King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

Was listening to the new live set and chuckled when the flute started doing Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk."

i really like Beat but it was maybe the first KC album I ever owned, and I was really into the beats at the time, so I liked the kerouac/burroughs/bowles references

also all of three of a perfect pair is great, don't know what you all are whining about. i mean if you want to hear KC run out of ideas, go listen to construkction of light

hah I just realized that Jakko was in The Tangent, that's pretty cool

What's all this "Fuck Adrian Belew Forever" stuff?

Not sure how I was unaware of this album until now, but David Cross and Robert Fripp released an album based entirely around the Starless riff in 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsAZlQAf3pA

This sounds good. Cross does most of the work here but it flows together well.

Any thoughts on "Radical Action" y'all? I've been really enjoying it - surprised by how great Fripp & Collins still are, and I think they really do justice to their back catalogue. In a way this feels like the "final form" of King Crimson - they've got the heaviness, the horns, the mellotron, and even a percussionist, even sample the old records but re-arrange the tunes to make them sound new enough. I like Jakko on this too, he's like an amalgam of all the singers of Crimson past. New songs are good but not great, picking up right where '00s Crim left off I guess. Sound quality is incredible, and cutting out the crowd was (IMO) a good move. The three drummer thing seems a little underutilized and I wish they'd pulled out some less obvious tunes (lets be real here, do we really need another recording of "Red" or "Larks 2"?)...something from Lizard would've been awesome, "Cat Food" or "Lament" perhaps, and can Fripp not do "Fracture" anymore? But overall I'm really glad I picked it up.

Ha, I think I threw a vote to the Cross/Fripp in last year's ILM poll.

yeah I've listened to it a lot as I kept it in my car for months. they have been doing some stuff from Lizard live lately (as well as Indiscipline, surprisingly) which keeps this from feeling like the absolute final word. The performances are exceptionally professional; if you go back and listen to this band vs say, the 70's band playing Red, it's lost a bit of the wild freeform feel; having seen them live I can confirm that they really do play things this well; so it feels a bit more like a classical recital of crimson stuff than earlier incarnations. The video is annoyingly edited but gives a realistic enough view on what these shows are like.

Any thoughts on "Radical Action" y'all?

I wrote about it for Burning Ambulance.

Any thoughts on "Radical Action" y'all? I've been really enjoying it - surprised by how great Fripp & Collins still are, and I think they really do justice to their back catalogue. In a way this feels like the "final form" of King Crimson - they've got the heaviness, the horns, the mellotron, and even a percussionist, even sample the old records but re-arrange the tunes to make them sound new enough. I like Jakko on this too, he's like an amalgam of all the singers of Crimson past. New songs are good but not great, picking up right where '00s Crim left off I guess. Sound quality is incredible, and cutting out the crowd was (IMO) a good move. The three drummer thing seems a little underutilized and I wish they'd pulled out some less obvious tunes (lets be real here, do we really need another recording of "Red" or "Larks 2"?)...something from Lizard would've been awesome, "Cat Food" or "Lament" perhaps, and can Fripp not do "Fracture" anymore? But overall I'm really glad I picked it up.

― frogbs

recent gigs have addressed at least a couple of your setlist concerns, fwiw.

i'm not sure what to say about it, because i actually saw a show on the tour, my first time seeing king crimson, and mostly i find that i don't enjoy the record as much as i enjoyed the show. people generally seem to be really taken with the record, though.

they have been doing some stuff from Lizard live lately (as well as Indiscipline, surprisingly)

"Indiscipline" is a neat addition; as it is these sets kinda feel like they're (unintentionally) writing Belew out of the band's history

No matter how much Fripp would deny it, I can't help thinking there's a feeling of nostalgia, of revisiting past glories about these shows, what with there being so little new material. Not that I'm complaining, these shows are stellar.

The Power To Believe is terrible

I dunno I kinda liked that album - didn't think much of the actual songs but the instrumentals were good. Definitely a sense that they've run out of ideas but there's been that feeling since 1995. Hopefully they'll crank out some new material soon; I do think that "Radical Action" -> "Meltdown" is pretty great, but sold on the other two songs yet but the fact that they're writing new songs at all is kind of a good sign. Given their extensive tour they have booked for 2017 I'm guessing they're still working some things out.

Hitting the west coast starting in Seattle in June, psyched to see them again.

I haven't got The Power To Believe but "Dangerous Curves" is fantastic.

the power to believe is pretty good, it's better than the construction of light anyway

yeah that was definitely their "these dudes should break up" album; nearly the entire thing was retreading their old ideas with a much shittier drum sound. though the new take on "Fracture" was really good. Belew's lyrics got terrible in a hurry too.

oddly enough the 2000 live set Heavy ConstruKction is one of my favorites - all the new material sounds better live (without the distortion and studio effects), and the improvs are really good

they got into some kind of grateful dead thing where their studio records sucked but they burned live

Rieflin is back according to latest Fripp diary, and they're keeping Jeremy Stacy so this will be an 8 member band going out in the summer (west coast!)

Four drummers, jeez.

that's strange, though I suppose Rieflin will probably be doing more keyboards full-time? what the hell are you going to do with four drummers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0-5XCJNdTE

77 Crimdrum

... what the hell are you going to do with three four drummers?

