The King Crimson studio album poll

Am I right that we are getting closer to the live debut of the new line-up?

Logic would suggest that, yes.

No, I mean, there are dates, correct? September?

Meanwhile:

http://issuu.com/samsleiman/docs/mike_giles

In all seriousness, I have no idea.This is the most recent thing I could find, in Uncut:

"The first performance will take place in either North or South America," Fripp told Uncut. "There will be rehearsals primarily in England, and the final batch of rehearsals will most likely be in America in August or September 2014. There is a plan to include the UK in the tour dates, but it depends on a number of circumstances. Right now the primary geographical focus is the United States."

http://www.uncut.co.uk/node/19245#mmsoVdUHJq4rCBS2.99

I'd have to listen to the Den Haag gig again to say whether the rest of it is noteworthy- I remember the mix not being as clean- sounds like a radio broadcast. But if you want a great recording of that band, 'New Haven CT 11/14/03 (KCCC44), is a killer. It's the last gig of that band's life, and in true KC fashion they give their final performance their all.

I gave a listen to the Den Haag show in its entirety. Noteable moments are a good runthrough of Dangerous Curves with a proper climax to the song, and LTIA IV wherein the coda is played without the vocals, making it about a hundred times better than any version in which those lyrics are sung.
Otherwise, it's a pretty typical gig.

The New Haven show is pretty spectacular, particularly Level 5 and Lark's 4. I'm just lately starting to shuffle through the live recordings of this phase of the band (having not been a huge fan of the last two albums on the whole, but having been a fan since 86 or so).

Is new haven still buyable as a download from DGM?

dunno, it is still available on the internet in places.

it's going to be pretty weird to not have Belew in this band, frankly. I wonder if they'll avoid his and the 80's bands songs. I know those have been frankly played to death at this point, but still. That was my entry into KC.

Who's singing? Jaczycjjck?

yes

he can reliably cover earlier KC material but I think it would be stepping on toes and just kind of wrong to do Belew written material, so I assume they won't

After the Den Haag show I've been playing the last KC recording, from '08 with the double drum setup. Funny that they essentially fused the setlists from The Power to Believe tour with the standard Thrak era numbers- generally this gig is more interesting than invigorating- Levin is a lot less muscular than Gunn on the more "recent" stuff, but when it comes to Frame by Frame and the like he can play it in his sleep. Overall I found myself more intrigued than I had in the past by the presence of a 2nd drummer. It's abundantly clear that Fripp loves clattering percussion, and this show has it in abundance.

A little more time together probably would have done them some good, but maybe enough was enough. Truly I never quite got his motivation for that brief incarnation of Crim.

Me either. It's a good lineup and I wish they'd donea record with Harrison, so maybe they will now. Maybe not?

I'm not keen on Jakko but really I can't imagine who in Fripp's world would be a more preferable (to me) frontman etc.

I listened to Fripp's strangely poignant motivational speech this morning ("from good to great") and he tells a story about the VV editor's cats named Fripp & Eno.

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Saturday, May 25, 2013 3:55 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

ok so i listened to this and have thought about it so many times since. it was really good. but the real reason i am posting here is because r fripp's sister is the reason he recorded that speech -- she's really big on the public speaking circuit and does lots of trainings and whatnot. she was featured on "from good to great" briefly.

flash forward to this past weekend. i went home to visit my parents and my mom needed some help with her computer. she received an email from p@tricia fripp and i was like "p@tricia fripp -- is that robert fripp's sister?!" (i didn't remember her name) and my mom was like "how do you know who robert fripp is?" turns out my mom has attended some of p fripp's seminars and she was aware that her brother was a guitar player, but did not know he was someone that i would have any interest in. we loled, we told my dad who these people are, nbd. i played

THEN the next morning i stopped by before i took off i stopped by and my mom went to use the bathroom, but my dad and i heard her giggling. it was kind of weird. she came back downstairs and said that she was talking with p fripp, who had called her to arrange some sort of appt, and she had emailed a link for me (my mom told her about the previous day's lols). apparently robert fripp's next public speaking engagement is also available via live stream, so if anyone wants that -- i've got the link! so weird.

of course the whole time in the back of my mind were fripp and eno humping their way across the usa (i did not mention this to my parents)
Oh! Oh! The battles that are fought throughout the Holiday-Inns of America! Delightful."

the end

i played
oops-- forgot to finish that sentence -- i youtubed some songs so my mom could hear the guitar playing of robert fripp and she agreed that yes, he is a top notch guitar player and very inventive

OMG all of this is most satisfactory indeed!

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

She was one step removed from a carnival barker at the merch table on the tour.

omg lol

it's really unnerving how their faces look so much alike
they're not twins are they?!

Also how they refer to themselves in the third person.

what if they address one another in conversation as 'brother' and 'sister'?

I think it would be great if she was the variety of motivational speaker that spends her time onstage seated, nearly motionless, staring at a laptop and other devices surrounding her, and thus is reliant on more outgoing American underlings to engage the audience that paid to attend the event and to be motivated (I'm sure someone else has made that funnee on the innuhnet at some point).

she's really nice and ives in the bay area. she worked the merch table at the KC shows here a few months ago; she told me a 'medium' would probably fit me because I was not as 'chubby as some of our fans'.

