Giles, Giles & Fripp — “One in a Million”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — April 9, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,170) Giles, Giles & Fripp — “One in a Million”

This ’68 A-side, representing King Crimson in the womb, sounds a lot like the offspring of Syd Barrett and Monty Python — “very English music hall psych … the sort of track done not just by Floyd, but by the Beatles and The Kinks as well” (Trotsky, https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464), with a “generous helping[] of goonish humour”. (Lin Bensley, https://www.loudersound.com/features/giles-giles-fripp-cheerful-insanity) “I’m quite sure that I won’t be able to get the melod[y] . . . out of my head for quite a while.” (tarkus1980, (https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464)

The song comes from an album — The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp — that is “very charming, intellectual, tongue-in-cheek pop album of the sixties” (Matti, https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464), “decidedly weird” (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited), “an aural oddity of incurable nonchalance” (Lin Bensley, https://www.loudersound.com/features/giles-giles-fripp-cheerful-insanity), with “a strange mixture of light jazz, psychedelia, droll humor, Goon Show/Monty Python-style comedy, and very offbeat balladry”. (Bruce Eder, https://www.allmusic.com/artist/giles-giles-fripp-mn0000657298#biography)

In Trotsky’s view, one “probably ha[s] to be a fan of ‘silly’ psych albums like The Small Faces’ Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake and Pink Floyd’s Piper At The Gates Of Dawn to appreciate this album on its own terms”, with songs that “are generally a tamer (but not necessarily poor) version of the sort of stuff that early Floyd was doing”. (https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464)

In Lindsay Planer’s, “Musically, Giles, Giles & Fripp are wholly unlike anything before or since. Drawing upon folk, classical, pop, and even sacred music, each track brings a fresh listening experience. . . . lighthearted and decidedly folksy English tales.” (https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-cheerful-insanity-of-giles-giles-fripp-mw0000100997#trackListing)

In Dobermensch’s, “[a]dmirers of Syd Barrett and the more pastoral side of early Floyd will like this. Unfortunately it’s not as strange or acid drenched but retains a certain British quirkiness throughout. The songs are sursprisingly catchy and remind me of Bowie’s first album from ’67.” (https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464)

In Evolver’s: “A friend of mine once said that the one common aspect of all of the early music from the great proggers of the seventies is silliness. This is true of The Nice, early Pink Floyd, and even band’s like Tomorrow (Steve Howe’s pre-Yes group). But few were as silly as Giles, Giles & Fripp.” (https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=8464)

In Lin Bensley’s, “[t]here is an air of lost innocence (or should that be intelligence?) that permeates the whole album, brimming with words and music that owe less to psychedelia than the village hall or Vaudeville”. (https://www.loudersound.com/features/giles-giles-fripp-cheerful-insanity)

Bensley tells us that:

The album was completed in May, and in the same month a first single was released: One In A Million b/w Newly-weds. It was accompanied by a satirical press release penned by Peter Giles:

“This is just another single from one of the countless groups who have come to London in the vain hope of making good. Later this year an LP of their compositions will be tentatively released to take its tentative place in a thick catalogue of other LPs on current release.” . . .

Perhaps Peter [Giles] should have the final say. “The Cheerful Insanity… album WAS WHAT IT WAS in 1968, and IS WHAT IT IS now. It has a musical ingenuousness. That’s what I liked about it then, and that’s what I like about it today.”

https://www.loudersound.com/features/giles-giles-fripp-cheerful-insanity

Unfortunately, “the punters just didn’t seem interested”. (Vernon Joynson, The Tapestry of Delights Revisited) The song and the LP are certainly not everybody’s cup of tea, certainly not rushomancy’s:

The album takes a dramatic turn for the worse with “One in a Million”, the first Mike Giles composition. The liner notes indicate this as having been written in 1965, and it sounds like it. The orchestrations . . . sound completely chintzy here accompanying this piece of sub-Herman’s Hermits garbage. . . . If you’re into wildly uneven fringe ’60s music, though, [the LP] might just be up your alley.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/giles-giles-and-fripp/the-cheerful-insanity-of-giles-giles-and-fripp/

Lindsay Planer writes:

This pre-King Crimson aggregate involves the talents of Michael Giles (drums/vocals), Peter Giles (bass/vocals), and Robert Fripp (guitar/vocals) accompanied by a plethora of studio musicians — most notably keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and backing vocalists the Breakaways. By any standards The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp is one of the more eclectic albums to have been issued during the psychedelic rock movement of the late ’60s. The album was initially issued in September of 1968 on the Decca Records subsidiary Deram — whose releases were aimed specifically at the alternative or progressive rock market. . . .

https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-cheerful-insanity-of-giles-giles-fripp-mw0000100997#trackListing

And Bruce Eder adds:

Giles, Giles & Fripp only existed for a little more than 15 months. They never got to play a single live performance under their own name, never charted a single anywhere in the world, and were so obscure in their own time and their own country that the one album that they recorded . . . sold fewer than 1000 copies. But out of that trio grew the band that became King Crimson. Drummer Michael Giles and his bassist brother Perer Giles were veterans of the rock scene in Bournemouth . . . between January of 1960 and May of 1967. . . . In late August of 1967, they hooked up with Robert Fripp, an ex-member of groups such as the League of Gentlemen, who was then playing guitar in a hotel orchestra. . . . [They] found some interest in their music at Decca Records . . . and passed an audition to get signed to the company’s progressive-oriented Deram Records imprint. The result was an album . . . cut during the winter and early spring of 1968 and a pair of singles. It never sold, despite a surprisingly enthusiastic publicity push by Decca. . . . Peter Giles crossed paths with ex-Fairport Convention vocalist Julie Dyble, who was advertising for a band and working with Ian McDonald, a multi-instrumentalist who also wrote songs. For a time, [they all] worked together, recording a handful of tracks, and McDonald ended up staying after Dyble departed. . . . and soon a non-performing fifth member with the addition of McDonald’s friend and one-time bandmate, lyricist Peter Sinfield. In late 1968, Peter Giles quit the group and decided to leave professional music behind, and Fripp brought in Greg Lake, an old friend who took over on bass and who would also serve as lead singer. . . . [T]he new quintet with a new sound selected the name King Crimson.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/giles-giles-fripp-mn0000657298#biography

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