Bandwagon jumping: Today's picture is the hard to find CD copy of McDonald and Giles from 1970, remastered in the same way everything else has been by now (kitchen safety dagger inserted for scale). It's always a labour of love on someone's part. They were all the rage back then too. Well no they weren't but they make an interesting footnote in the sprawling King Crimson landscape, not a piece of territory I'm wholly familiar with either. Too complicated in every sense. I was just a lad at the time and didn't know any better. And there they are, McDonald and Giles, all hair, ties and girl friends.
It's odd listening to this ancient album without any actual contemporary memory or references to go with it. Like digging up a stranger's time capsule. A magazine with no photos (that's called a book). There's nothing to hang it all onto, no events or pain or a friend's half baked opinions. Progressive rock happened in a bubble that has no ending. It floats on it's own unexplored sea as if it had never existed until I heard it today. If it didn't then there's only a philosophical paradox of sorts to either cling to or run from. So would I have liked it at time? I'll never know.
P.S. Despite the criminal retrospection that plagues this blog I'm fortunate enough to have grandchildren who keep me posted on current music and, as is the family tradition, a lot of what they listen to isn't just the mainstream pap, it's actually pretty good.
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