King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

I will try to do this without spoilers...

It was excellent. First off, the set list is extremely well-chosen. Deep cuts, arrangements that are both inspired but also faithful somehow.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, unlike what I heard about the "double trio" of the 90s group, this lineup totally jelled. A few Scarcity-esque moments on the soprano aside, Collins is a bit of a revelation -- so great on those early records, blowing pretty full on throughout. Levin is a fucking anchor, bowed bass, stick, and some fine stage presence. Jakko fit in pretty well. His voice was versatile enough to handle Lake and Wetton material with no problem. Fripp took some ripping solos and looked like he was enjoying himself.

But the triple drum thing took the cake – both as theater and musically (Mastolonetto looked uncomfortably like a trim Michael Moore BTW). They never filled too much space and balanced out the heavy riffage nicely. It was a lot like having Giles, Bruford and Muir on stage together but with them constantly switching roles.

They also managed to make the whole thing really fun.

Lastly, after the show, a sixty-ish year-old guy in the bathroom looked around at the other guys, turned to me with a smile and said, "King Crimson. Brought to you by Flomax."

Don't hesitate. Go.

ITCOCK, Red and Larks (40th Anniversary Editions) going up on the iTunes store Sept. 30th.

iTCOCK

Someone take this broke old corny fuck to the nyc show tonight! I am v charming company!

:(

Dude if I was in NYC I would totally take you. Except I think the shows are all sold out?

they are indeed! But ilxors are the kind of important ppl who have fancy +1's and such.

The two albums that Robert Fripp did with David Sylvian, 'Damage' and 'The First Day', are being reissued.

They're not coming to Canada at all afaict.:(

Fripp is being such a control nut about these shows that there are little in the way of + tickets, let alone +1.

"good news, you have a comp ticket -2"

well I expect he'd rather sell the tickets than give them away.

I was pissed that they released a bunch of floor seats this week for the warfield shows in SF. I don't get how this stuff works but I'd much rather be sitting there than the balcony, which was the best available when I bought a ticket a week after they went on sale.

We were in the balcony. You can see the full seven guys very well, and the three drummers up front.

thanks for the reassurance.

Tom Scharpling
15 hours ago
At the King Crimson show. There would be less dudes in one place if I was at a factory that manufactured dudes.

Interesting thing I read in a Fripp interview recently:

He spent most of the '90s embroiled in disputes with management, record companies and lyricist Pete Sinfield, "who considers himself in relation to Crimson the way Roger Waters does to Pink Floyd".

I never realized that Sinfield was considered a major contributor.

Sounds like it's only Sinfield that considers Sinfield a major contributor.

Okay, just checked the credits for the first album (Court of the Crimson King). Sinfield actually gets more writing credits than Fripp on that one. He's listed as the co-writer of every track (only lyrics I guess?). Sinfield is also credited with "illumination"...

Fripp is credited with writing the music for three of the five tracks. Ian McDonald (the keyboardist) is listed as co-writer of the music for all five tracks.

Sinfield is also credited with "illumination"...

odd then that they're playing Sinfield-composed songs on this tour

Why odd? KC played Schizoid Man in 73-74 after the Fripp-Sinfield split, and didn't even the 81-84 band bring it out occasionally?

Sinfield:

“I was the one who wrote all the poems and had the strange bohemian background,” he says. “Robert came from a staid solicitor’s family in Dorset. He kept his paperback books in plastic bags, and mine were scattered all over the place. But for two and a half years, the combination worked.

“When Greg was asked to join, it was still stuck in Giles, Giles & Fripp land, all very clever-clever. Ian and I introduced an element of songwriting – something of weight, flamboyant Gothic weight. Greg’s talent and enthusiasm is like a big pair of bellows. There’s this small spark and he’ll puff away and suddenly he’s made it into a flame and added some harmonies to it. Mike would put some drums behind it, I’ll stick a word or two on it, and Fripp would calmly say, ‘I have an idea for that’, and drag something out of his 20,000 years of guitar practice.”

81-84 never played that, no. Pictures of a City was written by Sinfield, so was the Letters. So that's three tracks that presumably he gets royalties off of

ha, that's kind of a great quote xp

Sinfield is responsible for some truly atrocious lyrics but I don't think King Crimson could've been what they were without him. Plus he wrote "Under the Sky" for GG&F and I freakin' love that tune

note: from the bootleg I heard, even though they are playing Construkction of Light, it's an instrumental version, so Jakko either didn't feel comfortable singing Belew's parts or they just agreed not to.

Fripp goes out of his way to praise Sinfield whenever he mentions him in the online diary and makes it pretty plain that that wherever their differences of opinion turn into grievance and acrimony, the acrimony is one-way. I don't think he'd ever decline to play Sinfield-written songs as a way to ding Sinfield economically. He has his passive-aggressive moments, but not in that way imo.

