After the final concert of their 2021 tour, Robert Fripp said that King Crimson, 'have moved from sound to silence.'
(All guitars used in this allegory were played in Old Standard Tuning.)

Epitaph for the Crimson King including The Danse Macabre and Farewell.
‘The King is dead, long live the Queen!’ 
The Night Watch chant from the Palace Green
And all the lights of the world go down.

The Old Guard line the marble halls
While the women weep and the trumpet calls
And all the clocks of the world run down

Although there was a time when the Black Queen sang and the cracked bell rang
To the songs of the Prophet Bard
Sang of a flaming spear across the battle field where the fate of the Crimson King was sealed
Now we dance the Danse Macabre

On the funeral morning cold and pale
His burning ship glides under sail
And all the eyes of the world look down

As the flaming arrows pierce the decks
The ship sails out passed the Prism Wrecks
And all the cheers for the King rain down

Reminders of a time when the Jesters pranced, and the Courtiers danced
When the streets were paved with gold
Now the pilot on the Sea of Loss allows the Old Grey King to cross
And this story will always be told.
Farewell.

Epitaph For The Crimson King.

Inspiration - We were out dress shopping in Poole (the dress was not for me, honest Guv. I was the one carrying the bags) and the little black number in the title picture gave me the inspiration for this song. Not a bad trade for half a day's shop 'till you drop,

Kiss The Boys And Make Them Cry

And now the whole sad story's almost over and I've got time on my hands
You're living your life in clover, while I'm out on shifting sands
But no one knows from where the cold winds blow
no, no one know from where the cold winds blow.
I've been around and done it all, but nothing comes close to you
I've been around I've had a ball, but nothing comes close to you.

Kiss the boys and make them cry, break their hearts as you walk on by
Kiss the boys and made them cry, just like you made me cry.

You're fast car friends with their easy money, take up so much of your time
Oh while you think of me as dead end and passe,
And deny that once you were mine.
But no one knows from where the cold winds blow
No one knows from where the cold winds blow
I've been around I've had a ball, but nothing comes close to you
No nothing comes close, nothing comes close to you.

Kiss the boys and make them cry, just like you made me cry
Just like you made me cry.

KISS THE BOYS AND MAKE THEM CRY

Riding To Jaipur (Monsoon Bride)

A bawdy tale in the old Music Hall style and in the vein of the comedian, Max Miller, 'the Cheeky Chappie' who spent a lifetime avoiding the censor's pen. God bless his cotton socks. 

The Ballad of Lady Clarissa Ponsonby Paige (A Cautionary Edwardian Tale)

The trumpet called Clarissa from the gates of Kazakhstan
Though she travelled incognito, she was following a plan
To tell the world about the plight of her fellow suffragettes
Until she came upon a dark Prince with his funny cigarettes

Then it was hey-ho and away we go, roll another one please
Legs akimbo in the air, or down upon your knees
Take your inhibitions and throw them in the bin
Lay back and think of England as you revel in your sin
Take your inhibitions and fling them far and wide
Lay back and think of England as you head out for the ride

Clarissa fell on hard times, when the Prince refused to play
Now she runs a house of ill repute, on the road to Mandalay
Where the mountain men are restless and always form a queue
So to stop the fights on Saturday nights, she often takes on two

Then it was hey-ho and away we go, roll another one please
Legs akimbo in the air, or down upon your knees
Take your inhibitions and throw them in the bin
Lay back and think of England as you revel in your sin
Take your inhibitions and fling them far and wide
Lay back and think of England as you head out for the ride

So if you know a lady, who may travel east or west
Tell her of Clarissa and the funny cigarettes
And if she will not listen, you must turn to her and say
‘Keep your hand on your ha’penny' to keep those men at bay.

If not it's was hey-ho and away we go, roll another one please
Legs akimbo in the air, or down upon your knees
Take your inhibitions and throw them in the bin
Lay back and think of England as you revel in your sin

The Ballad of Lady Clarissa Ponsonby Paige (A Cautionary Edwardian Tale.)

Another seaside song.

