Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat. Please put some whipped cream on your ‘old man’s’ head…
Wait, no, those aren’t the right words.
Forgive us, we’re a little distracted today. Because easing into our traditional Sunday schedule – a long, lazy lie-in, smashed avocado on sourdough toast, Sunday Brunch on Channel 4, sending out Jeeves on his forklift to collect the Sunday papers, clicking on the Toyah YouTube channel bookmark to see what Britain’s most loved-up couple are up to, y’know, standard Sunday shit – we didn’t expect to be confronted by the sight of Toyah and Robert Fripp making merry with a canister of whipped cream and an industrial fan.
We’re going to assume here that you’re familiar with the delights that King Crimson’s redoubtable leader and his beloved partner have been cooking up in their kitchen in Worcestershire over the past two years in their weekly Sunday Lunch sessions: if not, oh boy, have fun down that wormhole.
Recent weeks have seen these national treasures cover both Metallica and Megadeth, but today, they’ve chosen to get festive, with a spirited take on Brenda Lee’s much-covered seasonal standard Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree. With the addition of the aforementioned whipped cream…
Oh, just watch it. There’s nothing more we can say at this point.
In an October interview with The Telegraph, Fripp admitted that the YouTube series has “upset some King Crimson fans” and stated, for the record, that he does not “give a fuck.”
“At the beginning of lockdown, my wife handed me a tutu and a pair of her black tights and took me to the end of the garden and put on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake,” the guitarist explained. “My wife insists performers have a responsibility to lift people’s spirits in hard times. Do I respect that? My answer is yes, completely and utterly I do.”
He continues, “We’re keenly aware of what people have experienced during lockdown. I mean, banged up in a small apartment while your mother’s dying and you can’t go to the funeral. My wife said to me, if all we’ve done in two years is help one person through their bad time, it’s all worth it. So I’m not sure if that meets a criteria of serving what is highest in music, but for me, it’s a real undertaking that I respect. And I am quite prepared to strap on a guitar and rock out to a classic riff in order to achieve it.”
“At age 76, why should I give a fuck?,” ponders Fripp. “This is my life.”
Not all heroes wear capes…
