King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

I've heard great things about RED, but I've never heard it. Possibly due to the stigma of John Wetton. Even though RED predated Asia by veritable eons, I cannot erase the crime.

Red is ace, and has been discussed here before. The instrumental tracks are the ones that sound less dated - especially the title track and its 'devils interval' backstory.

But I think Wettons vocals on Starless and Red are lovely and I disagree that the placid quietness of them is just 'static' - there is a line on one of the tracks on Starless... 'My Home... was a place by the sea' which I just adore and I've never known why - but it kept popping up in my head when I had my Steve Erickson reading binge a couple of years ago and it has that same mesmeric Erickson quality of difference and strangeness but not different and not strange (ooh thats a hopeless description: Somebody save me here!).

There are three formulas involved in the Larks/Starless/Red tracks - and I think I like them all.

There are the dream-like songs I've already mentioned - all playful repeating echos of other things, and that strange wailing sound which I always imagine is one of them corrugated tubes you wave around your head - but presumably is just frippertronics (it turns up on evening star too). I always thought they were an influence on Nirvana on Nevermind's quiet moments but haven't seen it confirmed that Cobain knew this stuff.

Then there are the agressive ones - Red, the loud bits in Larks part one - the bit in Fracture where it suddenly changes speed. For a prog band they sure conjure with an magikal energy - that stuff sounds great - its a shame that neither the post rockers like Mogwai / Aeorgramme / etc or the Nu Metallers studied that stuff to avoid making their mistakes. Its not just a feature of that period of Crimson though, 21st C on the first album, the bit nicked from Mars on the second have that feel too.

The bits that are left form a third grouping, mainly instrumental and much more passive - but definately not static. The quiet bits of Larks pt1, Trio, Night Watch. Larks overtly references Vaughn Williams and thats a good suggestion of what's going on, Debussy and Satie too. But there is a lack of optimism in those tracks that doesn't sit well with the grace of those influences. They are bleak and hopeless feeling too.

"Easy Money" has this (on the live versions, not the studio version, alas) great (for prog rock, mind you) bit of lyric:

"So I argued with the judge, But the bastard wouldn't budge, 'cause they caught me licking fudge, and they never told me once, you were a minor..."

Mark- Apparently Red is KC's favourite album ever. He also loved the raincoats, having written some brief notes for the reissue of their excellent debut. Even though nirvana sucked he had good taste (though I think that he only said that to piss off the metal fans that bought his music).

Agnes Moorehead, obviously. :)

Ladies of the Road and Formetera Ladies are the clunkers I refered to above btw. Though I think Sinfields worst lyrics are on Still.

Truly unfathomable, I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. However, it explains much. There's a site where I help write reviews for prog rock albums, and we once received a snippy letter for dissing the Wake of Poseidon album (or at least, not being fanboy-ish enough towards it), and the person, opening up by claiming we had "less wit and culture than an ant" (yep) used much of the material found in the Wake of Poseidon chapter as their defense of the album and its depth. Maybe it was even The Keeper of the onyx-embolden'd-husking-jewelled-warthogs website himself! :)

Cue your golf swing.

Wow... Mind = blown.

Very cool! thx ned

"that's some really wild stuff"

In The Lounge of the Crimson King

More on Belew's fourth-rate David Byrne impersonation - "I repeat myself under stress, I repeat myself under stress." Geddit? Hilarious, eh? Anybody who finds that remotely amusing in any way should be avoided.

Dave Q really killed it on this thread, huh? I like lots of KC but I hardly ever find myself playing them. When I do, it's either Larks' Tongues or Beat.

I think Belew's a pretty terrible lyricist but that was kinda the point, right? The lyrics weren't supposed to stand out. It was all about the music at that point.

Met this guy tonight who said he'd done tarot card readings with Adrian Belew, back in '83 or so

the story just got weirder from there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILSVAUjd5QI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Fripp speaks

excellent...wish it was longer

2009 Crimson, with Porcupine Tree drummer as second drummer, was awesome live.

so, who is buying the 13 CD, 1 DVD, 1 Blu-Ray of Larks' Tongue In Aspic?

http://www.dgmlive.com/news.htm?entry=3916

Just registered for DJM live site just so I could hear a sparse guide track for "Islands" the song. Boz sounds like he's singing into a cheap condenser mike, but otherwise it's quite lovely.

