The King Crimson studio album poll

Lotsa gossip and quotes here:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/king-crimson-with-belew-will-never-happen.576502/

there must be more stuff happening recently to have caused fripp to write this, his mention of 'ex members and their de facto manager'; belew must have had his manager (if he has one? i can't tell) fire off some angry stuff regarding their playing neurotica and indiscipline and that set him off.

because, other than the two comments that are re-produced in that hoffman forum, belew has been very quiet about this on FB from what I've been able to see.

I'm sure that's it. They must have come to an agreement, by Belew's understanding, that Belew era stuff would not be played, then Belew was informed that Fripp had reneged. Hence, if I'm not right for the band and I'm not involved, then stop playing my shit.

And Fripp's disingenuous response is hey, it's all KC, what can I do? It's a collective ensemble. As if he's seriously not making more than the other guys.

it's not clear if he is or not. he states pretty emphatically that everything is being split 9 ways. He also does fucking everything for this band; he's gone far beyond what most people would do to sort out contractual stuff, royalty backpayments from EG, etc. If he wanted a quick payday, as someone said elsewhere (maybe that hoffman thread) he would have taken out a 4 person band, the overhead would have certainly been less.

you know, belew's ask is kind of a big one. we're talking about more than 30 years of king crimson and he's saying "don't play my songs". well, they're all "his songs" because fripp, in his infinite wisdom, insisted in '81 that writing credits be split equally among the members of the band. it's a credit to fripp that when belew asked his response wasn't immediately "hahahaha, no", but overpromising and underdelivering is not a really great idea. at the same time there probably _weren't_ at any point lawyers involved and i can easily see a situation where fripp believed he was promising not to have anybody else sing belew's lyrics (though i'm sure it must have hurt him deeply that he couldn't get someone else to sing about a speck of lint on the penis of an alien), and belew thought fripp was promising not to play any songs he has a writing credit on (again, essentially every song written while he was in the band).

having said that i don't have any actual clue and am essentially guessing at things, and am probably completely and totally wrong about all this.

(though i'm sure it must have hurt him deeply that he couldn't get someone else to sing about a speck of lint on the penis of an alien)

I can think of maybe one King Crimson song that doesn't have lyrics that fall somewhere on the spectrum between laughable and horrifying - "The Night Watch." Their lyrics are awful.

Seriously, if ever there were a "I read it for the articles" kind of band, it's King Crimson.

lyrics to exiles aren't bad

most of belew's 80's lyrics were alright. it's the 90's stuff where he got dreadful at times. I feel like he held back his better lyrics for his solo work

sick burn. on "op zop too wah" he literally wrote a love song to his guitar.

pete sinfield's lyrics are ridiculously overwrought, but as ridiculously overwrought lyrics go not terribly bad, i wouldn't say.

'Starless' lyrics are also good

I have a very soft spot for Sinfield's lyrics. Palmer James had his moments. Belew doesn't really begin to bother me until the 90s. But Sinfield's lyrics were so ambitious, inscrutable and florid it's hard for me not to be in their thrall. Mach I was as much Sinfield's vision as Fripp's and I'm reasonably sure Fripp wouldn't disagree.

As for writing credits, I hadn't heard about the split four ways thing but if that's the case, I can almost see why Belew might be aggravated at this point. Let's face it: a number of songs from the 80s are Belew solo songs in all but name. The Hoffman thread goes into some detail there. But it seems a bit odd to me that Fripp has no problem with Belew playing KC songs with the Power Trio, it's a problem if he does so with KC.

Petra Haden has covered "The Sheltering Sky" btw --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVAzvWToMRA

Aaaaand ... tour continuing/extended into the fall. I guess a Fripp's gotta eat.

US continued into fall, Europe confirmed already for 2018, and US again hinted at for 2019. I think Fripp is going to keep this going for as long as he can.

after kicking myself for years for not going in 2014, and then being out of town for the recent new jersey shows i am overjoyed at the new dates

I'm giving some thought to the Halloween show in Newark. NJPAC is a much nicer venue than the Count Basie Theatre.

Can an nyer get there just using PATH?

