King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

Just heard the sad new that Keith Tippett has passed on. King crimson’s one of a kind piano player on In The Wake of Poseidon, Lizard, and Islands. Pure genius! pic.twitter.com/y0WKyTpcFt

— fernando perdomo (@fperdomo) June 14, 2020

:(

he hasn't even got a dedicated thread:(

Considering how many people have been in KC, the band has fewer dead ex members than you'd expect; Wetton, Burrel, and now Tippett.

Bets on who's next? You lose points if your answer is "Robert Fripp if he keeps making those bloody viral videos with Toyah"

:(

RIP

xp haha the Fractured/cat-dance video was the best one yet

xxp you forgot Bill Rieflin!

and Ian Wallace

And Greg Lake!

Oh yeah. Major brain fart there particularly on Bill.

My vote is Pete Sinfield or Jamie Muir, who i’d actually thought died some time ago.

I never knew Tippett appeared with KC on Top of the Pops doing Cat Food. The notes on this youtube say that the original episode was wiped but this soundless version has been preserved (colorised here):

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

The version with sound is here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7rrvxh

man I swear that's the studio recording/lipsynch, it's been a while but it sounds exactly the same to me

apologies if that's what you meant!

yes it's a dub; I assume that it was actually broadcast as a dub. They probably took the sound off the YT version to avoid a takedown notice. It's cool to see this full version though; the clip I'd seen prior was B/W and only part of the song.

Love the young Germans dancing to King Crimson like they're Boney M or something.

I'm a bit into that Mercy Dash album he did with Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean in the 80's at the moment, marvellous stuff.

Muir is definitely someone I thought had passed away. There was that anecdote in the Jim O'Rourke interview someone posted on that other thread, where he goes to visit Derek Bailey, iirc, and one of Bailey's neighbors is Jamie Muir, who I can only hope would don a big, crazy fur cape when cooking out. I guess he's a painter now? Here's a more recent picture:

https://preview.redd.it/dyo3ypc4meo31.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=8fd5a8aed7cfa262b6aa1724805411ee9731e5dc

Do we think he spits blood on visitors?

I'm finally getting around to getting Crimson on LP after decades of shitty Editions EG CDs and am now honing in on Islands as the last of the studio LPs I need. Anyone ever grab the recent reissues? I heard MP3s of the Steven Wilson mixes which were stunning, but wonder if I should not just go for an original pressing, to have the LP as intended.

oh man, this reminded me i was gonna see them for the first time tonight. maybe some other time...

I have a repress LP of Discipline which sounds fantastic.

i think the wilson remixes on vinyl are the way to go, personally. I have originals or close to it for most of the albums but I do have the wilson mixes of Lizard and Wake and they just sound much better than anything else I have on vinyl from the band. I'll probably replace my 72-74 albums with the new ones soon since my copy of Red sounds pretty worn out.

Are there any Wilson remixes of any of these prog albums that are not preferable to the original mixes?

some people didn't care for his yes remixes (I like them). I never really cared for Jethro Tull or ELP so I can't really compare those; I've heard them all but can't tell you which is better.

I didn't like his mix of Tales from Topographic Oceans.

His aqualung is good but not my first choice

https://www.change.org/p/bristolmusictrust-org-uk-renaming-colston-hall-to-the-keith-tippett-hall-centre

looks like they're releasing the Steven Wilson mixes as individual LPs. That's what I'll go for. I really liked what he did with Islands.

damn DGM's shipping is $12 per LP! What!

Ian McDonald’s 74th birthday today. Sid Smith reminds me how wonderful the McDonald and Giles record is.

The Complete 1969 Recordings box is available for preorder - only $195!

https://cdn.nexternal.com/dgm/images/KCCBX9111_packshot%20resized.jpg

Contents:

CD 1: Live at Hyde Park, July 5th 1969
CD 2: Live at The Marquee, July 6th 1969
CD 3: Plumpton Festival, August 9th 1969
CD 4: Live at Chesterfield, September 9th 1969 (new master) disc 1
CD 5: Live at Chesterfield, September 9th 1969 (new master) disc 2
CD 6: Fillmore East, November 21st/22nd 1969
CD 7: Fillmore West, December 14th/15th 1969
CD 8: Original master edition expanded
CD 9: Alternate album expanded
CD 10: 2009 mix plus additional material
CD 11: 2019 mixes expanded
CD12: Let's Make A Hit Waxing (this is described as "'in the studio with the band' mixed & compiled by David Singleton")
CDs 13- 18: Complete Recording Sessions
DVD 19: Complete Recording Sessions, Let's Make a Hit Waxing (24/48 stereo) Stormy Selections (16/48)
DVD-A 20: 2019 stereo, 5.1 & instrumental mixes. Original master edition album mix (24/48)
Blu-Ray 21: Complete Recording Sessions (24/96 stereo), Chesterfield, Giles, Giles & Fripp (24/192)
Blu-Ray 22: 2009 mixes in stereo & 5.1, Additional Material & alternate album (2009 stereo mixes) (24/96)
Blu-Ray 23: 2019 mixes in stereo, 5.1, original master edition, alt. album, additional material (24/96)
Blu-Ray 24: 2020 Dolby Atmos Mix by Steven Wilson, I Talk to The Wind (Duo version, Surround mix), Let's Make a Hit Waxing (24/96)
CD 25: Giles, Giles & Fripp (new master)
CD 26: BBC Sessions, Trees

A disc for every other week of the year

In a shop earlier today I was informed that the they didn't have a KC section because entire KC catalogue had been deleted and recalled. What's up with that eh?

I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about that.

Yeah no chatter in the usual places. They didn't know why except to guess there might be a rights issue, but that seems most unlikely as it's all on Fripp's own label isn't it?. I'm thinking maybe it's that the shop hasn't paid the distributor or something like that.

If anyone seems like the type to vindictively delete and recall releases on their own label it's Fripp. But as far as I can tell everything seems to be up and running.

Yeah, I just went to the webstore and clicked on a couple of albums - they're all still for sale.

FB reporting that Gordon Haskell has passed away.

Yep. Someone on ILM described his voice as sounding like his balls hadn’t dropped but I love his singing on those two records.

RIP

That's all of the 70's Crimson vocalists gone (except Jon Anderson). Haskell had a weird unpleasant tightness in his voice which fits in with the unpleasant loose weirdness of Lizard. None of his solo records are progressive rock, apparently, which makes sense as he notoriously disliked KC's pretensions so much.

has ILM ever done a KC poll?

perhaps the least-loved of all KC vocalists from within the band and from the audience, but it's very hard to imagine those songs sounding any other way

had no idea they re-recorded the entire ConstruKction of Light album (called, of course, The ReconstrucKction of Light)

it's really good. I never liked the original much but this takes care of a lot of the gripes I had with it, to the point where I think it's about as good as THRAK and Power to Believe. many times I've thought about an album "this could've been so much better" but I can't think of many other times when the band actually made it so

Yeah it’s a big improvement; nothing really fixes how dumb Prozakc Blues is but over all the album sounds much better. Lars, frakctured, and the title track are all really great songs.

the one thing that redeems that song (somewhat) is the performance on the Heavy ConstruKction live performance...turns out Belew can do the voice just fine

Yknow, I really like the original ConsKCruction! New metal production didn't bother me… I think "Into the Frying Pan" is poignant in a manner never previously achieved by this band, and the playing is much much better than Thrak…but i'll check the re-recording…

The ReConstruKction of Light is somewhere between a remix and a reconstruction, as Pat Mastelotto redid the drums and partially some other tracks by necessity (ADAT-taped sessions were worked further in ProTools and the computer files then had got lost). This is detailed quite extensively in John Kelman's review of the Heaven & Earth box set (skip to "The Terrifying Tale..." chapter of the review): https://www.allaboutjazz.com/heaven-and-earth-live-and-in-the-studio-1997-2008

It's a King Crimson 50-year-copyright-protection-palooza! Every extant session reel from In the Wake Of Poseidon and Lizard is now downloadable. Hearing all 15 takes of "Groon" is the best thing that's happened to me in 2020: https://t.co/9otOpsfbwP

— Andy Zax (@andyzax) December 23, 2020

Def. a commentary on 2020.

Seriously, was coming here to the post the same thing. Unfortunately I won’t be satisfied until I hear two dozen takes of Boz singing Ladies of the Road.

Listening to the samples, the most unexpected segment is "Groon Soundcheck", which is actually Giles, Giles and Fripp playing Brazil with Fripp singing?

how on earth are there 15 takes of Groon that didn't end up somewhere on a 44-disc boxset