There are no windows in the painting.

December 27, 2012 10:09 AM

The Dork Report is posting fairly in-depth album by album (frame by frame?) analyses of King Crimson's design and typography in a series called The Young Person's Guide to King Crimson Album Art.

Tackled so far:

In The Wake of Poseidon
Lizard
Islands
Starless and Bible Black
Red
Beat
Three of a Perfect Pair
THRAK
The ConstruKction of Light

posted by mintcake! (19 comments total)

This looks insanely excessive and unnecessary . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 10:28 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the link! An aptly-named blog.
posted by omnidrew at 10:35 AM on December 27, 2012

For you, I play a 14/8 theme of gratitude on my Chapman Stick.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:38 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

was planning to get some work done today...
posted by supermedusa at 10:38 AM on December 27, 2012

This looks insanely excessive and unnecessary

Indeed. I bet it takes discipline.
posted by LionIndex at 10:57 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just wanted to point out that The Dork Report wraps its ampersands in a special HTML tag, so that they can be in Baskerville, Goudy Old Style, Palatino, Book Antiqua or Warnock Pro instead of the surrounding sans-serif font. Eponysterical.
posted by migurski at 11:06 AM on December 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

I do remember one thing.
It took hours and hours but
By the time I was done with it
I was so involved
I didn't know what to think.
I carried it around with me for days and days
Playing little games
Like not looking at it for a whole day
And then looking at it
To see if I still liked it.
I did!
posted by erniepan at 11:58 AM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Okay, so it's not technically a King Crimson album, and the titular duo were only in King Crimson for a very short while, but I'm still a bit disappointed by the omission of McDonald and Giles from the canon.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:58 AM on December 27, 2012

For you, I play a 14/8 theme of gratitude on my Chapman Stick.

Do you really have one? Um...can I...touch it?
posted by sourwookie at 12:13 PM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

||: I REPEAT MYSELF WHEN UNDER STRESS I REPEAT MYSELF WHEN UNDER STRESS :||
posted by Sebmojo at 12:13 PM on December 27, 2012

As a guy who still cares deeply about the album format and album artwork, I offer a very sincere thank you for this post.
posted by davebush at 12:16 PM on December 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've posted the link here before, but this is a good opportunity to revisit this awesome performance of "Elephant Talk". Belew is so good he actually causes Fripp to smile.
posted by davebush at 12:27 PM on December 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

That clip, which was from the short-lived ABC competitor to SNL, "Fridays", comprehensively blew my mind when it aired. I guess I was 13. I didn't know who Belew was; I had the new album, but I figured he was basically just the singer, and that all the up-front guitar was Fripp. I also thought the credit of "Stick" was just a joke of some kind and that all the bass sounds were bass guitar.
posted by thelonius at 12:47 PM on December 27, 2012

Belew is so good he actually causes Fripp to smile.

I don't want to seem humourless myself, here, but may I point out that Robert Fripp is actually a very funny man who laughs a lot. Not so much onstage, but then I suspect Iggy Pop doesn't walk around naked swallowing microphones when he's off-duty. It's just the way it needs to go in performance.
posted by Grangousier at 1:09 PM on December 27, 2012

They don't call him 'Chuckles Fripp' for nothing.
posted by mintcake! at 3:59 PM on December 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

Belew is so good he actually causes Fripp to smile.

Well, he tried anyway. I'm afraid a rictus was the best he could do.
posted by sourwookie at 4:42 PM on December 27, 2012

It took a little effort, but I managed to find my copy of this delightful pic, which seems to belong in this thread.
posted by thelonius at 7:07 PM on December 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

Wow. Hi everyone, I'm the person behind The Dork Report, and I wanted to thank mintcake for linking to my series on King Crimson album art. I will definitely take "insanely excessive and unnecessary" as a compliment! This positive feedback (and spike in site traffic, to be honest) came just in the nick of time, for I had been seriously thinking about calling the whole thing off.

I had recently been informed about an error in the THRAK piece, in which I misidentified Gill Sans as Helvetica. That was embarrassing, but worse, I had also just read the following excoriation in Fripp's online diary:

00.13 An alert took me to a chattering-site for various Crimson-related witterings. Uninformed declarations regarding my actions, thinking, decision-making processes, even feelings, usually in rude and dismissive terms, continue to astonish. Ah yes! This is what-it-was when I greatly engaged with the Opinionating Public Of A Crimson Hue.

A folder - Kicking The Wasps’ Nest - holds various exchanges and interactions with posters, mainly from ET and the DGM Guestbook; this part of a liberal education in better-knowing the mechanics of a fallen world; eg the public display of dopey, witless pratterings from persons with confidence in the value of unreflective opinions. Who recalls Mr. Hurt Brat, he with the Social Gland, proclaiming that Zen works! before becoming indignant when his dopey postings attracted my responses?

It is not possible to discuss the weather with a person whose head is placed where sunshine never falls, and yet who feels themselves to be a climate expert.

It's entirely possible (I hope) that Fripp was rolling his eyes over somebody else's excessive Crimson chatterings and witterings. But if he was taking offense at The Dork Report, I was close to stopping the Crimson project and going back to the site's original remit of occasional movie reviews.

In my insanely excessive manner, I had been trying to be clear throughout about what was researched fact and what was mere musing and supposition on my part. I went particularly afield in the introduction to the whole series, but stuck more to the facts when writing about the individual albums.

I think I can finish this writing project if I remember that I'm certainly not writing it for the band members or Fripp in particular — I've been a Crimson fan long enough to know he doesn't suffer fools. I'm writing it for others like me, interested in the same things.

But anyway, long story short: thanks again for the attention and feedback. I'm the slowest writer in the world, but you can look forward to analyses of In the Court of the Crimson King and Discipline going up in the near(ish) future.
posted by TheDorkReport at 11:20 AM on December 28, 2012 [6 favorites]

Hey! It's a really neat project and I'm super happy that you're going to carry on. Cheers.
posted by mintcake! at 12:52 PM on December 28, 2012