Gloria Grierson

Gloria Grierson eats like a bird
Goes day after day with hardly a word
Fills in her Sundays with custards and creams
And seduces the postman in her dreams 
In her dreams

Gloria Grierson drinks like a fish
Passes the well with only one wish
Came home in the dark and fused all the lights
And still bans the bomb on Wednesday nights 
On those nights

And it seems so long since her bloke ran away
With the beautiful girl from the Sea View Café
Though she keeps a light on her front windowsill
He won’t come home tonight ‘cause he never will

Gloria Grierson cries like a child
Should not have ignored the call of the wild
Fills up her head with tails of romance
Walks home on her own from the single’s dance
From the dance

But it seems so long since her bloke ran away
With the beautiful girl from the Sea View Café
Though she keeps a light on her front windowsill
He won’t come home tonight ‘cause he never will

Gloria Grierson moves like a ghost
Haunts all the cafés along the coast
Sits on her own on a table for two
And conjures up dreams that will never come true
Rounds off her days with whisky and cider
And remembers the man that wriggled and tiggled
And tiggled and wriggled and wriggled and tiggled…….


Gloria Grierson

Sad Lisa written by Steven Demetre Georgiou, Cat Stevens or Yusuf Islam. - A songwriter by any other name would be as good. - The song was first released on the 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman - Tempus Fugit.

Sad Lisa

A song for Norma, my aunt who sadly passed away last week aged 86. Norma, the get-up-and-go aunt of my childhood, who taught me how to swim, who used to ride kamikaze-like on her moped and was the first person I ever knew who went on holiday to Spain (quite an adventure in the late fifties).
Norma built up a successful civil engineering business with her husband Bill Lonsdale and they lived in a huge house overlooking the golf club in a place called Middleton One Row, where their choice of transport was a beautiful Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. As the British say, ‘She had a good innings.’
During her later years Norma succumbed to dementia and must have been in a lonely and sometimes frightening place. Yet still, every time we saw her she never lost her sense of humour and fun. Good on y’ Norma. - I am in Norma’s arms in the title picture, which was taken in  1953.

Norma

Saw you the last time today
No more you wanted to stay
So all I wanted to say
Take care when you fly away

And when you reach the other side
With your eyes open wide
Then you can step out with pride
And wonder why we all cried

Sleep tight
In your light
‘cause your light
Will see you home
Then you will not be alone

Norma

Man Flu prevents me from singing my latest song on my 65th birthday, so instead here’s a early(hissy, but it does get better)Secret Red Orchestra track that I wrote and recorded back in the early eighties. If I’d recorded it in the nineties, the lyrics would have been very different, having written for TV and being in meetings where ITV men in suits who were telling me that they ‘just loved’ episodes three and four of my series. This to me meant that episodes one and two were in the bag, and I was already contemplating buying a dinner jacket for the National TV Awards. Unfortunately the fickle TV business dictated that the project was binned after three months. This happened to me again when writing for Hale and Pace – 'Your sketches are in, yes, they're in - no they're out' - oo I was mad.

Television History

I just had to smile, there I the mirror, where my face should be
Television history
I’ve been around the universe though I never left my room
From my armchair one small step to my first walk on the moon

It seems I can recall a time when I was on my own
But now I can’t tell you from me and when I call you’re never home

Look in the mirror and what do I see?
The face of a stranger staring at me
Look in the mirror and what do I see?
Television history.

Going out live at six forty five you can fill me with the news
Or make me buy the things that you want with a deal I can’t refuse.
I am the greatest of them all when you put me in your place
And if you want to know some more, you’d better watch this space.

Television History(Click Title)

The Persistence Of Memory

Being an extract from the memoirs of Sir Ronald Falcon Wystan Millions, concerning the love of a certain lady and the ensuing declivity thereof. 

 A big thank you to Charlotte Bronte for writing Jane Ayre and providing me with the words of the female lead; words to which I have taken the liberty of changing context to fit the narrative of this short drama.  The excellent Carole Boyd plays the female lead. (Other parts were written and performed by members of the cast.)

The Persistence Of Memory

Young as we were, she allowed me a glimpse of that boundless inner landscape that she kept firmly in reserve; a glimpse that went through my very soul like a flaming arrow.
I am well aware that the landscape has been trodden by better men than I, and is now the realm of a man who rules her heart and mind.
In moments of desperation I am driven to covet his position to the point of being consumed by shame.

I would ask you to cast your mind back some forty-seven years.

Do you remember her? Do you remember him? (repeat.) Do you remember?

And they wrote ‘Thanks for the roe.’

And though she worked at Bradbury’s the haberdasher, she would always say.
‘I was so little accustomed to grandeur. I stepped over the threshold. I looked up.’

A glimpse that went through my very soul like a flaming arrow.

You may think that your recollection is perfect, and that an aide-memoire is not necessary.

