DISCIPLINE

I was a KC fanatic in the 70s and LTIA was the ultimate for me. Punk arrived and, having been pressured into joining an RnB band by friends (who tied a rope around the cabinet holding my prog and jazzrock record collection!) they even got me playing along with their stinking versions of the Sex Pistols's Anarchy in the UK and Pretty Vacant. Yes, a lowlight. Some years later I remember playing drums with brushes to Girl From Ipanema at a restaurant and feeling roughly the same way.

Soon afterwards punk evolved into new wave and I played in a new wave band for a while before a friend rescued me so as to start up, well, not a prog band but it was the result of the bands members' influences - Nina Hagen, King Crimson, Zappa, Santana, Lena Lovich, Henry Cow and Jimi Hendrix, streamlined into 3-minute ditties in deference to the punk era apart from a couple of songs that flowed into ridiculously sprawling improvisations. Tight but not slick. Primitive yet deceptively tricky. If you look up Eat that Chop Now on YouTube you'll see what I mean.

So with this background how did I feel when I first heard the title track, Discipline, on the radio?

At first I had no idea it was my beloved Crims reincarnated and I felt disappointment bordering on betrayal that my numero uno band had descended to this ... this ... over-slick staid monotony. A band I was in at the time had a manager who would consistently berate us, claiming that every song we wrote had about four songs in it and we should just find a groove and stick to it. How on earth would we ever write a hit if we are going to be arty about it? This was the 80s.

Of course, I thought him a Neanderthal. Yet now, the foul religion of the one-groove one-idea song had infected my favourite maverick band! Sacrilege! No! Blasphemy!

So I gave up on the Crims. I also quit playing in bands and pretended to be a normal human being, forgetting about music and getting my creative kicks from other fields. I even quit pot 10 years later.

Then, a few years ago - almost 20 years later - I started buying MP3s, picking up all those all much-loved oldies that I'd lost as my vinyl fell out of favour. I started listening to KC again, and then decided to revisit Discipline.

Sure, I'd hated it but I remembered how much I loathed LTIA when I first heard it as a Beatles-loving 11-year old when a friend played me his big brother's copy - like danging a musical spider in front of the girl's face to laugh at me going EEEEEUUWW!! ... and scream EEEEEUUWW!! I did. If I could hate something so much and grow to love it once, then maybe ... ?

New ears, no expectations. Thela Hun Ginjeet was the first to blow me away. This had to be amongst the best rhythm section performance I'd heard. Bill in supreme form and Tony Levin doing some things you wouldn't expect from a bass. If there is one thing that stands out on this album, it's that this is probably the best rock rhythm section ever. Some may be more virtuosic. Some a little more complex. But NONE kick with such a combination of power, precision, imagination, such a palette of colours and, of course, virtuosity all at once.

Then there's Bob Fripp, who'd seemingly decided to become CONSCIOUSLY math (apart from his trademark metal riff flirtations and Schizoid squeal in Indiscipline and wailing in The Sheltering Sky). His playing has always been math-inclined but this time he decided to BE math. Freakishly complex and precise single note lines abound. What he does in Frame By Frame doesn't seem humanly possible. Some people think it must be a loop effect. Nup, just Bob's Dynamic Digits.

Then there's Adrian Belew. At first I didn't like hearing an American voice in what had been the most British of bands, but the fact is his vocal and lyric combination was the first of the Crims that didn't have moments that made me cringe. Matte Kudesai is the obligatory ballad, and the best since 'I Talk to the Wind', although the competition isn't great. I love KC but they never got the hang of ballads; as with all those rock bands in the 70s, they'd just pop a token ballad into each album to show that they could and to give the listeners' ears a rest. This one seems to be a follow-up from North Star from Daryl Hall's Sacred Songs album, in which he collaborated with Bob.

On this album you will find none of Greg Lake's melodrama (albeit beautiful melodrama). None of Gordon Haskell's pootling moments (ain't Lady of the Dancing Water the most feeble thing you ever heard?). None of Pete Sinfield's lack of perspective (Ladies of the Road) and general disconnection from reality (he went on to pen Bucks Fizz songs when he woke up from his medieval dreams). Nor do you get Boz's comic attempts to be Louis Armstrong or John Wetton's clumsy phrasing. All these guys had their good moments but Adrian is a class above when you look at his combination of wit, tone, tunefulness and variety.

Then there's his guitar work. Is there are more underrated guitarist? He's just brilliant, in the same league as Bob Fripp, and I don't say that lightly. This is someone who, as a young fella, could mix it with Uncle Frank. His combination with Bob is uncanny throughout.

Frame By Frame is a KC classic, with its impossible guitar line, Bill Bruford sounding like a cross between Billy Cobham and half of Santana's rhythm section, and lovely, soulful vocal sections that somehow manage to make 7/8 sound as natural and intuitive as 4/4.

Then you have Elephant Talk, obviously Talking Heads influenced, but better and funkier. Here Tony Levin sounds like a bass and funky rhythm guitar all at once.

That's the thing about this band. Any one of the musicians is like two members. Imagine having one of them in your band! Bill B sounds like a drummer and percussionist in one. Tony Levin can either sound like a bass and keyboards or bass plus guitar. Adrian sounds like anything he likes - guitar, elephants, seagulls, keyboards and goodness knows what else. Bob sounds like Bob - enough said.

Even so, if there's one thing I miss with this incarnation it's Ian Mac's or Mel's saxes and flutes, or the various other wind and brass that appeared on their old recordings.

And yes, the songs are less OVERTLY varied than in the 70s, but that's because in the 80s KC discovered subtlety. People say KC didn't improvise on this one but there's improvisation within the song structures, just that the songs are structured. There are still just as many little things to pick up with repeated listens as we expect from the Crims.

The title track is a marvel. Some say it's repetitive and boring. That's what I thought in the 80s when I first heard it on the radio. Yet few KC songs IMO bear as many repeated listens. Once you dig into it and listen to the moves of the subtle rhythm section and the way the cross-beat guitar lines create different tones as they interweave, you'll see what I mean.

Those who think this album bears no relation to old KC are mistaken. Once I got used to this album I could clearly see the same band that had played Cat Food, LTIA, The Talking Drum, Book of Saturday, The Great Deceiver, Fracture and Red. It's just cleaner, more melodic and, yes, played without KC's once-trademark wildly-varying and flexible dynamics, which is what I suspect is what understandably bugs some of the old KC diehards (bless their cotton socks).

So I agree that this album isn't perfect. If there was a bit more variation in dynamics, a few wind instruments, if The Sheltering Sky was a bit shorter (isn't it a crack up when people frown about THAT NOISE, which of course is just Bob with effects), and if it had Starless, then it WOULD be perfect.

Still it's KC's most consistently good album with no stinkers. If you're into prog and don't have this one then you might as well go back to your Torporific Oceans, your Pictures at an Exhibitionist and Rush's thinking-man's AOR in preparation for your beer gut middle-age catching up with your old classics in the garage while the missus makes fairy cakes for the kids as she listens to The Spice Girls' comeback single.

Ok, that's too harsh (but fun), so maybe Adrian Belew can have the last word:

No matter how closely I study it, No matter how I take it apart, No matter how I break it down, It remains consistent. I wish you were here to see it!