THE BEARDS.

The Heavenly Music Corporation --

(1980-82, Mom dead.)

"No Pussyfooting" is an album by the guitar player Robert Fripp and the keyboard player Brian Eno. The album consists of two songs, or compositions; there are no voices on the record, no lyrics. Unlike other recordings by Fripp and Eno, alone or as members of groups, "No Pussyfooting" doesn't involve studio overdubs. Although the music provides a fullness, an illusion of depth, the two cuts appear to be long improvisations between the players, conducted in real time, within simple boundaries. Side one is made up of achingly long tones, swells of sound that rise and fade. In vocal terms, the instruments groan or wail. They keen. On side two, the tones are frantic with ripples, oscillations. In vocal terms, the instruments ululate. Or orgasm.

Side one is called "The Heavenly Music Corporation." Side two, "Swastika Girls."

I bought "No Pussyfooting" in 1979 or 1980, at the record store on the eighth floor of Abraham & Straus, a palatial department store on Fulton Street, a few blocks from where I lived. My friend Jeremy and I had been going there regularly to browse the long sections of Frank Zappa and Kinks records, and to dare ourselves to spend money on some of the mysterious products we couldn't have investigated otherwise. I was curious about Brian Eno because he was the producer of the newest Talking Heads record. I imagine I selected the two Eno records I bought--"Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy" and "No Pussyfooting"--on the strength of the jacket art, which was alluringly dark and strange, and which had a resemblance to gallery art, as did the jackets of Talking Heads albums.

I also liked the name Eno. It sounded vaguely alien, bliplike, like the names of some of the writers I'd begun to idolize: Lem, Kafka, Poe, Borges.

When I got those records home, "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy" turned out to be a sequence of songs in conventional rock format, three to six minutes long, mostly with guitars and drums underlying their creepy, synthesized sound effects and ominous, gnomic lyrics. Perfect, in other words. "No Pussyfooting" was this other thing: a pair of fuzzy electronic suites, which absolutely refused to beguile. I should have filed it in my collection and forgotten it, gravely disappointed, as I'd imagine most of its teen-age buyers were. Instead, I decided I loved "The Heavenly Music Corporation," and hated "Swastika Girls."