King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

unrelenting parade of fvck-awful singers (all of them)

☝️☝️☝️

the Belew erasure here is egregious

― Paul Ponzi

the problem with belew's singing is that he's singing lyrics he wrote

you know they're aliens because they got lint on their dicks. my dick never had no lint on it, i can tell you that for damn sure.

Earthbound, indeed

longest mens room line i've ever seen at the NYC show, strangely no line for the ladies' room...

letting steve vai do steve vai stuff instead of fake fripp works really well it turns out. if you like those three records this tour is totally worth it imo

I got tickets to Chicago and Madison, because I figured, you know. these guys are by and large irreplaceable. Like, Belew and Levin, they alone are one of a kind talents. Vai, I don't usually care about him, or his playing, but I like that he stepped up to this challenge that is out of his wheelhouse, if not beyond his abilities. And Carey, he's the best thing about Tool, and one of the best drummers ever, so to see him in any context (let alone one where he gets to pretend to be Bill Buford) is always a joy.

That November weekend in Chicago, man ... Beat tour, Drive-By Truckers doing "SRO" in its entirety, and now Stevie Wonder. (I think Iron Maiden is in town, too.)

I deeply hope to see this tour in Australia - Belew has said they're keen, but getting these 4 guys together with a clear schedule must be difficult & time is not onside - fingers crossed!!

Well, tbf, when one key member of your band's most pressing commitment is Peter Gabriel, and the other's is Tool, that probably leaves them with a lot of free time.

Does anyone think Vai looks a bit fragile, or is that just how he looks in general? I was getting latter-day Mick Mars vibes from his stage presence on the YT clips I've been watching.

It's from decades of making funny guitar hero faces.

Also, honestly, he's probably focusing pretty intently. This ain't no arena spandex goof.

longest mens room line i've ever seen at the NYC show, strangely no line for the ladies' room...

― adam

i was surprised when i went to see crim in '13 how many women there were. not in a "my partner dragged me here" sense either, hipster nerds. and '13 was before the whole "i found a new way to get more women into king crimson concerts" thing became... i'll say before it was possible, in practical terms, for most people.

mostly dudes at the show outside philly

regardless, anyone remotely interested in checking this show out should treat themselves. it's one of the best concerts i've ever seen, and i'm not even the hugest crimson fan. even channeling fripp, vai is infectiously deferential to belew (who it's impossible to believe is 74!), while levin has finger extensions tapping along to danny carey's killer bruford impression. it's astonishing, no joke

Had to miss their DC show, anyone here go?

Seeing the Montréal show tomorrow. I couldn't be more excited to see this band at work.

Belew is an ageless wonder - I have the Gizmodrome live album (which is Belew, Stewart Copeland, and a couple other prog guys), Belew not only somehow sounds *exactly* like he did in the 80s, he also does a really good Police-era Sting impression, better than Sting himself could muster at this point

Spent the last week or so revisiting live stuff by every line up, after being reinspired after the Beat show. It’s interesting to track songs played by multiple line ups and compare, particularly how the 80s session treated Red era tracks be how they dealt with them in the 90s and 00s; and how the most recent incarnation treated Belew era songs (probably the most controversial thing the band ever did as far as the fan base is concerned)

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