A fascinating glimpse into the rehearsal room under the Fulham Palace Road Cafe, and arguably one of Robert's clunkiest and ungainly compositions.
The song first emerged as part of the pre-Crim Giles, Giles and Fripp. By the time it was being played, the trio had been joined by Ian McDonald who helped them record two totally poptastic renditions collected on Peter Giles' archival release of the period, The Brondesbury Tapes.
It got a slightly heavier make-over when it was co-opted onto the newly formed King Crimson setlist, and was last played by the band during their stint at San Francisco's Filmore West in December 1969.
Over a year later, the song can be heard being rehearsed by another incarnation of the group. There's a lot high spirits heard on this tape, the product no doubt of the elation of having emerged from weeks of audition purgatory as they tried to find replacements for the recently departed Gordon Haskell.
Benefiting from this line-up's fluency with rock and jazz, it would be another month or so before the track would get new lyrics from Peter Sinfield and be rechristened, The Letters. In that guise its live debut was in Plymouth's Guildhall on May 14th 1971 - captured for posterity on KCCC14.
This track is now available for download as part of a bumper collection of Mr Stormy's Monday Selections - his first year of random romps through the murky, cavernous DGM archives, torch in hand, fedora upon his head.
