League of Gentlemen

League of Gentlemen (1981) ...

Robert Fripp's post-punk band operating in 1980, recorded one album ...released as a double cassette with Let The Power Fall, an album of 'Frippertronics' ... It has never been released on CD in its original form... This band didn't last long but the music formed the basis for the later 1980's version of King Crimson...

Inductive resonance ...
 

The League of Gentlemen began rehearsing on March 19th in a 14th century lodge just outside Wimborne.
The personnel were:
Barry Andrews: organ
Robert Fripp: guitar
Sara Lee: bass guitar
Johnny Toobad: drums.
Our first commitment to work together covered the period March 19th to July 22nd, the second September 8th to September 24th and the third November 10th to December 4th. Johnny Toobad left on November 22nd and Kevin Wilkinson replaced him. On this album KW plays on all but Heptaparaparshinokh and Dislocated. The team played 77 gigs.

Minor Man ... 

Side I
INDISCREET I
INDUCTIVE RESONANCE
MINOR MAN
HEPTAPARAPARSHINOKH
DISLOCATED
PARETO OPTIMUM I
EYE NEEDLES
INDISCREET II
Side II
PARETO OPTIMUM II
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
HG WELLS
TRAP
OCHRE
INDISCREET III
Studio: Amy’s Shack, Parkstone, Dorset
Engineer: Tony Arnold
Photo of the League taken at Gramercy Park,
New York, during July 1980 by Marjori.
Front cover by Danielle Dax.
Cover glue Rob O’Connor.
Hamsprachtmuzic on “Minor Man” by Danielle Dax,
courtesy of the Lemon Kittens.
Extracts from the Sherborne House talks by
J.G. Bennett courtesy of Elizabeth Bennett,
available from Claymont Communications,
P0 Box 112, Charlestown, West Virginia 25414
Strategic Interaction: Paddy Spinks
Indiscretions compiled by Robert Fripp
Produced by Robert Fripp
johncoulthart.com ...


Dislocated (live) ...
A live album of this band was later released as Thrang Thrang Gozinbulx (1996)...

dgmlive.com

"The League of Gentlemen was, as Fripp once put it, "a wonderful little bopping band" that played seventy-seven gigs in England, Europe, and America between April 10 and November 29, 1980, and produced one album. The personnel initially consisted of Fripp, keyboardist Barry Andrews (formerly of XTC, and who had played on Exposure), Sara Lee on bass, and Jonny Toobad on drums. Fripp had recruited Lee and Toobad after hearing them play in London in a band called Baby and the Black Spots. If Frippertronics was primarily a music of the mind, with the League of Gentlemen Fripp was interested in a music of the body, music of sexual energy, "energy from the waist down," as he called it. In another formulation, he said that "The League of Gentlemen works from outside the music inward, while [Frippertronics] works from the inside outwards." He added a remark on social setting: "It is very difficult to play Frippertronics to drunk people at rock'n'roll clubs."

         For Fripp, the League of Gentlemen represented a sort of musical populism - a populism, however, not of a naive sort, but of a reflected, thoughtful quality. Much of his work with the musicians of King Crimson had involved virtuosity at a self-conscious level, but Fripp had come to be suspicious of displays of artifice for their own sake. He expressed the dilemma in terms of the contrast between competence and ideas: "I've found that musicians who can play 10,000 notes tend to play them, and the 10,000 notes I hear I don't enjoy." Better to have a limited set of chops and through them to express something of real significance." ... progressiveears.com ...