The King Crimson studio album poll

must admit, I'm kind of amazed the 80s period is so well regarded...

Loudly enjoying Disc 2 right now, thanks again for this compilation!

friend of mine was getting rid of a few Adrian Belew solo albums from the 80s/90s ... SHOULD I GRAB THEM. He said they sucked.

i've been listening to vol 1 and 2 all day long -- LOVE LOVE LOVE. i remember adrian belew as a weirdo with an overbite who wrote songs i didn't like (90s, mostly) and now i get it.

i get it! i love it.

also had no idea they were so deeply jazzy

yeah, that was surprising to me, too!

i'm really familiar with stuff like V5, The Thing, etc. and it totally reminds me of that, only heavier. LOVE!

I think the jazz came from McDonald & Giles in the first part, then Collins & especially Ian Wallace later--Wallace even did the whole Crimson Jazz Trio in his last years--I'm still out on that one.
On my forthcoming live megamix there's quite a bit of the jazzy stuff--Drop In sounds like a more skronky Astral Weeks track, and in The Sailor's Tale Mel Collins actually quotes a bit of Sonny Rollins' St. Thomas...
As I understand it, Fripp ultimately wanted to be able to break away from the jazz-based improvisational structure and try to improv in a strictly rock context, the result being the Larks band.

La Lechera: This "The Thing"?

http://www.rerelease.net/catalog.php?RID=4

Yeah the jazz thing is hitting me too, ties in kinda well with the Return to Forever anthology I've been listening to lately.

i'm talking about the smalltown superjazz the thing
http://www.smalltownsupersound.com/v1/superjazzz/news.php

related tangentially to brotzmann, mats gustafsson, paal nilssen-love (just saw atomic this weekend, it was awesome)

Oh yeah, ok...cool... You should check out that Arni Cheatham record though. If you like this kind of stuff, you'll dig it.

Will do!

COMING INCREDIBLY SOON

MEGAPHONIUM FANFARE: VOLUME ONE

a live extravaganza featuring

VROOOM VROOOM/Coda: Marine 475
Red
Drop In
Improv: Wilton Carpet
The Sheltering Sky
The Sailor's Tale
Improv: Kassel II/Exiles
Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part II
and by request
Starless

....and here's the link

thanks!

ooh, thanks! i've been listening to vol 1-4 pretty much nonstop all week.

brillllllliant. Haven't made it to vol. 4 yet, but 2010 is already the year of Crimson for me ...

likewise
where does high tide fit into this? i realized that the earlier stuff reminds me of them too.

yessss. thanks again!!

It is my distinct pleasure to compile these things. I've had so much fun I could keep going and going as long as the interest is there. For those that have gotten to the live comp, I'm curious to know how it sounds-- I edited the thing together with Garageband to make the transitions between songs seamless and enhance the conceit of a continuous live performance across time/personnel. As with all of them, they play best when itunes is set to gapless playback....

I just listened to "starless" on crummy laptop speakers but it sounds great! I've just had a blast with these comps in general. love em.

but... I got some kind of audio error unpacking the file and the mp3 cuts off 7mins in or so. any chance you could re-up "starless" again?

That's the live starless? I'll reup it (or anything else) when I get home...

yeah, that's the one. (from your last "megaphonium" upload.) thanks!!

btw, as much as I love these comps, they're having the strange side effect of making me go and listen to red over and over again for the umptenth time in lieu of other crimson stuff I haven't explored. which isn't really so strange because it's totally great... but fer instance, I have to give larks' tongues the time it really deserves already.

We were rocking 'Red' at the weekend in the shop and it was finally dawning on me what an absolute stunner of an album it is, gloriously heavy and I was going to pick out the drums to mention but, actually, all the playing is sublime.

I love the bass sound on it. and "gloriously heavy" is otm.

but it's true, everyone is in top form.

Red is tops, no doubt. One thing I think that contributed to the overall sound is that Fripp stepped out of the recording/production process, and since Cross was gone at that point, Bruford & Wetton made most of the decisions re: the overall sound...so what did the rhythm section do? Turn themselves up!

To quote from KC's site:

Bill Bruford recently described the album in just five words: Prescient, short and bass heavy.”

Ok, here's the reupped Starless from Megaphonium Fanfare v.1

http://www.mediafire.com/?mn1tg2r2oxf

Let me know if there are any other probs.

awesome. no probs with that one and thanks.

and I actually never knew that bruford/wetton produced red - hah! makes sense.

also makes me wonder what some of the other albums would have sounded like produced red-style.

