As this sequence of Churchscapes concerts draws to a conclusion today in Norwich, I thought it would be a good time to pay tribute to Mark Graham who worked so hard to make the whole series of performances possible.
It was Mark who got on the blower to the various establishments to see if they would be interested in having a man with an electric guitar bleeping and droning in their space.
So, speaking as someone who saw two concerts from this series, I’d like to thank Mark for his work in churchscapes to the UK.
Mark has long-time King Crimson connections having been a Guitar Mechanics (sic) student of Robert Fripp in the 1970’s and has since created The FraKctured Zone as a repository for lots of stuff to do with Fracture and FraKctured - analysis, music scores, tabs, MIDIs, ring-tones etc - because, well, somebody had to!
He has collaborated with Andrew Keeling on a series of interactive CD-ROMs which are Musical Guides to King Crimson, with two completed already (LTIA and ITWOP) and a third (ITCOTCK) in the pipeline.
In an earlier life, Mark was house engineer and studio manager at Spaceward Studios where he worked with Jakko Jakszyk, The Bible!, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and many others: For anyone interested in rock music history (the studios ran from 1971 - 1986), the Spaceward retrospective discography reads like a Who’s Who of everything from Acid Folk to Psych Punk, including: Syd Barrett (his last live recording - tape recently unearthed!), Iron Maiden (demo tape), Toyah (first demo), Gary Numan (discovered his signature sound there), The Soft Boys, Stiff Little Fingers, Scritti Politti, The Stranglers, Julian Cope, Dave Stewart... the list just goes on and on and on....
In the 1990’s Spaceward (with Mark) moved into CGI and developed the Matisse videographics system and Satori FilmFX - award-winning, 64-bit resolution independent, paint and image editing software for Windows.
Nowadays Mark is self-employed (webs & new media) and lives near Cambridge in the UK. He plays nylon-string guitar and writes and records songs with pal Ed Harbud as Somewhere In The Foreign Office
His top ten King Crimson/RF songs are...
1.) A Blessing of Tears
I play this and think of my father and sometimes cry
2.) Baby’s On Fire
A stonker. I love the way in which the Fripp’s mad solo is progressively strangled and distorted by Eno’s treatments and processing
3.) Frame By Frame
For the combination of a beautiful melody and the insanely fast cross-picking
4.) Heptapraraparshinokh
Such a catchy tune it should have been a hit single. It has a perfect structure and a wonderful one note solo from Barry Andrews
5.) Heroes
A great song made greater by delicious, sustained guitar lines
6.) Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)
Just too beautiful for words
7.) Prince Rupert’s Lament
The first example of Fripp’s sonic architecture? The mournful, plangent solo wanders across the stereo spectrum from speaker to speaker, comes up close and then recedes into the distance by means of volume and ambience. A lesson in sound production thoughtfully presented as the guitar rages and howls in anguish and pain
8.) Starless
Just about the most gorgeous melody ever written
9.) The Night Watch
Fripp’s solo is like a shaft of brilliant sunlight. Spine-tingling and still induces goosebumps after 30 years
10.) The Sailor’s Tale
Fantastic, complex instrumental interplay. Jaw-dropping, awesome chord solo. Mean and moody mellotrons. Leaves me breathless every time