'Islands' is the worst album ever made by anybody.
― dave q, Friday, February 15, 2002 7:00 PM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

NO.

its kind of weird to imagine that King Crimson only played a fixed amount of concerts when they were active. it feels like they're able to just create more and more live bootleg material at will, even if it was phyiscally impossible for them to have played that many dates.

So many of them are pretty dodgy quality though, aren't they?

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/lk/l/w/dd360157ea8e506661983ea7336800bc/4330188.gif

classic:

'released in three separate editions to satisfy the merely curious and the expectant collector'

so, who is buying the 13 CD, 1 DVD, 1 Blu-Ray of /Larks' Tongue In Aspic/?

http://www.dgmlive.com/news.htm?entry=3916

One reason I'm glad Beat is touring and doing so many of the weird instrumentals from those records is because they never got live outings much after that period; which is weird because both the 00's and the most recent version would have done a great job with stuff like Sheltering Sky and Industry.

Which of you nerds will be at the Madison show Monday?

Whoops, Sunday.

I really should and I will probably regret not going (like I regret not seeing KC's final show here), but I've got an early morning flight to Japan the next day. Have fun!

myself and my top two Krim nerd buds went to Red Bank NJ two weeks ago to check this shit out…it's like our yearly prog loser outing, '22 Roxy, '23 peter Gabriel, both at MSG, but since I am so sick of the Beacon and MSG, we went to Jersey. And thus, there were probly incrementally more Rick Beato, "this is real music" rock mooks at this show than would have been at the Beacon, but only just. I do wish that people who would go to This Heat or Gang of Four or Godspeed or Hard Quartet would attend this band's shows in appreciable numbers, and not quite so many Steve Vai and Tool shitheads. And yeah, it is great to experience this music, which was shunted away by Jakko, who does indeed represent the interests of "KC IS A EUROPEAN BAND" dead enders.

Now this is bonkers. I was listening to "Red" (that new "elemental" mix) while waiting to take off. It was getting to the end, so I took out a book. "Starless" was still playing, and literally right after Wetton booms "starless ... and bible black!" I looked down and that exact phrase was in the book I was reading! Wasn't sure how to interpret this message from the prog gods.

Speaking of said "elemental" mix, apparently it is a new mix blending different takes of each song, so ... same but different. It's been a while since I listened to "Red," but I was really reminded that despite that band/lineup famously being a trio there is all sorts of stuff on there. Cello, trumpet/horns, lots of guitar overdubs. I guess I had just gotten used to listening to the live versions.

Jordan, I think there are cheap tix on secondary, it would be easy to pop in and listen to an hour!

yeah the mixes on there are interesting. Starless is particularly impressive, great brass and reeds parts.

The "elemental" mix of Red is extremely cool

Beat was a ton of fun. I never expected to enjoy Steve Vai so much, but it was kind of fascinating to watch his approach to Fripp's parts, some replications, some adaptation and some imprinting his own style. A lot of the fast picking on "Frame by Frame," for example, Vai did by tapping, but it still sounded cool. The only downside of the whole show was trying to watch everyone at once, because they're all up to something dope at any given time.

The Red "elemental" mix is still really blowing my mind and I normally not a big fan of these types of remix projects, esp on a record I already really love

I didn't like it. The bass sounds all distorted and horrible, and the panning is so wide it's hard to enjoy

Beat did one of those pay-per-view livestream gigs for a platform called Veeps the other day. It's still up for purchase or you can probably find a t0rrent of it somewhere.

RIP to prog's most floral lyricist:

https://www.nme.com/news/music/king-crimson-songwriter-and-lyricist-peter-sinfield-dies-aged-80-3813188

LOL, florid. That's what I get for being snarky. Confusion will be my epitaph.

prog's most floral lyricist

You're thinking of Peter Gabriel

In 2014, Fripp invited Sinfield to provide an updated take on the lyrics of ’21st Century’ Schizoid Man’.

It's heartening to hear that sniping at each other in the press wasn't, presumably, the last thing they did together.

"starless and bible black" is a dtylan thomas quote, from his radio play under milk wood -- which begins

"To begin at the beginning:

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now."

this was the cover of my mum and dad's copy, one of those pictures you can gaze at forever as a child and pick out all the details as they feature in dialogoe

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/nDwAAOSw29Rm4nts/s-l1600.jpg

lol dylan thomas not dtylan thomas

Fripp is going ham fighting with all his fans on his FB

lol I glanced at that and have no idea what is going on. I think it's posted in more accessible ("accessible") form here:

https://dgmlive.com/diaries/Robert%20Fripp/2024-11-08-rf-diary-apologia-pro-vita-sua

But really it seems like a rambling tract documenting arguments between crazy people.

