The record is, tongue in cheek, Fripp’s most “commercial” offering and it begins with his comments to that effect. Just to show how “commercial” it was, Daryl Hall’s management and record label (RCA) refused to allow Hall’s voice to appear on several songs (in part) for fear of Exposure‘s lack of commercial appeal (on which see the Allmusic article here). I should say that a Fripp-infused Daryl Hall is a Daryl Hall I can listen too, and I’ll be looking for that Fripp-produced album this week.

Several things stand out from my repeated exposures to Fripp’s album in the past few days. The main thing is the way in which the entire album is united by theme, namely exposure to suffering. Interspersed throughout the album’s lyrics or spoken samples are either painful expressions of the inevitability of human suffering (as in Buddhism) or dire warnings of more suffering to come (as in the apocalypse of ancient Judaism or Christianity). This is done in an intriguing way both lyrically and musically.

There’s “You burn me up, I’m a cigarette” with a very down-to-earth expression of suffering in terms of relationships, “Exposure” with its terrifying screams, and Gabriel’s “Here comes the flood” with its apocalyptic warnings of the coming end (on flood imagery and ancient apocalypticism, go here; on Dylan’s use of similar flood imagery, go here). Spoken samples are also built into the songs, as when a scientist speaks of the coming of catastrophic floods in the near future and when someone (a follower of the Buddha?) speaks of the inevitability of suffering, at least in this world.

Perhaps most astounding is the way in which the music itself takes you on a roller-coaster ride that involves the listener in suffering and relief from suffering. The album runs the gamut of genres, from experimental new wave and heavy-metal to soothing ballads and ambient music (reminiscent of Fripp’s ambient work with Brian Eno — I’ll have to post on that soon, since I also managed to find a copy of the LP No Pussyfooting). Quite often, you are moved from harsh and jarring sounds in one track, to a soothing aural experience in the next. The heavy-metal style vocals of Peter Hammil are juxtaposed with the soothing R&B voice of Daryl Hall or the gentle (Joni-Mitchell like) vocals of Terre Roche on some tracks. Yet Roche’s screams of “exposure” found on the title track are both impossible to listen to and impossible to abandon, despite the torture. And one could not ask for a more calm and emotive performance of Peter Gabriel’s “Here comes the flood”, which is stripped of the somewhat over-produced sounds on Gabriel’s debut album and replaced with Gabriel and his piano along with the subtle guitar loops of Frippertronics. Also interspersed throughout are ambient songs which likewise use the Frippertronics tape-loop experimentation begun on Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting.

This is one form of suffering I would recommend.

UPDATE: It seems that the vocal samples involving a scientist’s predictions of the coming flood and the quotation regarding the inevitability of suffering are both by John G. Bennett, a British scientist who combined his scientific views with Eastern religious ideas. Interesting combination.  He started up his own school to teach such things.

Bill Bruford, who is best known as the drummer of Yes in the early years and then of King Crimson (on which see my post here), comments on his involvement with Genesis once Phil Collins became lead singer in 1976 (after the departure of Gabriel, on which see my earlier post on Trick of the Tail). Bruford became Genesis’ drummer for the 1976 tour. Seeing that Bruford was, at one point, a member of all three of the most well-known progressive rock bands, it is interesting and somewhat humorous to hear his perspective.

First of all, he comments on how Genesis was viewed in the early days:

I think everybody in Yes and King Crimson thought that Genesis would never make it because they sounded like a combination of the two groups. We thought they might be too late — we’d been there and done it. We saw them along the lines of ‘Genesis are quite fun, but they’ve got a guitarist who sits down like Robert Fripp and a drummer who plays a bit like Bill; the Americans have already had that’. . . (p. 198)

Bruford also comments on the overall atmosphere of each of the three bands in connection with his own less orchestrated style:

I like to wing it a bit on stage, but Genesis were very, very precise. I’m much more accustomed to making it up as I’m going along. . . I’d learnt the tunes from the albums, and if it felt a little different from what Phil would have done, people would look at me and say, ‘Hey, Bill, could you make it sound a bit more like the record?’. . . [N]ot being much of the session type, I didn’t do terribly well at just delivering the parts. In fact, what finally drove me out of rock n’ roll was the repetition. That’s what had separated me from Yes. Why I had found King Crimson so attractive was because they were way more open: ‘Surprise us, go ahead, let’s improvise, terrific.’. . . (p. 198).

The mood in Genesis was such a contrast to the chaos of Yes, where nobody could agree what day of the week it was . . . How we in Yes ever got anything done, I still don’t know (p. 199).

Anyone who has heard an album like King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man knows what Bruford means by improvisation.

Yet what is amazing is the way in which the entire album is not overtaken by this opening track. The other tracks on the album demonstrate the experimental range of this team led by Robert Fripp and including Greg Lake as vocalist at this point (soon to be the instrumental vocalist in Emerson, Lake and Palmer). The heavy-duty opening track is followed by an equally complicated but far more subtle tune, “I talk to the wind”, with its flute and clarinet duet, accompanied by the far less terrifying, perhaps comforting, vocals of Greg Lake.

The somehow calming funeral dirge, “Epitaph” (track 3), has a capturing, dramatic build as the world seemingly comes to an end in the final apocalypse. Here acoustic guitars meet somber clarinets and strings as Greg Lake soothingly (somehow) sings: “Confusion will be my epitaph, as I crawl a cracked and broken path. If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh. But I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying, Yes I fear tomorrow I’ll be crying”.

Side two finds more experimentation in a lengthy tune (“Moonchild”) followed by the climactic “The court of the Crimson King”. This finale almost demands that you sing along (at least my conscience demands it). Here again there is a sophistication that beats even the most well-written progressive tune by the likes of Yes or ELP, and one could not ask more of the flute solo.

Wikipedia artricle on King Crimson and their albums here.

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