A Couple Having Fun And Succeeding At Youtube

February 18, 2021 12:23 PM

It started with a DIY rendition of Swan Lake, and Toyah Wilcox’s desire to keep her spouse Robert Fripp from getting sedentary during lockdown.
Now, the two do a recurring series of agony aunts videos, sunday-brunch electric covers of classic rock songs like “School’s Out”, “Welcome To The Jungle”, “Paranoid”,“Rebel Yell” and “Enter Sandman”, and wear many, many outfits.
Writing for The Quietus, Patrick Clarke has a puff-piece interview about this sweet li’l channel: “Couple Goals: Toyah’s Lockdown”
posted by Going To Maine (38 comments total)

I've seen Fripp smiling and laughing more in these videos than in fifty years of press photos and concert footage. It's one of the more weirdly sweet and funny things you can see, especially if you cut your teeth on music of the 70s and 80s.
posted by ardgedee at 12:42 PM on February 18, 2021 [15 favorites]

Thank you, I didn't know about these videos. There's so much joy, enthusiasm, and energy. Makes me happy.
posted by stevil at 12:43 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

I am also a fan of how "Fracture" was interpreted in dance as if by an overcaffeinated mouse.
posted by stannate at 12:47 PM on February 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

these two are really the cutest thing!! (I am Yuge King Crimson fan since forever) I love that they are having fun and sharing their lockdown weirdness.
posted by supermedusa at 12:47 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Yeah, no idea Fripp was a goofball. He's come off as overly, terribly serious in most of the publicity stuff I've ever seen him do. Good for him.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:32 PM on February 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

They're just the wacky aunt and uncle the world needs right now.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 1:33 PM on February 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

These are fucking amazing. Thank you.
posted by bondcliff at 1:55 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Yeah, no idea Fripp was a goofball. He's come off as overly, terribly serious in most of the publicity stuff I've ever seen him do. Good for him.

Sing or Swim Toyah addresses that in the 'Lockdown' interview. basically he has never been willing or able to share that side of himself publicly before and it was really hard for him and he's sort of evolved during all of this. its pretty awesome!
posted by supermedusa at 1:59 PM on February 18, 2021 [11 favorites]

An absolute lark, with no tongues in aspic evident.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:09 PM on February 18, 2021 [9 favorites]

Hadn't seen these, and they're awesome. My image of Fripp had always been the po-faced guitar ascetic who subsisted solely on a diet of disapproval and diminished scales. This quirky Fripp supporting Wilcox is a lot more fun.

I only take umbrage at the "Wow, she really moves well for someone who's 62..." remarks. Umm, having reached that point myself, I want to slap the words right out of your keyboard, young person. And also, for those videos in which Ms. Wilcox's breasts are more visible, the many sniggering schoolboy "witticisms," because it's like, really?, the sight of a woman's covered nipples moved you to comment? Holy shit, wait till you find Pornhub...
posted by the sobsister at 2:44 PM on February 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

Earlier in the Pandemic, Fripp began releasing an ongoing series of soundscapes, Music For Quiet Moments, which are really quite lovely but obviously lacking the shaggy dog fun of these videos with Toyah.
posted by KingEdRa at 3:05 PM on February 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

The sight of a woman's covered nipples moved you to comment?

Honestly, I was uncertain if I should flag this as NSFW, which says something about society.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:15 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hammond Song
posted by Windopaene at 6:04 PM on February 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

Holy shit, wait till you find Pornhub...

Meh. Endless free p0rn is for the proles. Gimme vaguely outlined areolas on a random YT video.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:12 PM on February 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

P.S. That cover of 'Rebel Yell'? Toyah totally brings it. Wow!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:29 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I'm somewhat saddened that I just discovered their cover of "Anarchy in the UK" now, since I can think of a few people to whom I would have sent it to over the holidays. In other words, they do it with a Christmas theme.