!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8t4lYNjS0Y#t=80

what do people think of Lizard?

the steven wilson remix is nice

Agreed. Love the weird, sometimes ugly Third Stream sound of the record.

I'd probably vote for Lizard if we ran this poll again. So weird, so heavy. That Steven Wilson remix is indeed something of a revelation. Too bad they never played "Indoor Games" live, there is a clip of the Islands-era band playing "Cirkus" though

I do not get why everyone loves Red. It rocks. I enjoy it. But what does this record do that Black Sabbath or Deep Purple or even Genesis didnt do better years before?

this post still baffles me

I think Lizard is underrated. I have always loved "Cirkus", and although Haskell's vocals sound like Marlon Brando chewing on a ham sandwich, the title track and a few of the other middle tracks make it worthwhile. it's weird, it's not immediate, but I think it was my second KC album.

Red or Lark's Tongues for me though, usually.

It used to be that the only Crimson records you could find in the used LP bins were the 80s ones and 4 copies of Lizard.

Having had my mind first blown by the Wetton/Bruford era, coming upon Lizard was a profound letdown. 'There are no gnarly guitar solos on this record wtf was generally my take'. Nevertheless, I'd break it out periodically to see if I liked it any better. Hearing the material on the Collectors Club releases was what really convinced me of its virtues. It's kind of a classic 'when you're sick of every other release by your favorite band' kind of record.

The Wilson remix really did improve upon the original recording in some ways, especially for Cirkus & the title track, much the same way that Islands sounds tons better for those who primarily knew it from the Editions EG CDs, or in my case, cassettes, which were probably some of the worst mastered products I've ever heard.

Seems like the general reappraisal of Lizard and Islands from the remixes were a big motivator for Fripp to reembrace that material himself. I guess that's an obvious point... but all in all, still has a lot to give imo.

the reason I ask is that I was toying with buying a kc album on vinyl (since they're not on spotify) and out of the ones in the shop (larks tongues, starless, lizard), lizard was the one I was most tempted to take home despite the fact its reputation

...is not so hot compared to the others.

you should buy them in the order you listed them in

you should go with the one with the best cover artwork, probably lizard? though maybe one of them has a cool gatefold or something I dunno don't have any KC on vinyl

I really like the cover of larks tongues too, so much so that I considered getting a tattoo, until I discovered that Mike Portnoy had the same bright idea, and his looks awwwwfffuuul

Mike Portnoy ruins everything

tbf I was going to do it in plain black to better illustrate the yin yang aspect, his is in color and looks like he got it in prison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NS6XNjAHCE

Dunno how many of y'all follow DGM's "hot tickles" but this is a pretty fascinating look at some of the isolated backing tracks for "indoor games"

It's kind of a classic 'when you're sick of every other release by your favorite band' kind of record.

pretty otm right here, but honestly I rate it higher than a lot of the KC discog anyway

It's the first great departure (Poseidon was obviously In the Court pt II) and apparently Peter Sinfield really stepped up to the plate for Lizard? As much as I love Fripp, I think King Crimson works best when there is at least one other voice making decisions at a production level, checks and balances and all that. Music is just tremendously more interesting to me as a real collaboration, rather than one person and a "vision"

it's a lot more interesting than anything that came after Thrak

Post-Thrak band sounds best to me live. Until then, I think they were a more solid studio band than they are generally given credit for. But once they started doing the Projekcts, I think they were really in their element when they were playing in concert, usually with lots of improvisations and Fripp Soundscapes.

https://youtu.be/pDKBdiR64J8

Funny you should mention it, I blogged about that album a couple weeks ago

https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/king-crimson-lizard-1970/

In general it went from a record I thought was amusing but not very good, to one that I now think is really great, and SW's remix had a lot to do with that. Wilson's cleaning up the mix and supposedly adding some parts that weren't in the original kinda clarify how truly strange a record this is - I won't say it's aimless, but I do think the artistic vision was mostly left up to Sinfield, and the musical direction was left in the hands of the individual players, most of whom probably envisioned it being a different kind of album. Like you listen to McCullough's playing during most of the jam sections and he's just playing all these little fills, as though he doesn't know what anyone else in the group is doing. In other words everyone's just kind of roaming free which is actually kind of amazing. Can't really think of another record like it - maybe some VdGG discs come close?

nice writeup!

yes great work frogbs

I'm greatly indebted to you, Sparkle Motion. The mediafire links for your compilations still work, and I downloaded them all last week. These really are excellent, and they have a great selection of live material. They've gotten more listens from me than many of the original albums. Many thanks!

Hey, hooray! I had such a blast making those. I prepped but never finished subsequent volumes of the live volumes. It remains to be seen whether this iteration of crim makes enough of a dent of its own to warrant a revisit to the series...anyway, I'm glad the links work and that you enjoy them!