Toyah and Robert Fripp show no sign of letting up as Sunday Lunch series enters another year

Toyah and Robert Fripp in their kitchen — (Image credit: Toyah Willcox/YouTube)

As sure as night follows day, Robert Fripp and Toyal Willcox have started 2023 as they finished 2022, and 2021, and 2020, by bringing a quiet corner of Worcestershire to life and entertaining the masses with their latest Sunday Lunch video.

This week's instalment finds the enterprising pair providing a new and somewhat ragged slant on The Offspring's 1998 punk anthem The Kids Aren't Alright. It's a song that was originally inspired by trips frontman Dexter Holland made to Garden Grove, the Orange County city where he group up.

"I was driving around the block thinking of all the stuff that had happened to everyone growing up there-this one had a nervous breakdown," Holland told Billboard as the band's Americana album was released. "Another guy got killed in a driving accident. You grow up in America, and [you're supposed to] have such a bright future, and it's really not that way."

Naturally enough, Holland's tale of youthful despair, tragedy and heartbreak has been turned into a slightly surreal romp by Willcox and Fripp, with Toyah brandishing a bright pink scarf and the King Crimson man's forehead apparently daubed with gold leaf.

In King Crimson news, the band's debut album In The Court Of The Crimson King will be the subject of a pair of "immersive" listening events in London and Los Angeles this week.

The two events will feature Steven Wilson's spatial audio mix of the album played in its entirety in a pitch-black, distraction free environment, on a 45-speaker, concert-grade sound system.

The London event on January 10 is already sold out, but tickets are still available for the Los Angeles playback, due to be held the following night at L-Acoustics Creations' immersive sound space in Westlake Village, CA.

Artists

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.