Lots of bands have >2 percussionists! Not rock bands usually but it's not completely absurd

Rieflin is back according to latest Fripp diary, and they're keeping Jeremy Stacy so this will be an 8 member band going out in the summer (west coast!)

― akm

i knew moving to the west coast was a good idea

personally i hope they start adding "thousand finger man" to the setlist

xp the fact that the majority of the setlist was written for one drummer does make it pretty interesting though. also both Rieflin and Stacy are multi-instrumentalists so there's a lot of potential there. Fripp is now talking about a "dual quartet" which is kinda awesome sounding.

Very intriguing. I thought the three drummer lineup was a bit overkill and that bill rieflin really didn't add that much. Four drummers, I can imagine a dueling band thing going on. They should let rieflin sing, he has a voice like David Sylvian.

xp the fact that the majority of the setlist was written for one drummer does make it pretty interesting though. also both Rieflin and Stacy are multi-instrumentalists so there's a lot of potential there. Fripp is now talking about a "dual quartet" which is kinda awesome sounding.

― frogbs

oh give it up bobby you're not going to re-record fucking "free jazz"

I sure would like them to start doing improvs again

They do improv, but mostly between song stuff. In fact, as talented as KC is and has always been, their improvisation has always been secondary, imo. That is, there are changes here and there, but having listening to several shows in, say, that Road to Red set, I've not noticed any huge shift from take to take. Fripp is such a control freak that he (and his compositions) keeps his band on a pretty tight leash. The ProjeKCs seemed to improvise a lot more.

I mean the jams that they end up calling improvs

the interstitial stuff, like intros to Night Watch, Exiles, etc, never really counted as such IMO

I liked what they did with the pieces they built around 'Siezure' & 'x-chayng-z' or whatever - that stuff ended up feeling very exciting. I'd enjoy seeing this group approach that sort of thing.

When I saw them in 2004 they were basically a very loud chamber ensemble, precise, no improv. I think that can make it hard for music to enter the room, as Fripp puts it.

I always wondered about that. Some of the "improvs" on The Great Deceiver and Heavy ConstruKction sets seem so structured that there's no way they just pulled them out of thin air. I can see something like "Trio" coming together since there isn't a whole lot of a tune there, but some of the rest, you at least get the sense they knew where it was starting or what it was leading to. Would be cool to see more jamming out of this incarnation of the band, I actually think the "Easy Money" on Radical Action is the best version I've ever heard, mostly because of the freeform middle section.

that was what i loved most about the construction of light tour - they started doing standalone "blows" again, which give or take a couple of late '81/early '82 oddities, they hadn't really done since '74. the whole "thrakattak" approach they took, man, it just didn't work, because the music had no space to breathe.

how structured were the '73-'74 "blows"? yeah, some. funny that you mention trio, frogbs, as that was a kind of regular thing they did- no main melody, mind, but there are a lot of improvs by that band that sound like "trio". certainly they had some set pieces- the "fracture" melody started out in improv pieces, and that's not really the sort of thing one just makes up on the spot- but overall they were freer than one might imagine.

oh god, Thrakattak - don't think I could stand to listen to that one again. as I recall it the issue wasn't that you had 6 members of the band improvising all at once, but rather that most of the members seemed too afraid to do anything! yes, that is what pure improvisation can sound like.

I always thought "Fracture" was a take off on "Suite No 1" from the Giles, Giles, and Fripp days. obviously Fripp's technique improved a lot over the years but when I first heard that it sounded like there was a connection there.

oh god, Thrakattak - don't think I could stand to listen to that one again. as I recall it the issue wasn't that you had 6 members of the band improvising all at once, but rather that most of the members seemed too afraid to do anything! yes, that is what pure improvisation can sound like.

I always thought "Fracture" was a take off on "Suite No 1" from the Giles, Giles, and Fripp days. obviously Fripp's technique improved a lot over the years but when I first heard that it sounded like there was a connection there.

― frogbs

"suite no. 1" sounds like a cut-rate "flight of the bumblebee" to me. "fracture" not so much.

the issue with thrakattak, i would say, as that they just edited together thirty separate recordings of the middle two minutes of a six minute song. that's just not going to sound good.

if i may, goddamn I love this band and anytime this thread revives it makes me happy

hmmm rushomancy I think you're right. but "Fracture" sounds a little like that to my ears too.

for the record I thought the "Schizoid Men" disc on Ladies of the Road worked alright - or at least would have had the sound quality been somewhat passable.

Schizoid Men disc is good fun.

it's nice enough but at a certain point i start feeling like i'm listening to free bird.

This thread and the news that Rieflin is back with them as they head back to the States has me breaking out Heavy ConstruKction and the ProjeKct box again. They're both such a nice contrast to the new band – woolly abstract (abstraKct) futurism vs. suits and ties woodwind classiness.

how structured were the '73-'74 "blows"? yeah, some. funny that you mention trio, frogbs, as that was a kind of regular thing they did- no main melody, mind, but there are a lot of improvs by that band that sound like "trio".

There is at least one "improv" on the Starless box that is not Copenhagen (possibly Italy) in which they play "Trio" almost note for note. Frankly, given the Bruford story and its rep for being completely improvised, I was a little stunned.

it's nice enough but at a certain point i start feeling like i'm listening to free bird.

Ironically, for a jammy band, Skynyrd jams were super tight and composed. Three guitars, lotta soloing, gotta do some planning.

okay, allmans then?