Believe me, it will play tricks on you.

In short, do you remember the friends of your youth?

Was it those Ragworth boys and Hartburn girls?

He bent his head a little towards me and with a single hasty glance, seemed to dive into my eyes.

I have received from her several perfumed notes of late. I find myself constrained to pour over her every word, in the hope of finding a vestige of love, amongst her otherwise decaffeinated affections. 
Although it had been my most earnest wish; it was not to be. And though I stared more than once into the dark waters of the Thames, I rallied, and sallied forth into the counting house.
The clock started ticking.

The Persistence Of Memory

11.11.1918  10.58

A cover of the classic James Taylor song , Fire and Rain ,released in February 1970.

Fire And Rain

Mr. Wells, just one of millions 'trying to find a memory in a dark room.'

The Small Dreams of Mr. Wells (Looking for Stella Lane)

'Hello and welcome to Jazz Club - nice. -  Later we'll be hearing from Hermann Goring and his Fly Boys with the title track from their debut album, Nuclear Regrets - one up for the guys on Enola Gay there Hermann. - But first, The Secret Red Orchestra featuring David Attenborough on trumpet, with that seasonal global warming classic, Plastic Sleigh Ride - topical. - Take it away David'

The title photograph was taken on Seaham Harbour beach, just along the coast from where I live. The 'plastic tide line' is now a permanent feature.

Jazz Club - Plastic Sleigh Ride

By way of being a tribute to that irascible drumming genius that was Ginger Baker. Goodbye Ginger.

Badge (acoustic)

Johnson and Son. - 'No one asks for more money 'cause nobody dares, even though they're pretty low and the rents in arears.'

A cover of Cat Stevens' Mathew and Son. A whimsy on what it might be like to work in a small company owned by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump A zero hour contract would be standard, and undoubtedy you would spend your days hoping for a bone and expecting a kick. Such is life.

Johnson And Son

Love On The Tyne

I will talk of your beauty, and I will sing about the colour of your hair
And the things that still should be, and those things that will never be there.
It was another time, and another place
Just my fears from the words you were sayin'
Just my tears and a lone guitar playin'

There was only one question. Are you Beatles or Rolling Stones?
But it never really mattered. Just those golden days we spent on our own.
It was another time, and another place
Just my fears from the words you were sayin'
Just my tears and a lone guitar playin'

We crossed the Tyne together, on the front seat at the top of the bus
On the bridge that's always been there
It's like the whole world was looking at us
It was another time, and another place
Just my fears from the words you were sayin'.
Just my tears and a lone guitar playin'

I sang for my supper, the sitting alone in my room
Amongst the psychedelic posters telling how the world would be as one soon.
It was simple then, not so simple now
Just my fears from the words they are sayin'
Just my tears and the orchestra playin'

Love On The Tyne

A small protest at having my European Citizenship taken from me, by means of lies deceit and electoral skulduggery. The track fearures Mr Boris Johnson spouting one of his innane chants to the strains of Ode to Joy, followed closely by Theresa May reprising a similarly impotent  catchphrase to the sorry conclusion of the track

Goodbye Berlin, Paris, Rome And Goodnight Vienna

North Country Rhapsodies

I'll take you along to the mountains and hills
And the paths that I've travelled away-o
Through the beautiful valleys with dark waters still
And the Shires where I'll always stay-o

By the sun of the summer I've worked on the land
From springtime to harvest I've loved-o
Then down in the darkness with shovel and hand
And dreamed of the world way above-o

Over the countryside church bells from far and wide ring out, ring out
Not far from the factories, north country rhapsodies, sing out, sing out, they sing.

North Country Rhapsodies

A loose collection of virtual musicians writers and p*ss artists based 'up North.'. Sometimes affiliated to the local virtual progressive rock band The Crimson Kings and the virtual  and less progressive Shy Vikings. Ronnie2010ist is PA to Ronnie Millions the manager of The Secret Red Orchestra. Raison D'etre - to keep the dysfunctional members of the band in some kind of order. A thankless task.
Infulenced by Robert Fripp, King Crimson,Yes, Alan Hull, Lindisfarne, Genisis, Led Zeppelin, Caravan (Through the Land of the Grey and Pink, where only boyscouts stop to think, etc.) Brian Eno, Rick Wakeman, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Vic Reeves and  Bob Mortimer (local heroes), Dylan Thomas and last but not least, The Irate Pirates Steering Committee.

The Secret Red Orchestra

Pinned to spotlight

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