Help....What do you consider non-essential Robert Fripp Recordings

[Septober Energy]

I disagree about Fripp or Enos ambient works (or his cooperation with Harold Budd) have aged badly, or that they are just soporific. Not all Enos ambient albums are over the top fantastic, and some of Fripps works are a bit redundant.
But when you spin albums of this type, it has to be on the right occasion and not in a car, etc.

I'm with you 100% Zeuhlmate. Ambient music is something that can't be appreciated the way most people listen to music these days. On the other hand, people here probably listen much more attentively than the average person, but I am convinced that this kind of music is something you either get or don't.

Fripp's written a lot about how people's expectations destroy their appreciation for new music, and I think he's spot on. If people weren't thinking about "Larks' Tongues in Aspic Pt. 2" or "Red" when they popped in a soundscapes or Frippertronics CD for the first time, would there be so much disappointment? I doubt it. Even I took years to warm up to Soundscapes, and it was because I wanted the warmness of tape loops a la No Pussyfooting rather than harmonizers and MIDI strings, etc.

Do you really experience this tune as aged badly?

It hasn't aged any worse than "21st Century Schizoid Man" or "The Sailor's Tale."

[Zeuhlmate]

If I recall correct all KC concerts on the 74 tour began with an excerpt from No Pussyfooting. The album USA starts that way, has a great chocking effect when Larks II starts.
Circumstances are important.

Some years ago I attended a concert called G3, with Fripp, Vai & Satriani sharing the stage (Vai had also Tony Mcalpine and Billy Shehan with him).
Fripp started the gig with sóundscapes, and he was after a while actually booh'ed ! The audience were obviously waiting for rock&roll guitar sports, talking, shouting & poring beers, etc. and Fripp was just sitting discreetly in the back of the stage, and didnt even present himself. Many in the audience didnt know who he was.
Talk about miscalculated event... must have been a really unpleasant tour for Fripp, but he should have figured out playing something else than Soundscapes.

Horrible experience all together. Lousy acoustic environment (boomy hall meant for sports). Steve Vai, and especially Satriani played way too loud.
The whole thing ended with all guitarist on stage doing a handicapped weird rendition of King Crimson: Red mixed with another KC tune (Schizoid?).

[GuitarGeek]

If I recall correct all KC concerts on the 74 tour began with an excerpt from No Pussyfooting. The album USA starts that way, has a great chocking effect when Larks II starts.
Circumstances are important.

Yeah, I think they started using No Pussyfooting as the play on music in late 73, and continued to use it straight through to the end of the US tour in Central Park in July 74. Some of the shows, it sounds like the band comes on and starts improvising along to the tape, as a means of segueing from the play on music into Larks Tongues I. Other shows, they launch violently into an uptempo number (something like The Great Deceiver or Larks Tongues II), abruptly cutting off the tape. On the Central Park show, you hear the tape fade out before the band plows into Schizoid Man.

Some years ago I attended a concert called G3, with Fripp, Vai & Satriani sharing the stage (Vai had also Tony Mcalpine and Billy Shehan with him).
Fripp started the gig with sóundscapes, and he was after a while actually booh'ed ! The audience were obviously waiting for rock&roll guitar sports, talking, shouting & poring beers, etc. and Fripp was just sitting discreetly in the back of the stage, and didnt even present himself. Many in the audience didnt know who he was.
Talk about miscalculated event... must have been a really unpleasant tour for Fripp, but he should have figured out playing something else than Soundscapes.
.

You must have seen a different G3 tour from the one I saw. The one I saw, it was Vai, Satriani, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, one of the many teen idol Stevie Ray wannabes who flooded the market back in the mid and late 90's (or maybe they didn't flood the market, maybe it was just Kenny Wayne and Jonny Lang, but it sure felt like there was a whole army of them at the time).

Anyhow, the show Vai didn't have Sheehan or MacAlpine in his band, or at least I don't remember them being in his band (I think Vai had the same band had the previous year, with Mike Keneally playing rhythm guitar). But Fripp was the opening act, and billed as such (ads had him listed as "special guest). The interesting is, he had more stage time than any of the other three. I think Vai, Satch, and KWS each had something like a 45 or 50 minute set, then there was a big jam session encore with all four of them. Yes, that's right, Fripp came onstage and jammed with the others. As I recall the encore was Going Down (the Freddie King song) and two or three other similar cover tunes. Fripp was playing what kinda sorta sounded like blues licks (well, blues licks with the occasional chromatic line thrown in) on a guitar synth. One of the stranger things I've ever heard.

