My review of King Crimson guitarist/vocalist Jakko M. Jakszyk's upcoming Secrets & Lies, due out the Friday, 10/23, published today at All About Jazz.
Life often unfolds in unexpected ways. For some, like Jakko M. Jakszyk, it has taken some truly surprising twists and turns. That the 62 year-old multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter has attained considerably greater visibility in the last ten years than in the previous 35 has, to say the least, righted a significant wrong. Which makes the release of Secrets & Lies, Jakszk's first solo album since the The Bruised Romantic Glee Club (Iceni, 2006) and its 2009, self-released companion piece, Waves Sweep the Sand, cause for celebration.
Jakszyk's history on the UK music scene, crossing genres and gradually finding his way into circles occupied by some of those who were musical heroes during his formative years, has demonstrated a slow but inexorable and inevitable path to where he is now. As lead singer, guitarist, and occasional flautist and keyboardist in the current seven-piece King Crimson lineup, Jakszyk has toured, barring the current year's pandemic restrictions, every year since 2014. The longest-lasting lineup in the group's lengthy, off again/on again career, Jakszyk has also been a member of its most unusual three-drummer front line incarnation. Many believe that this current lineup is also the band's best. That's no mean feat, considering a fifty-plus year career that has seen the group shift gears so many times that even the reductionist progressive rock label of its groundbreaking debut, In the Court of the Crimson King (Panegyric, 1969), has been rendered far too constraining.
Jakszyk first came to attention in the UK through 64 Spoon's curious blend of disco and West Coast pop and rock, all filtered through progressive rock and classical influences. The band ultimately broke up in 1980, after all attempts to fit its stylistic square peg into the music industry's round hole failed, and to which Jakszyk has dryly reflected: "They say that success is largely down to timing. Well, we timed it perfectly. We were the wrong band at the wrong time." Still, 64 Spoons, and Jaksyzk in particular, came to the attention of some of the guitarist's heroes, most notably former Hatfield and the North/National Health keyboardist Dave Stewart and drummer Pip Pyle. This led to Jakszyk's brief tenure, with Stewart, Pyle and bassist Rick Biddulph, in the short-lived Rapid Eye Movement.
Between numerous attempts at a solo record that were ultimately scuttled for a variety of reasons, Jakszyk spent four years as guitarist for Level 42 in the early '90s, a nanosecond with the Kinks, and some time with bassist/singer/songwriter Tom Robinson, the latter resulting in the pop-centric We Never Had It So Good (Musidisc, 1990). He also collaborated with Peter and Kristoffer Blegvad, John Greaves, and Anton Fier in the short-lived New York-based band The Lodge, which released its lone album, The Smell of a Friend (Island), in 1988.
But if Jakszyk's career seemed, at the time, to be a frustrating mix of what ifs and what could have beens, he remained persistently active. He finally released an EP, The Kingdom of Dust, and his first full-length solo album, Mustard Gas And Roses, in 1994 on the Resurgence imprint. Prior to that, Jakszyk collaborated with drummer Gavin Harrison, classical Indian singer/percussionist Pandit Dinesh and renowned Pentangle alum, double bassist Danny Thompson, in Dizrhythmia, releasing an impressive eponymous Antilles debut in 1988. The album was something of a turning point for Jakszyk, fusing world music with art rock concerns and featuring guests including Dave Stewart, singer Peter Blegvad and pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole. Dizrhythmia was such a good experience for the band that it reunited, in 2016, for the stellar, self-released Dizrhythmia Too, with pianist Dave Stewart now a de facto member alongside guests including former Japan keyboardist Richard Barbieri and John Thirkell, the trumpeter who guests on two of Secrets & Lies' eleven tracks.
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