Robert Fripp and King Crimson are the subject of an interview with the experimental musician Scanner who chose the track Frame By Frame as his “one reason to live.”
The interview is one of several with numerous movers and shakers in the arts edited by Julius Nil who hosts a radio show on the London-based alternative radio station Resonance FM. Guests are asked to choose one piece of music – one reason to live – and talk about its significance.
I particularly liked this section from the interview where he talks about how he discovered Fripp and Crimson.
“My family changed the carpet in our living room – this sounds so absurd so far – and we peeled up this carpet that had been stuck down for what seemed like centuries and found an old New Musical Express from 1976 or 77, at a point where Fripp suddenly had this strange breakdown. He was in a popular band, King Crimson, late 60s, early 70s, a massive stadium band at some level, and then stopped the whole thing and became what he called this “small integral mobile unit”.
[This] One man, a revox tape recorder and a guitar. He started playing in places like Pizza Express cafes in London, ridiculous situations in a way. But that really appealed to me. In fact, to this day, Fripp still does actually perform in these kinds of locations. I’ve seen him perform in the lobby of a theatre.
So, as we dug this carpet up at home, we found this newspaper article. This man dresses in this sharp suit with his clipped short black hair and I thought he looked like the dude. He looked so funky, and spoke about these very interesting ideas and for me it was a small revelation, you know, to peel this carpet back and to find this article by somebody that could alter the way in which one lives, in a sense.”
Published by Errant Bodies Press it’s available from Amazon in the UK and USA.
