseidon. For me, it represented the reverse side of King Crimson and is no less important for that. The music had, and still has, an overwhelming effect on me.

I would like to thank Robert Fripp for inviting me to write the analysis and granting permission to present the musical material from it. Thanks to Peter Sinfield for his many contributions and especially for permission to reproduce the lyrics. Great gratitude to Michael Giles for discussing the drumming apropos Poseidon. Great thanks to Mark Graham for bringing my otherwise dry prose to life with his extraordinary graphics. Thank you Hugh O’Donnell for providing photos of Poseidon-period King Crimson and to Ian McDonald for permission to use the musical extracts from Epitaph and Court of the Crimson King from In the Court of the Crimson King. Gratitude again to Ian McDonald for helping me to understand the intricacies of the McDonald and Giles album. Also I owe Jason Walsh an enormous debt of gratitude for making the musical examples and score thoroughly presentable. Tim Bowness, your proof-reading of the text and further suggestions were most welcome and much appreciated. Thank you Declan Colgan at Panegyric, for your support. Thanks to Mr. McFall's Chamber String Quartet for their performance of Robert Fripp's 'lost' string quartet. Thanks too Jakko M. Jakszyk for additional information and for performing vocals and mellotron parts on the reconstruction of In The Wake Of Poseidon (Andrew Keeling, 2004). Thanks to Ken Nicol for recording my performance of Robert Fripp's acoustic guitar parts in the recreation of the 'playing score' of the title track (Op. cit). Musical terms are defined in the Glossary.

(Andrew Keeling - 2004, Rev. 2010)

Recommended listening: King Crimson - In the Wake of Poseidon, 30th Anniversary Edition. Virgin/DGM CDVKCX2 or CDVKC2, 1999; McDonald and Giles - Virgin CDV2963, 2002.

Part 1

Background

Following the departure of Ian McDonald and Michael Giles from King Crimson in December 1969, Robert Fripp and Peter Sinfield were left in the difficult, although not impossible situation of writing and producing a second album. Greg Lake, who had also left the band to form Emerson, Lake and Palmer, agreed to return and sing on the new recordings and Peter Giles, who had played with Robert Fripp in Giles, Giles and Fripp, was drafted for bass guitar. Michael Giles also agreed to perform on the album as a session musician.

This period in King Crimson’s history is commonly known as the Interregnum, a time when the band were unable to secure the services of full-time members for the purpose of ‘live’ performance. It marked the beginning of the band’s ongoing tendency to break up, reform, or reincarnate, in order for its music to more properly manifest itself in the persona of King Crimson. Fripp and Sinfield both regarded themselves as sitting at the apex of a kind of hierarchical pyramid structure employing session musicians or friends to perform the parts which had been composed. Indeed, Mel Collins, from the Transatlantic Records band Circus, was invited to play saxophone and flute parts, and the jazz pianist, Keith Tippett, was also called upon. Gordon Haskell, Fripp’s former musical colleague from the League of Gentlemen, added vocals to the album’s second song, Cadence and Cascade.

The Music

Peter Sinfield has said: ‘When we returned from America in December 1969, after Michael (Giles) and Ian (McDonald) had left, we were left in the position were we had virtually no material. It was a case of thinking, what the bloody hell do we do? (2) A projected second album with the original band was to have included Ian McDonald’s Birdman suite. Robert Fripp: ‘I was very disappointed that Birdman couldn’t be used, but Ian and Michael took this for their own album.’ (3)

Fripp and Sinfield rewrote songs from the King Crimson repertoire such as A Man, A City re-naming it Pictures of a City and rearranging it with a greater role for guitar along with new lyrics. Cadence and Cascade, originally a song written by Sinfield and McDonald, was rewritten by Fripp although the original melody was taken by McDonald appearing on his and Giles’ later eponymous