Re: High Tide, (xxposts) I haven't heard them (or even heard of them), so I'll give it a try... I did listen to the McDonald/Giles album, cut & released shortly after In the Wake of Poseidon. Apparently the final track, "Birdman" was originally going to be the second side of ITWOP. However it's hard to guess what KC might have done with the material. It's much lighter & poppier than anything KC was up to. The piece would have benefitted from Fripp's hand though, as it's fairly long and musically pretty dull. The rest of the record is at least worth a listen--there's a decent rewrite of Cadence & Cascade, and Tommorow's People is fairly funky- the drum sound is killer.

Listen to Sea Shanties -- to me, at least, some of it sounds a lot like In the Court of the Crimson King (which I bought, btw). The electric fiddling is obvs less jazzy than the skronky horns of KC, but the records came out around the same time iirc. I dunno, they seemed kind of similar in the "inventive/unusual/progressive/heavy rock music of the late 60s" kind of way

http://www.progweed.net/reviews/h/seashanties.jpg
this one!!

cool, I'll check it out.

the sea shanties cover is awesome

Oh my.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/;kw=[36885,160416]

Sounds like this
http://themusicninja.net/newsongs/datd5fuq9v.mp3

nothing he's got he really needs

Can't believe control freak Fripp signed off on this, but good for the dude if it underwrites another decade of his music.

I have just seen this thread and downloaded Sparkle Motion's sets. I demand we revive it!

A few somewhat random thoughts, as I'm jumping around the sets:

Listening to the remixed "Cirkus" now. I've always found Lizard to be a very bizarre, but very good little record (and never really had a problem with Haskell's vocals). But I'm almost stunned at how much better these recordings sound than my "Definitive Edition" versions. A song like "Happy Family," which was kind of (if endearingly) ugly before feel like they make a lot more sense with a crisper mix.

"Fallen Angel" in the first show by the Muir group -- whoah!

"Daniel Dust" is pretty awesome -- feels like a fusion of "Trio" (Cross's rhapsodizing) and "Book of Saturday" in places. I've always wanted to buy that Great Deceiver box (the original issue with the full liners) but have never gotten around to it. I might just have to now. Also, by fusing it to "The Night Watch," you now have three different recordings linked together (as TNW included a live intro and studio recording for the rest of the track).

Glad you like the comps, they were really fun to make. I've got about half of a 2nd live comp sitting around, I should finish it sometime.

I still listen to them all the time too!

today, even

damn dude, i'll have to grab those
70's Crimson had so much talent but I always felt many of their albums could have been better

yeah those KC comps showed me the glory of KC. live stuff is probably my favorite, so a sequel would be raddddd.

I will add it to this weekend's activities then!

This is reminding me I had a dream about them last night, where in the back of a crowded auditorium some fellow had a turntable set up with some gatefold KC lp I'd never seen called "Sailor", from 1985, but looking to be from 74, with three long tracks on each side. The songs were so long, in fact, that the track timings listed all of side two with a total duration of about 58 minutes. The groove cramming caused the tone arm to skate sort of randomly over the side as it played, and in dream logic I realized I was looking at a cat swishing its tail over the record, who then leapt into my arms and purred the rhythm of the Frippertronic heavy track that was playing. Of course I was shocked and asked the man if he saw that, to which he seemed merely uninterested, like it happened all the time. I swore it wasn't a hallucination, although in truth I hadn't been getting enough sleep. Then I awoke sharply with Jane Wiedlin's "Rush Hour" in my head for the next thirty minutes.

Thanks a bunch for those comps, Sparkle! I forgot how bizarre "Happy Family" was. Those vocals are completely mutilated - it doesn't sound like the CD I have. Which version of Lizard did you pull that from?

i think in the wake of poseiden is underrated

Hey glad you're enjoying them. I've begun to relisten to them again myself...that 'Happy Family' is from the 40th anniversary stereo remaster (remember there's also a 5.1) of Lizard, on DGM. The distorted vocals (run through a VCS3 if I'm not mistaken) are original, they just sound 10x cooler than previous editions.

Of course, picking up the pieces of the live comps has proved to be an ever-expanding enterprise. Pretty sure I could put out 3 more without scrambling for material.

One thing this has proved to me is that listening to KC always makes me feel better.

listened to disc 3 of those sparkle motion comps yesterday. some monstrous jamz.