The thundering, rumbling, low frequencies of four decades are silenced...

Playlist

Various - Krautrock : Music for Your Brain

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 4 Way Street

The Who - Endless Wire

Captain Beefheart - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)

Ornette Coleman - Live In Paris 1971

Humble Pie - Rock On

Talking Heads - Little Creatures

The Who - Join Together (live)

Talking Heads - Naked

The Stranglers - Live X-Cert

Travor Rabin - Face To Face

Status Quo - Spare Parts

Captain Beefheart - Doc At The Radar Station

John Coltrane - Coltrane

Asia - Alpha

Asia - Asia

Mogul Thrash - Mogul Thrash

Bryan Ferry - Another Time, Another Place

Various Composers - Diverse Light Volume 2

Steve Hackett - The Tokyo Tapes

Ayreon - The Theory of Everything

Asia - XXX

King Crimson - Red

Very sad news filtered through today that bass hero John Wetton had left us in the early hours of the morning...

He had been ill for a long time but, you know, you always kind of hope things'll be ok...

I've been a fan since seeing him play bass with Uriah Heep in 1975...

I didn't know at the time, but it was his thumping, funky bass line which underpinned one of the best singles I bought in 1972, "Burlesque" by Family...

He played with Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music and, of course, King Crimson - but not on this LP which is an Italian pressing of an earlier line up of the band, using his photo to try and sell it...

This was the masterpiece, "Red"...

...which I only discovered in 1978, via the collection, "A Young Person's Guide to King Crimson", four years after the group had been broken up by Robert Fripp...

I was a young person and the double LP did guide me into the music of this mighty band...

Wetton joined Heep after Crimson and then founded UK...

They recorded what is, for me, one of the best prog rock albums ever...

I've always regretted giving up my tickets for their concert at the Edinburgh Odeon in May 1978 to sister Pam and her chum Janice so that I could go to a house party...

Pam did, very kindly, record the gig for me...

Not the same though...

Of course, looking back, I'd always thought I knew "Red" before I knew "UK" but, from my diares, that seems not to have been the case...

Funny how the mind plays tricks...

I finally got to see a reformed UK in 2012 and 2015...

I like to think I played a small part in reconciling Messrs Wetton and Jobson allowing the reformation to finally take place...

And, of course there was Asia in the 80s and then, post their reformation over the past decade or so...

And a plethora of solo albums and collaborations across the years...

Mr Wetton was a fixture in my life for over 40 years...

Sad news indeed...

A tribute podcast planned...

Meanwhile, this arrived from the States after a few weeks' wait and it was worth said wait...

On telly, "Silrnt Witness"concluded and, no doubt, some other stuff was watched too...

Lowlight of the Day : Death of a four decade plus fixture in my life...