I'm still going to send it to those people, though.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:43 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

with no tongues in aspic evident

I hereby retract my comment above, but only after wiping down my monitor after spit-taking at this:

Toyah & Robert's Sunday Lunch - Larks' Tongues In Aspic: Part Four
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:54 PM on February 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

O! A previously I missed.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:34 PM on February 18, 2021

This is just so fun! Great post.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:33 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I love this.
posted by atoxyl at 9:45 PM on February 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I suppose some of the fun here is implicit in the premise of Robert Fripp being married to the star of something called “Barmy Aunt Boomerang.”
posted by atoxyl at 10:14 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

I just... cannot.
Bless you for sharing.
posted by soakimbo at 10:25 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Their sense of humor is delightful, and Toyah has clearly been good for Robert. If you poke around you can find a photo shoot she did with him in a bath--where he's actually grinning!-- and a video clip where she got him to appear on a British quiz show talking about their relationship. I'll just note that the next video after the first one where Toyah wore a tight top mentioned how many views that video had "racked up" so clearly they just decided to have fun with it. Which is pretty on-brand for Toyah who always seemed like she was very aware of her image and how that was presented. I may be imagining it, but in the next video Robert seems almost like he might crack up when Toyah is so obviously being so over the top (cough) with her outfit.
posted by indexy at 10:36 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Who's the small, mobile, highly intelligent unit now, Frippy?
posted by Paul Slade at 11:32 PM on February 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

Been seeing these off and on for weeks. It's really fun to see Fripp like this, but I always thought his stage demeanor was mostly a put-on... it's Show Business, after all. Toyah Wilcox is great in these, too, though I admit I had never known of her before.

I had not seen their "Agony Aunts" clips, so I'm gonna watch them now. Thanks for this post.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:50 AM on February 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Anyone who thought Fripp didn't have a lighter side clearly didn't know about The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles, and Fripp.
posted by goatdog at 6:22 AM on February 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

Just learned this:

Willcox is married to musician Robert Fripp [....] The couple have no children and have arranged their will so as to leave their entire fortune to the establishment of a musical educational trust for children.

So that's pretty great.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:48 AM on February 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

some of the comments here and on YT reveal we haven't "figured out" some things yet.. leering knuckle-head comments aside, do you completely ignore the fact that Toyah is an attractive person by so many measures? there are times we seem to say nothing for fear of saying the wrong thing, and time passes, and beauty and love just languish or something.

I'm also partial to Fripp's (performative) restraint. I'm so happy someone gets to be Fripp and Wilcox!!
posted by elkevelvet at 8:35 AM on February 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

These are just fantastic. (They do, however, leave me wondering about the actual lunch part of Sunday Lunch, which even the "Prepare My Lunch" video doesn't really address.)

I can't begin to express how much I love the unicorns.

Also, I was going to skip the Patrick Clarke interview, but I'm glad I didn't - Toyah's reaction to seeing the crowds on their busy street reduced to a single elderly woman looking around at the quiet - "I think at that point I realised that this is a new type of creative experience. How do we work around it?" - is delightful and revealing. In fact, the interview may be the best part of this post, and that's saying a lot. I'm not sure I'd heard of Toyah Willcox before now, and suddenly I'm a big fan.

Thank you so much for posting this, Going To Maine!
posted by kristi at 8:45 AM on February 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think there's almost always been a sense of humor to Fripp's work. Not all of his work, but much of it. The band King Crimson went through many different incarnations, from dreamy pastoral psychedelic, to psychedelic lunacy, to intensely introspective and psychedelic, to blistering "math rock" and on and on. He's worked with many different musicians commonly known from other styles of music (his album "Exposure" (HIGHLY recommended! A much, much better version of Peter Gabriel's 'Here Comes the Flood', too, plus punk tunes... it's amazing) featured a bunch of wide-ranging artists and he even did a song with Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame which is amazing—for example), and his album with David Sylvian is deep and introspective and haunting. King Crimson's period with Adrian Belew was full of outlandish comedy dressed in hard rocking insanity. It's "serious" music but funny (the song "Elephant Talk" comes to mind) sometimes.

Anyway, I'll leave the thread now. I just love this so much.
posted by SoberHighland at 9:15 AM on February 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

I'm deeply pleased to know that Robert Fripp has a sexy wife
posted by supermedusa at 9:25 AM on February 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you had told me 5 years ago that I'd be sitting in my darkened house and the most meaningful human contact I'd have in days would be watching Robert Fripp play "Rebel Yell" while his cheerleader-costume-clad wife sings and dances.....

