Discipline

Discipline
Studio album by King Crimson
Released	September 1981
Recorded	1981
Genre	New wave, progressive rock, post-punk
Length	42:03
Label	E.G. Records Warner Bros./E.G. Virgin Records
Producer	King Crimson and Rhett Davies
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Robert Christgau (B) link Rolling Stone link
King Crimson chronology
USA (1975) Discipline (1981) Beat (1982)

Discipline is an album by the band King Crimson, released in 1981. This album was King Crimson's first album following a seven-year hiatus. Only founder Robert Fripp and later addition Bill Bruford remained from previous incarnations. The rest of the band was Adrian Belew (guitar, vocals), who had played with David Bowie and Frank Zappa, and Peter Gabriel alumnus Tony Levin (bass, Chapman Stick). The album resulted in a more updated 1980s new wave pre-techno sound mixed with the previous dark and heavy sounds of the 1970s.

Song notes

"Matte Kudasai" (Japanese: 待って下さい) literally means "please wait". The original release of Discipline featured only one version of "Matte Kudasai", with a guitar part by Robert Fripp that was removed from the track on a subsequent release of the album. The latest versions of the album to be released contains both versions of the song - track 3, "Matte Kudasai", without Robert Fripp's original guitar part; and track 8, "Matte Kudasai (alternative version)", with the guitar part included.

The lyrics of "Indiscipline" were based on a letter written to Adrian Belew by his then-wife Margaret, concerning a sculpture that she had made.

"Thela Hun Ginjeet" is an anagram of "heat in the jungle". When it was first performed live, some of its lyrics were improvised around an illicit recording made by Robert Fripp of his neighbours having a vicious argument when he was living in New York; this recording is featured on the track "NY3" on Fripp's solo album Exposure. While the track was being recorded for the Discipline album, Adrian Belew, walking around Notting Hill Gate in London with a tape recorder looking for inspiration, was harassed first by a gang and then by the police. On returning to the studio, he gave a distraught account to his bandmates of what had just happened to him. This account was recorded by Fripp without Belew's knowledge as well, and is featured on the Discipline version of the track (as well as almost all live versions), in place of those earlier lyrics that were based on Fripp's New York recording.

"The Sheltering Sky" is named after and partially inspired by the 1949 novel of the same name by Paul Bowles. Bowles is often associated with the Beat generation, which would be an inspiration for King Crimson's subsequent studio album Beat.

Live versions of "Elephant Talk", "Indiscipline", and "Thela Hun Ginjeet" included partial vocal improvization during spoken-word parts. One such example can be found in the August 13, 1982 performance, which, as of February 19, 2007, was still available for free download in both MP3 and FLAC formats from DGM. (sample (from "Indiscipline"))

The band used the Celtic knot on the original LP cover without knowing that it was copyrighted, and for the most recent releases, it is replaced with a similar knot redesigned by Steve Ball (used with his permission).^[1]

Track listing

All songs written by Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, Robert Fripp and Tony Levin.

Side one

1. "Elephant Talk" – 4:43
2. "Frame by Frame" – 5:09
3. "Matte Kudasai" – 3:47
4. "Indiscipline" – 4:33

Side two

1. "Thela Hun Ginjeet" – 6:26
2. "The Sheltering Sky" – 8:22
3. "Discipline" – 5:13

Bonus track

8. "Matte Kudasai" (alternate version) – 3:50

Personnel

• Adrian Belew – guitar, lead vocal
• Robert Fripp – guitar and devices (Frippertronics)
• Tony Levin – Chapman Stick, bass guitar, support vocal
• Bill Bruford – drums

Charts

Album

References

External links

• Lyrics