Anyway, Fripp actually started Soundscaping just before they opened the doors, so from the moment they started letting the audience, he was already playing. I don't think he got any boos at the show I saw, but I'm also not sure anyone realized there was any live music going on at that point, maybe they thought they were hearing some weird ambient pre-recorded music or whatever. A

Anyway, so Fripp would play a few lines, get up wander around, sit down, play a bit more. This probably went on for around 90 minutes, before he finally stood up, bowed to the audience, went over to his effects rack and hit a button that caused the loops to sort of disintegrate (that's the only way I can describe how it sounded).

I think the reason they went with Fripp was because they needed someone who would allow a minimal amount of changeover time between sets. The previous year, on the first G3 tour (which was Vai, Satch and Eric Johnson headlining) they had a solo guitarist named Adrian Legg, who basically played solo acoustic/electric guitar (Legg used to play a heavily customized Ovation acoustic/electric, but he used a lot of effects pedals, and by the time of the G3 tour, I think he had started playing what appeared to some kind of solidbody guitar, though he was still getting a quasi-acoustic guitar tone from it). And I think they were deliberately going for "something different", which is why they chose Fripp for the second go round.

[GuitarGeek]

They released two albums in the 2000s: The Equatorial Stars and Beyond Even (a/k/a The Cotswold Gnomes). Both are very good--infinitely better than "Healthy Colours"--but not as magical as the '70s albums. (And Beyond Even ends with a screamingly loud jam that kind of spoils the mood.)

OK, so there's two things that I haven't heard yet then. I think I was put off by Healthy Colours, and was waiting to hear what others had to say about Equatorial Stars before I invested in it. Didn't realize there was another one after that, though.

[GuitarGeek]

II wanted the warmness of tape loops a la No Pussyfooting rather than harmonizers and MIDI strings, etc.

I don't really care about the technology used to create the loops. In this day and age, it seems kinda silly to even bother with using actual magnetic tape for that purpose.

I do agree I prefer the fuzztone guitar sounds Fripp used on the early Frippertronics recordings over his subsequent switch over to guitar synths (which I assume is what you're talking about when you say "MIDI strings"...remember MIDI is merely a control system, it has nothing to do with the actual sounds you hear). I've got one Frippertronics show from 83 or 84, where Fripp had switched over to the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Delay (the so called "Fripp-In-A-Box" as it was advertised, Fripp said he called them up asked for a free one, and they refused), and either a Roland GR-300 or GR-700, and I just don't dig the synth as well as the fuzztone.

Similarly, I don't like the tones he used when soloing with 80's era King Crimson. He used the synth and/or Harmonizer to generate some rather ugly tones that I don't find as aesthetically pleasing as the so called "laserbeam" tone he used back in the 70's.

[gojikranz]

You might as well get all the records if you play vinyl cause they can be found fairly cheap if you have a decent record store.

I would agree that lady or the tiger is nonessential, but I rather like it. The story is fun anyways with relaxing music.

[Mister Triscuits]

I've got one Frippertronics show from 83 or 84, where Fripp had switched over to the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Delay (the so called "Fripp-In-A-Box" as it was advertised, Fripp said he called them up asked for a free one, and they refused)

Did they actually use Fripp's name in the ads? Fripp could probably have made a fair amount of trouble for them if they did. But it certainly was a popular nickname for the unit, and I even heard Adrian Belew call it the "Fripp in the Box" at a Twang Bar King show--to which an audience member shouted, "Put it on a stool!"

[NogbadTheBad]

and I even heard Adrian Belew call it the "Fripp in the Box" at a Twang Bar King show--to which an audience member shouted, "Put it on a stool!"

Now that's funny.

[The Czar]

I saw the G3 tour in MN and part way through, Mike Keneally came out and did solos over the soundscapes. It was awesome!
I think Fripp would signal when a key change happened, because I remember him holding his hand like the letter "C" and Mike acknowledging it.

[GuitarGeek]

Did they actually use Fripp's name in the ads? Fripp could probably have made a fair amount of trouble for them if they did. But it certainly was a popular nickname for the unit, and I even heard Adrian Belew call it the "Fripp in the Box" at a Twang Bar King show--to which an audience member shouted, "Put it on a stool!"

I'm fairly certain Electro-Harmonix did in fact use the phrase "Fripp-In-A-Box", in the ads. I'd have to go through some of my old Guitar Player magazines (this would have circa 82-83), but I'm pretty sure that actually happened.

Edit: I found the ad in question. What it was, one Peter Mengaziol, referred to the 16 Second Delay as "In essence, a Fripp-In-The-Box", in a product review in Guitar World in March of 83, and this review was then quoted in the subsequent E-H ad. So that Guitar World review must be the origin of the phrase.

Come to think of it, I actually used to have that issue of Guitar World, I think Les Paul was on the cover.