It’s A Mystery

Tonight’s musical entertainment was the unlikely pairing of King Crimson guitarist and founder member, Robert Fripp, and punk icon Toyah Willcox. Yes, they’ve been married for nearly forty years and, yes, they’ve been performing iconic rock songs on YouTube since lockdown, but it was still a bit strange seeing them sharing a stage with a full band behind them.
They’ve been touring this project extensively, but I’m not sure why The Coro at Ulverston was chosen as a venue, considering they’ve also done Glastonbury this year. The support act was a young lad, very much in the Ed Sheeran mould, doing lots of clever things with multiple loop pedals. Technically interesting, but musically not really my thing.
As for Toyah and Robert, I’m not sure how to describe their performance. It was almost like watching a really good covers band knock out some classic tunes and then chuck in a couple of the lead singers original songs, except those original songs happen to be multi million selling singles in their own right. There were a few numbers that Robert had played on, or had a hand in their production, but the rest were just random songs that they said they liked playing. An eclectic choice though, encompassing Metallica, Black Sabbath and Guns’n’Roses amongst others.
Having said that, it was a great evenings entertainment from two musicians who had lost none of their mojo, despite a combined age of over 140 years! Gives me hope that I might be able to carry on knocking out tunes for a few more years yet.