Released: 1991
Tracks: Listen; Eye of the Needle; Askesis; Bicycling to Afghanistan; Here Comes My Sweetie; An Easy Way; Scaling the Whales; The Moving Force; A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur; This Yes; Are You Abel? (Ready and Able to Rock ‘n’ Roll); Spasm For Juanita; Hard Times; Burning Siesta; Empty Magazine; Circulation; Chiara; Asturias; Ease God’s Sorrow
Best track: The Moving Force
Tracks to skip: I have to… skip Listen, Here Comes My Sweetie, This Yes, Empty Magazine & Ease God’s Sorrow. Also skip Are You Abel, Spasm For Juanita & Hard Times
This is my only (so far, I’m definitely going to buy more) album of the League of Crafty Guitarists. Quick history lesson: after King Crimson broke up in 1984 Robert Fripp started Guitar Craft, basically a new discipline and a new way of playing guitar. There have been Guitar Craft courses since 1985 and they still continue to this day. For more info go to
guitarcraft.com. The League is the performing unit of Guitar Craft and this album is a studio recording with some early Crafties. This album features not only Fripp, but also Bert Lams, Hideyo Moriya & Paul Richards of the
California Guitar Trio, former Crimson rhythm dude
Trey Gunn, and
Tony Geballe. This album is a little different in that there is actually a voice on here and it’s not all instrumental as would be expected. Expectation is a prison, right? Anyway, Patricia Leavitt sings A Capella on several tracks. She definitely has a load of talent and can do more with her voice than a lot of people, but the vocal pieces really distract from the flow of the album. I don’t know, maybe they break it up a bit. I wish they weren’t here though, and I do skip them because I’d rather hear the guitarists. Also I really don’t care for the three Ralph Gorga compositions (Are You Abel, Spasm For Juanita & Hard Times). Other than all that, the rest of these tracks are really good. By far the best piece is Moving Force, probably the most emotionally moving piece Fripp has ever written. The violin melody (courtesy of Cathy Stevens) is so gorgeous and I could listen to this track straight for the next month and never tire of it. The other standout tracks on here are Bicycling to Afghanistan, An Easy Way and Asturias. Most of these pieces are really good, but these 4 stand out above the rest. This music is very precise, and I’m sure some people would say un-emotional, but then again, love songs performed by kids on American Idol don’t exactly move *me*. Whatever. I think that Intergalactic Boogie Express is a better album (it’s all live and vocal-less), but I still enjoy this one and it seems that this album is easier to find than the others.
Rating: 86
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