I don't think Sinfield did the lyrics for the Wetton-Bruford band...he was working for ELP at the time. His ELP lyrics were pretty hit-and-miss but they sure were better than what Lake was cranking out. Lake might actually be one of the worst lyric writers ever, particularly after ELP's heyday.

Listening to Sinfield's solo album now...it's kinda decent, as you might expect given who he got to appear on it. Not essential exactly, but a good listen...I've always loved Ian McDonald's "Under the Sky", which never appeared on a studio album until this one. Truly a unique time in music history; crazy to think prog was so big that even the lyricists were getting solo albums.

Lake does appear on the title track which is kinda funny since his voice is so much better than Sinfield's...hard to think of other examples of someone getting upstaged like that on their own album.

P much every album by The Game

even the lyricists were getting solo albums

Released on ELP's Manticore label, probably without much hope of success but out of gratitude for stepping in to write with/for Greg Lake.

Looks like Belew is doing some 2025 dates with Jerry Harrison, and Tool is ramping up again, too, so maybe this is the last we see of this project?

very well could be but I wouldn't be surprised if they do another tour, it seems to have been wildly successful

they were talking a little bit ago about potentially writing new songs

Tool and Ade' and Steve ... absent lovers.

Were they talking about potentially writing songs, or did someone ask them, and they said "you never know"? I thought it was more the latter. It would be a little weird to have essentially King Crimson minus Fripp, though I suppose it could be like a Rain Tree Crow situation.

They're going to bring in David Sylvian to throw metal trays at the bandmembers?

Here's the quote I saw from an interview on a KC subreddit:

"Having added 21 concerts to meet demand for this fall’s tour, Beat is now eyeballing more dates for next year. Belew and Levin also hope to record new music with the quartet, too, though active individual careers make concrete plans challenging.

“Y’know, I was spending time with (Vai) in his studio and he said, ‘I’ve got this little guitar thing here and I keep hearing you, wondering what you would sing over and it and play along with it,’” Belew says. “I said, ‘So you’re thinking that we might actually write stuff together?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I would love to see that happen.’”

xpost That seems like more of a Jamie Muir role (he's still alive!!!).

one of my main takeaways from the beat show is how fucking cool steve vai is

That was my (shocking!) take away too! That and his recent interviews. I was, like, what a cool guy, and how extra cool of him to hang out with these total nerds.

Less cool:

https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/07/Steve_Vai_BlackBackground_1_2021_011-C-Larry-DiMarzio-1024x903.jpeg

wth are you talking about that's cool as fuck

i mean not as cool as batio but still

https://www.spirit-of-metal.com/les%20goupes/M/Michael%20Angelo%20Batio/pics/6b58_1.jpg

Steve Vai's first day showing up for King Crimson practice
https://ew.com/thmb/ods3tY7w5WwyZfeUprRtNmSYV44=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Freaks-and-Geeks-032823-01-9f10799cd1344a59bd161c99c1c1ae5b.jpg

another take away is how fucking huge danny carey is. levin is a tall mofo and he still towers over him.

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/2181425394/photo/detroit-michigan-steve-vai-adrian-belew-tony-levin-and-danny-carey-of-the-band-beat-perform.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=hSv_A5VaEdyBJkjF6pXGA7x_bT4-bnlbzZpkW2PqsqE=

I was surprised how old Carey is. He and Vai are about the same age, but Vai got a 15 or so year head start on his career.

Robert Fripp is actually 8 feet tall, it's only modesty that compelled him to stay sitting all those years, so as not to embarrass his dwarf-like bandmates.

https://joshgranger.com/wp-content/uploads/image/Boredoms%20Eye%20on%20guitar.jpg

has anyone found a downloadable version of the Veeps livestream?

Yeah I posted about this a little upthread, it's on t0rrent sites.

which ones (you can message me if need be)

the stream is also available on slsk if it helps

THANK YOU

also thank you to anagram who messaged me

if anyone wants a dropbox link to this message me

This is fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dYgl1TVzrk

Listened to the 50th anniversary Red last night. For someone who can happily listen to "Starless" on loop into infinity all the various mixes and "Making Of" tracks are a gift. Killer release.