King Crimson's period with Adrian Belew

If any superfans don't know this already: Trey Gunn and some fanatic named Gabriel Riccio have recently published transcriptions of those three 80's KC records.
posted by thelonius at 9:50 AM on February 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

King Crimson's period with Adrian Belew was full of outlandish comedy dressed in hard rocking insanity. It's "serious" music but funny (the song "Elephant Talk" comes to mind) sometimes.

Yeah and you do have the sort of introvert/extrovert dynamic, also.
posted by atoxyl at 12:20 PM on February 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

he even did a song with Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame which is amazing—for example)

He actually played a big role in Daryl's solo album Sacred Songs. Not exactly a KC album in disguise, but you can see why the record company was unsure it'd appeal to the 'rock'n'soul' fans.
posted by gtrwolf at 12:47 PM on February 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yeah and you do have the sort of introvert/extrovert dynamic, also .

I remember watching that Fridays performance when it aired! I guess I was 14. My brother and I had the album, but I didn't know who Belew was, wasn't into Zappa or Talking Heads then, and I had figured that he was basically the singer, and that all the crazy guitar work was Fripp's new stuff. Totally mind-opening education for me into what is possible on electric guitar. In the second song, which was "Thela Hun Ginjeet", he did this thing where he put the guitar down on the floor by the amp and got different pitches of feedback from rotating it to different positions. This was news to me! As was the harmonics behind the nut and the neck bending and other Belew-isms. Completely refreshing and novel. Guitar players in 1981 were usually either playing minimalistic stuff or trying to sound like Van Halen. All of it was future shock. That whoosh box that Belew turns a knob on - what's that? The Simmons drums. And the Stick, which I had figured was some percussion thing that Levin played on the side.
posted by thelonius at 1:44 PM on February 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

Yeah honestly it might be the coolest Crimson lineup?

I saw Tony Levin with his dual Chapman Stick band a while ago, that was fun. And KC in 2019, which was pretty “greatest-hits-y” as KC goes.
posted by atoxyl at 2:27 PM on February 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

1985 or 6 Fripp was living in WVA and taking students for his League of Crafty Guitarists. Some of them needed guitars and he worked out a deal with a music store in Fredericksburg. They played there free a couple times with zero press but my ex was in college there and called me so I drove over from Quantico and got my mind properly blown. Hands like spiders.

Fripp seemed uncomfortable mingling after and I know all about that so I cornered him. I had questions about Sherbourne House that interested him so we talked about Gurdjeiff for an hour and he was interesting and funny and wide awake in a way I rarely see.

So I am not surprised. He is deep and deliberate and busy inside but comfortable with it.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 2:10 PM on February 21, 2021 [3 favorites]

Cool post! I wouldn't mind if they produced it a little more, the guitar has that certain Pignose quality, but I ain't gonna complain. Toyah to me is the artist with the amazing shock of red hair in "URGH! A Music War" that made such an impression on me when I was 13 or so, so I've always loved that they wound up together. I like this quite a bit better than Richie Blackmore's Schitt's Creek-like take (I kid because I love!) on the idea (which by the way doubles as a stark window into COVID culture 11 months ago). All in all I vote yes on every talented person I like letting me into their space and noodling away.

--

he even did a song with Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame which is amazing—for example)

He actually played a big role in Daryl's solo album Sacred Songs. yt Not exactly a KC album in disguise, but you can see why the record company was unsure it'd appeal to the 'rock'n'soul' fans.

Fun fact: it's even more than that and one of my favorite stories in rock. They became friends after meeting basically randomly in the mid-70s, and when Hall wanted to stretch out a bit creatively after H&O's initial burst of fame, he asked Fripp to produce his first solo album.

In the midst of this (I'm not 100% nerdy on the timeline), Fripp was getting KC MkII(-ish) together and he asked Daryl to be the vocalist of a band which would be named "Discipline." Daryl decided to stay with H&O, Fripp got Belew, "Discipline" eventually became the name of MkII's first album, and Sacred Songs and Hall's two songs on Exposure were the result of everything else. Also, not to take anything away from Hall, who by all accounts is a nice and talented guy, but Adrian Belew is one my favorite rock talents of all time and was the linchpin of my favorite eras of both KC and FZ. But! Sacred Songs is good and a curious artifact besides, but at the same time I'm glad it wasn't the sound of Fripp's 80s group and we got the rock gamelan instead.
posted by rhizome at 9:58 PM on February 28, 2021 [1 favorite]