I don't think he'd ever decline to play Sinfield-written songs as a way to ding Sinfield economically. He has his passive-aggressive moments, but not in that way imo.

I think he had Belew & Levin overdub Gordon Haskell out of the box set version of Cadence and Cascade for precisely that reason.

yeah that was lame.

that's an interesting song in that there's now a greg lake version of it released. So that means there are three different studio takes of that, all with different singers. and they don't sound significantly different either.

anyway I'm looking forward to these shows; also hoping Crimson Projekct tours again when this is done because I do like belew and the Live in Tokyo release is pretty amazing; you've still got Mastoletto and Levin in there, and generally speaking they sound quite a bit tighter than Crimson Proper

81-84 never played that, no

I saw KC in 1984 and the only pre-81 songs they played were "Red" and "Larks' Tongues in Aspic pt. 2"

as far as I know they just did Schizoid Man once, in 96

Pretty sure they've done it a few times with Belew in the 90s.

I posted this upthread, think it was the only airing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhDnxovZNNA

They just released additional tickets for each remaining NYC night for sale at the venue. I seen it on twitter.

Sinfield was tremendously important to KC MK I's overall aesthetic – which I think even Fripp has acknowledged.

In addition to the lyrics, Sinfield was instrumental to the song titles (and their many sections and subsections), sleeve design and the overall atmosphere (the cirkuses, courts and Odyssey-esque themes). Say what you will about his "poetry" his lyrics aren't shallow. There are still stretches where I will go through where I listen only to those first four records – they are never flawless, almost always fascinating and a complete experience in a way records often aspired to be in the late sixties/early seventies. Sinfield really was the architect of that.

At its best, as he suggests himself in that Uncut piece referenced above, Sinfield's partnership with Fripp yielded something enchanting – things like "Schizoid Man," the "Lizard" suite or the whole of Islands are strange, mysterious, often lovely, and sometimes a bit unsettling ... even at the same time.

The magic of the new tour is that Fripp not only doesn't shy away from that reading of KC history but embraces it.

I listened to the 40th anniversary Lizard remaster on my way to work this morning. What a great sounding album. Funny that when early KC got jazzy they went Gil Evans instead of the burgeoning fusion route. Kieth Tippet is a force on that record (as well as Islands). Reading the wiki I didn't know that he declined to be keyboardist on an ongoing basis. Even if he had joined I doubt things would have gone too much different, since the split from Sinfield radically altered the KC sound in any case, and at least in the first half of its playing life, no incarnation of Crim was long for this world.

That Lizard remaster is incredible. Steven Wilson has done great things with a lot of old prog discs but Lizard was essentially rebuilt from scratch and features a number of sections that I don't remember being on the original. "Happy Family" is a song I always thought was ugly and hokey before, now it sounds absolutely terrifying. "Prince Rupert Awakes" still amazes me. I wish that was its own separate track.

Y'all are making me actually consider buying physical audio media for the first time in years.

I kind of wish the current kc remasters were the only ones, and not, like, the 15th reissues.

How does the KC reissue/remaster cycle compare to that of, say, Can?

Well, kc has been reissued more. But also, by now, better, so ...

All my KC cds are the E'G versions and 40th anniversary editions are vastly superior. Keep in mind that for the 80s records they used the 30th anniversary masters and added bonus tracks.
But considering that they used the 40th anniversary masters for the new vinyl reissues, I intend to just get everything on LP and call it good. They can't possibly make them sound better 10 years from now.

are you talking about the stereo mix of lizard or the surround? I don't fuck with surround, pain in the ass. but if the stereo is good I'll pick it up

Stereo. There's a great article in All About Jazz that goes into some detail about the original mix, why so much of the arrangements ended up being obscured and the approach Wilson ended up taking with the remix. More interesting than I'm probably describing here.

I wish I could hear the surround, but the stereo is amazing enough

I've still never heard anything before Larks' Tongues...thinking about picking up the 40th anniversary CD/DVD versions of the first four, but I don't know.

you should. Islands and Lizard are albums that people used to really bag on but they've grown in everyone's estimation, I think. You should absolutely have In the Court

Cover piece on Fripp in the Wire:

http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/eno_int_wire-oct14.html

xp - glad those two albums have been reassessed. I'm a fairly big fan of Lizard and can't see what's wrong with it at all.

Hm, I've never heard Islands or Lizard tbh. I've only known one person who reps for them and I assumed he was a bit off. (He HATES the Belew era and doesn't care too much for the Wetton era.) I'm a little intrigued.

I've liked Discipline for a long time but I've been getting into Three of a Perfect Pair and Beat. They're a bit poppier than Discipline, getting into Police and Peter Gabriel territory sometimes, which I don't mind. I feel like Belew tones down some of the most obnoxious elements of his delivery. Some great stuff in this show imo.