THE CHEERFUL INSANITY OF GILES, GILES & FRIPP

I think that the main importance of this album is really of being an immediate antecedent to the formation of King Crimson, but the musical styles of both bands are really very different, because this band was really a strange mixture of Jazz and Rock sounds with bizarre lyrics talking about some strange characters with a good dose of British humour. So, sometimes it is difficult to understand the humour of some of the lyrics being very British in sense. But anyway this album has some funny moments and very good musical performances by a trio of very good musicians. It still has some very good Prog related arrangements and particularly Michael Giles shines in his drums playing, while Robert Fripp`s guitar playing is more oriented to Jazz than to Rock, and the same could be said about Peter Giles`s bass guitar playing. Anyway, with this strange mixture of musical styles and comedy lyrics it is not really hard to understand why this album and this band didn`t have success then. But even in the present, this album is not a very interesting listening, apart from the historical interest and curiosity. Maybe the Britsh fans of King Crimson could be now be more interested in this album and in this band, but for the other fans of King Crimson it could be more of a collector`s interest.