King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

(Fuck Adrian Belew forever.)

so wrong

exactly. belew's tenure during the 80's albums made the band very special, IMO, and those records contain most of the best work he ever did as a songwriter. I'm not hot on the post-thrak work but not really because of him; his songs were always pretty good (eyes wide open, for example). this crimson revival is a venture into other things, makes sense to not have him there and I'm glad they're not attempting his songs.

Actually, isn't it sort of explicitly *not* a venture into other things? It's older, more unexplored material, with a slightly but not radically different band (custom built to explore said older stuff). Just as Belew rarely (if ever?) sang anything from before his time, this version of the band is not performing anything from Belew's time. Anyway, they were great when I saw them last year or whenever, but I would love to see this group let loose to just improvise. Heck, I'd probably pay just to see Gavin and Pat hit things.

Belew did "Schizoid Man" a few times, I'm pretty sure. Other than that they only dipped back to the instrumentals. I like Belew a lot and I think he's responsible for most of the good stuff Crimson did post 1974 but yeah I'm glad he's not on here

as far as whether or not this is truly a "venture into other things" I guess that's up to you, but IMO it sorta is because Crimson never became a nostalgia act like every other classic prog band - outside of the occasional "Schizoid Man" or "Red" they never exactly "played the hits". even the THRAK unit that didn't have a lot of material played much more 80's stuff than 70's.

he did schizoid man a million times

I don't think I've heard any of the new material, unless some of it's from Scarcity of Miracles. Is it any good?

I can remember Belew saying he was always trying to get Fripp to play more of the older stuff live, with little success. I like that they're giving his era a break, but...just from a performance standpoint, surely even the most fervent Belew haters rate him above Jakko, right?

belew KC only did schizoid man on one tour, AFAIR

there isn't any 'new' material except for some songs from Scarcity (which are better here) and some instrumental pieces

I never saw the Belew-era KC but I saw the Jakko line-up last year and I thought he was great. He wasn't the singer and guitarist in 21st Century Schizoid Band for nothing.

Belew reminds me a bit of Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac, a talented singer/guitarist/songwriter who joins a band known for its changing line-ups, who sort of radically codifies things into a stable vision with which he and it is henceforth identified. When Buckingham joined FM the first tour or so he played a few older FM tracks that preceded his involvement, too, but that faded quickly and soon stopped entirely. I don't think Belew ever sang any old Crimson beyond "Schizoid," and I don't think he ever sang that for more than a tour or so.

interestingly, belew recorded "cadence and cascade" over gordon haskell's original version for the 1991 king crimson box set. they never did it live, of course.

I used to mostly listen to '80s Crimson, but nowadays I'm finding it's 1972-1975 Crimson that I tend to want to listen to the most. At this stage I've basically narrowed the discography down to In The Court of the Crimson King, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Red and Discipline. I'm not too fussed about the rest nowadays.

my first two crimson records were the one with "cat food" on it and _starless and bible black_. i'm still a big fan of the long closing instrumentals on both of them.

My first one was 'In The Wake of Poseidon' too, so the old 'It's just In The Court Pt.II' criticism is kind of reversed for me - I prefer it to ITCOTKC. The next one I got was 'Beat' in a second hand shop. Imagine what 17 year old me would have made of that after hearing Poseidon.

I was thinking, no one talks about Beat do they? It feels like the runt next to Discipline and Three Of A Perfect Pair. Anyone got anything nice or interesting to say about it?

"Meltdown" is a new song isn't it? Or is it from someone's solo album?

I'm not 100% sold on Jakko but I will say he handles the breadth of material he covers quite well.

meltdown is new, that's right

What I like about Jakko is that he seems like more than just some happy to be here reality show/lottery winner, a la the guy from Journey, guy from INXS, guy from Judas Priest, guys from Yes, etc.. He seems peer-like, and even as far as "tributes" go, 21st Century Schizoid Band was otherwise all actual Crimson vets.

Well he is almost 60 and has a bit of tenure. This isn't like a Jon Davison type thing.

His RYM page is interesting:

Member of
Level 42, 64 Spoons, Rapid Eye Movement, The Kings of Oblivion, The Lodge, 21st Century Schizoid Band, Dizrhythmia, The Tangent, King Crimson

Also Known As
Grand Master Jelly Tot, Jakko, Michael Lee Curran [birth name], Jakko Jakszyk, Mario "Fat Man" Vanzetti

The lodge, that was a weird Henry Cow offshoot led by the bassist John Greaves iirc

He was also in the Kinks for ten days, replacing Dave Davies.

