Crispycat Recordings: Remembering No Pussyfooting and seeing the progress on the old house...

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

Remembering No Pussyfooting and seeing the progress on the old house...

Playlist

Up late...

Anne to Zumba and me writing the sleeve notes for Friday's release, my variations of Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting...

Introduction

"Variations on Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting"" is a reimagining of what is, for Cloudland Blue Quartet, a seminal release and one which spurred him on to what is now approaching 50 years of music making

The fifth in a series of variations on the music of Brian Eno, it follows on from his 2021 takes on "Music For Airports" and "Thursday Afternoon" and his 2025 reworkings of "Discreet Music" and "On Land" and is a double LP, comprising reworkings of the two pieces from the original LP plus the two stand alone "Disquietmusik" guitar solos, recorded for the project.

My sleevenotes:

"Brian Eno's collaboration with King Crimson's Robert Fripp, "No Pussyfooting" was originally released in November 1973, on Island's "Help" label, at a discounted price (although the German issue I own was released on the full Island label)

It perplexed

Preceding Eno's "real" post Roxy debut solo LP "Here Come the Warm Jets" by just two months, it was as far away as you could imagine from the work of either Roxy Music or King Crimson and alienated many of those bands' fans at the time

It sounded like nothing anyone had heard before and it polarised those who heard it.

But Robert Fripp liked it so much, he had been using "The Heavenly Music Corporation" as "walk on" music for King Crimson performances since recording it with Eno in September 1972

Back in the summer of 1974, I had never heard King Crimson (they were just about to "cease to exist"), so didn't know who "Fripp" was

I owned no Roxy Music LPs (yet) but was a fan of their singles, "Virginia Plain", "Pyjamarama" and "Street Life"

I was aware that Eno, the "weird" member of the band, had left Roxy Music the previous summer, pre "Street Life" and just over a month before he recorded "Swastika Girls" with Fripp (in fact fifty two years ago today, as I write these sleeve notes)

I bought "No Pussyfooting" on the 8th of July, 1974 and still have it in my remaining record collection (along with two CD issues). And so, the 51st anniversary of the purchase is kind of being celebrated by the release of these variations

I was on a school trip to Königssee in the Bavarian Alps and found it in a small record store in the nearby town of Berchtesgaden

I really liked the cover but had only heard of one of the two protagonists.

I had no idea what the music might sound like but was intrigued by the fact that the LP contained just two tracks, each lasting around twenty minutes

I had just turned fifteen and had limited funds for the seventeen day trip, so, the £ to Deutschmark equivalent of £2.48 (£36 in today's money) was quite a lot for a young schoolboy to spend on a record of which he had no idea what to expect

And, of course, I had to wait until I got home, six days later, before I could play it but, in the meantime, I poured over every detail of the record sleeve

In fact, a few years later, I even bought a copy of "Futurist Manifestos", edited by Umbro Apollonio, which sits on the bookshelf on the cover

When I finally did get to listen to it, I thought "well, I really have no idea what this is but...

...I love it!"

And I have loved it ever since

Indeed, I played it so often, my mum could recognise it at fifty paces - "that's Fripp & Eno, son - can you maybe turn it down a bit - are you sure you're playing it at the right speed?"...

"No Pussyfooting" was around the 50th album I owned.

My first purchase had been Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" almost two years before

At the time, around a third of my LP collection comprised Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Hawkwind and Uriah Heep.

I also owned two LPs each by Faust and Genesis, along with albums by ELP, Yes, Focus, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath

Other LPs in the collection included titles by Black Widow, ELO, Santana, Simon & Garfunkel, T Rex, The Who, The Eagles, The Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Mick Ronson, String Driven Thing, Haystacks Balboa, Velvett Fogg and the superb 2LP set on CBS, "Fill Your Head With Rock"

But nothing, nothing I had collected, thus far, sounded anything like "No Pussyfooting"

It was unique

I loved it then, I love it now, I will always love it

As bonuses for those who support this release by downloading rather than streaming, I've included backwards, half speed and half speed backwards mixes of the four tracks on the album

These reflect both:

(a) the error made by John Peel, who, having been sent a reel to reel version, played the full LP on his show backwards (without realising it!) and

(b) my own experiments of playing the album at 16 RPM on my record player, rather than the correct 33 RPM

Recording these variations on one of my all time favourite LPs has been a very enjoyable exercise indeed and I hope you, in turn, will enjoy what I've done"

David Reilly

Edinburgh

2 July, 2025

Here, my diary entry from 8 July 1974...

£1 then = £14.40 now...

Hey, that's inflation for you...

Superb LP...

Just after I thought I'd finished it all, I realised I could add the backwards, 16 RPM and backwards 16 RPM versions of the treated guitar solos - making it like a "Disquietmusik" LP within the main LP...

I made it so - adding around 3.5 hours to the bundle...

Madness..

Tasty soup again for lunch, sadly the last of it but, hopefully, it can be recreated...

At one point this lunchtime, there were around 10 small birds at the feeding station...

In the afternoon, I watched the first episode of "Travelers" for, probably, the third time - maybe I can get into the 3 seasons properly this time...

Anne was out visiting her mum...

I finished off the check of my Discogs collection thus far and commenced the task of adding new boxes to it...

Overall notional value of the CD collection is projecting at around £100,000 - of course, it's "notional" as that's only if every one of the 12,500 CDs is sold individually...

Smoked salmon tea...

This afternoon, I'd received a message from the new couple at my mum's house to say they’d found my Dad’s ashes!

So, post tea, we popped out to pick it up (empty of course - it was found behind the water tank in the front bedroom)...

Although not visible from the outside (other than a new gas meter box on the front wall), they are progressing with the renovations nicely, per these pics…

And all our “during decorating” messages from the 70's have kept them entertained!