Lyricist Pete Sinfield died last month.

His most famous work was done with King Crimson for whom he came up with the name and wrote most of the lyrics for the first four albums though he didn’t play on them.

I have featured his work before since he wrote the English language lyrics for Italian group Premiata, Forneria, Marconi (PFM.) The World Became the World is a prime example of Sinfield’s art.

He was also responsible for the words of Greg Lake’s great Christmas hit I Believe in Father Christmas.

Later in Sinfield’s career he moved more to pop and wrote songs for, among others, Leo Sayer, Cher, and even Think Twice for Celine Dion.

This is a haunting piece from King Crimson’s debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King.

King Crimson: I Talk to the Wind

Peter John (Pete) Sinfield: 27/12/1943 – 14/11/2024

The Pretty Things (whose member Phil May died last week) were a presence in and around my consciousness in the 1960s. I caught them on TV once and my father of course remarked they were far from pretty. Chart success mostly eluded them, though. However, I do recall vaguely that they were the first British band to sign to Tamla Motown in the US.

Like most early 1960s bands they started out playing the blues but they soon evolved. The were the first to produce a rock opera in the concept album (one of the first of those) S. F. Sorrow where they indulged psychedelic tendencies, but its release was messed up and it therefore appeared after The Who’s Tommy.

Below is an appearance from French TV in which they play a song from S. F. Sorrow. The introduction to this has pre-echoes of Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas and the visual styling and antics of the guy in the tricorne hat could have inspired The Alex Harvey Band.

The Pretty Things: Private Sorrow

Philip Dennis Arthur Wadey/Kattner (Phil May:) 9 /11/1944 – 15/5/2020. So it goes.

I know I marked Greg Lake’s passing a fortnight ago but it is Christmas time and this is his best known song.

We need its sentiments this year more than for some in the recent past. (More than for in most of my lifetime.)

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year.

Greg Lake: I Believe in Father Christmas

Keith Emerson who died earlier this week was one of the arch proponents of Prog Rock. I’ve already featured several of his recordings with that most unlikely of progenitors of the form, P P Arnold’s backing band The Nice. America, where his reworkings of classical pieces in a rock style perhaps began and which has a good claim, in its extravagance, to be the first truly prog track, its B-side, The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon and their first single The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack.

It was, though, Emerson’s work with Greg Lake and Carl Palmer as Emerson Lake and Palmer (aka ELP) that solidified his reputation as one of the “rock dinosaurs” that punk rock sought to consign to oblivion.

Here’s a live performance of part of ELP’s take on Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Promenade and the Gnome

Keith Noel Emerson: 2/11/1944 – 10/3/2016. So it goes.

A bit of proggy psychedelia. Just for a change.

This sounds a bit like Nirvana (the real Nirvana) but it’s a bit too fuzzy and fussy.

One of Shy Limbs’ members was a certain Greg Lake.

Shy Limbs: Reputation