True story. After seeing KC in Paris last year I went for a drink on my own in a bar not far from the venue. Walked in there and who should I see but Jakko, Mel Collins and a few of their friends and family. Ended up chatting away to them until the small hours. Lovely guys.

Huh. Surprised to hear you did not have an ... odd time.

Odd, like 9/8?

Not sure if I could listen to "Cat Food" or Lizard with the same ears I had long ago, because I've heard way too much jazz and probably I'm gonna go for Beefheart or Mingus or Mal Waldron before I get down with the early Crimson. Islands has "Ladies of the Road," which I love, and I do have a lotta respect for Starless and Bible Black and Red and that live album from around then. In retrospect I think the improvs on Starless really mean something and maybe I could also get into some of Larks' Tongues. The Belew stuff not so much, once again Beefheart or James Blood or whoever satisfies me far more, rhythmically, than the rather static stuff on those records. Anti-swing is OK but I don't feel it so much any more. Finally saw 'em a few years ago in Nashville, had a good time, Fripp played some great shit. So maybe I'll put on Wake of Poseidon and see how it sounds now.

kinda feel that EH -- King Crimson were more god-like to me before I got into way out noise-rock, avant-prog, jazz, metal, modern classical, etc. It's not that I still don't think "Red" has great riffs and rocks like crazy... but a lot of other stuff does too, and frankly, their improvs actually detract from the overall experience for me. The 70s group in particular always seemed like such unwilling improvising partners, and when stuff worked, to believe Fripp's accounts of the period, the band was almost as surprised as the audience. Compare to, say, Henry Cow, where improvisation was approached in a much more open/anything-goes manner, and importantly, more an integral part of the band's identity. IMO of course!

These days, I am more apt to listen to a metal band influenced by KC than KC itself (tho I am curious about new material).

Yeah, Dominique, Henry Cow were referencing bebop and had a lighter touch, and Beefheart's Decals just has more spark than the Euro-textures of Fripp's 1970 band. I like Fri but tend to look elsewhere for guitar playing that has more...something. Fullness. But Red is pretty great, that and Starless are the best KC albums. OTM about "unwilling partners," too, though the Wetton-Bruford backbeat has its charms. I'm gonna listen to Ronald Shannon Jackson before I delve into the Belew Crimson, for sure, and I don't think Belew was that great of a songwriter, either, which may be heretical...

Jakko's album "bruised romantic glee club' is really good, plus it has a bonus cd of classic prog covers and a great supporting band. I like him. He has ridiculous hair.

So there are actually several 'new' KC songs on this:

Meltdown
Suitable Grounds for the Blues
Radical Action to Sunseat Monkey Mind/Radical Action ii
Hell Hounds of Krim
Interlude
Banshee Legs Bell Hassle
Devil Dogs of Tessellation Row

and
Scarcity of Miracles
Light of Day (which were both on the Scarcity of Miracles album, but are better here)

So that's almost a full album's worth of new material. The instrumentals are interesting, the 2 brand new vocal songs (Meltdown and Suitable Grounds) are...alright, but nothing to crow about.

It was an interesting decision to strip this live album of audience noise; but it really sounds like little about the performances themselves were touched up. So, the performances are very 'live' sounding but it's missing the live atmosphere.

edd: i'm the reverse of you on cat food/lizard- i like it more the more jazz i hear because keith tippett has serious jazz skills (as do plenty of the other folks on "lizard").

jakko is a guy i can respect and he's been around for quite a long time but unlike belew has never done a record i've ever wanted to listen to.

the consensus around _beat_ seems to be that it's where crimson ran out of ideas once and for all. can't much disagree. i remember back in the early '90s king crimson somehow kept getting back to "heartbeat" as a second-rate love ballad was anything anybody wanted to hear from them which may have colored my opinions. but aside from "waiting man" which is a good jam there just isn't much on the album worth talking about.

I think I agree about Beat, but Three of a Perfect Pair has some really cool stuff on it.

side b of three of a perfect pair has some _cool_ stuff on it but their attempts at industrial music are ultimately pretty flat compared to their attempts at sounding like talking heads (not terribly surprising given the circumstances). i can listen to it but it ultimately sounds derivative to my ears.

yeah Side A of 3oaPP is pretty good, never liked Side B all that much

the Absent Lovers live set rules above everything as far as the 80's era is concerned

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