Robert Fripp, The League Of Gentlemen

condition (record/cover): EX / EX

An unofficial 1981 live LP capturing The League Of Gentlemen at their Hamburg gig (their twenty-second documented performance), credited on the sleeve to the deliberately misleading "Robin Hood & The Bunch Of Women". The actual personnel is the standard touring line-up: Robert Fripp (guitar), Barry Andrews (organ), Sara Lee (bass) and Johnny Toobad or Kevin Wilkinson on drums. The back-cover narrative ("The Bunch Of Women began touring on April 10th in a 20th century pub in Bath.") is part of the same fiction.

The set is the band's standard 1980 program: "Inductive Resonance", "Trap", "Heptaparaparshinokh", "Frank" and several Heptapara-prefixed variations that featured in their live work, plus "Dislocated" and other tracks not included on the official studio LP. The performance is louder, more aggressive and rhythmically looser than the studio versions. Audience response is audible throughout.

The pressing on offer is the original 1981 unofficial Raven Records issue, catalogued RV 81231 (some matrices also list Editions EF EFED 99, another piece of the misdirection). For collectors of the Drive To 1981 material, this remains the only widely available document of the League Of Gentlemen's live presence: the band toured intensively for ten months and committed only one official record to studio tape. The provenance is unconfirmed, the legitimacy frankly none, and the content nonetheless genuinely worth hearing for anyone interested in the post-King Crimson Fripp at his most aggressive.