Definitely. You have to switch trains at Journal Square, I think.

I'm absolutely there again. Hoping to get good tix this time.

jon there are two shows at the beacon theater! don't fall for his new jersey siren song

B-but Halloween

hey man you want to take the PATH on halloween with 75,000 people dressed up like bruce springsteen and snooki be my guest. i for one will be taking a convenient, well-appointed MTA train uptown to enjoy an evening of progressive rock with upper west side cosmopolitans.

No no yr right

Oh, I think I'll be able to see them in Boston in November now. This is the best news!

I really like how the words work with the music in "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "Fallen Angel" btw.

Petra Haden thing is cool.

had a dream last night that I saw KC live (maybe because they just announced a Milwaukee date?) - it was 7 dudes rocking out on a 40 foot long stage, with a bassist way off to the right doing Eddie Van Halen moves (despite his bass not being plugged in), and Fripp sitting on a chair with his back to the stage and his face three inches away from the kick drum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krsai3plmKw

(EVH, Levin, Hammer and Jerry Marotta, pretty close!)

So I've only sporadically poked into their catalog as I've been spurred on by coming across CDs in the wilds. Up to now my KC collection has been limited to ITCOTCK, Poseidon, Lark's Tongue and Red in terms of main studio albums. I've also got a handful of live releases (USA, The Nightwatch, Marquee '69, KCCC 24 Guildford - like I said, grabbing what I come across). Outside of that I've been surviving with those excellent ilxor mixes - but I've felt a desire for a deep dive creeping up.

Left unimpressed with what I'd heard of the '80s stuff, I'd never bothered beyond that. But I came across a really cheap copy of The Power to Believe and I'm surprised by how much I like it! Of course I already have a tolerance for progressive metal, so that probably helps, but this was better than the reputation led me to believe.

Do Lizard next!

THRAK is a pretty good one too. there are plenty of good 21st Century live sets, I like Heavy ConstruKction a lot (even if the studio album wasn't so hot) and of course all the recent live albums are incredible, though you really only need one of them

as for the 80s stuff...you may want to pick up Absent Lovers, its like the 80s albums on steroids. idk if there are any overdubs on it or if the band really was just that good. it's insane, maybe one of the best live albums ever.

I was trying to decide between Lizard and Starless next.

Forgot to mention that I do have two of the more recent live sets (Radical Action, Live at the Orpheum), both of which I enjoyed.

I'm so delighted those mixes are still in play. I've always meant to make more volumes of live stuff...

Those mixes are great. I have everything by KC but I still sometimes put them on.

KC has been the most sustaining music of my life up to this point. A buddy at work wanted to get into them and it got me into reliving everything I loved about them all over again.

I have all the albums up through Red, the Epitaph box (four CDs of radio sessions and liveage from 1969), and three recent live sets: Radical Action, Meltdown (live in Mexico City) and the Audio Diary, which is five CDs, one each from 2014-2018. I'm pretty astonished how much of a fan of this band I've become, really only in the last five years or so. I was always much more into Yes and ELP, but at some point a switch flipped and they just started to make sense to me. I really like how radically they've been transforming their material live in recent years.

I think KC's innate heaviness has served them well. They never (well, rarely) were cheesy or corny or too D&D the way a lot of prog bands could be.

They never (well, rarely) were cheesy or corny

This bit of corniness is kind of endearing to me.

Said the straight man to the late man
Where have you been
I've been here and I've been there
And I've been in between
I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear...

And the song is pretty.

Glad to see a bit of Lizard love. It's not their best album, but the whole last track / suite is one of my favourites by them and I especially like the Bolero. My guess is that Fripp is a big Ravel fan in general

I still prefer In The Wake Of Poseidon to ITCOTCK - listened to that yesterday and enjoyed the whole thing

Do you ever fantasise about hearing Easy Money on a massive reggae rig, or is that just me. Followed by a dubbed to fuckery version of course. What a groove. It's just not possible to get this loud enough at home.

An older hippie friend of mine said his dream was to hear Easy Star Allstars cover the whole of Larks Tongues in a dub-reggae style

Gonnna give Islands a listen now for the first time.

hmmm... the Lizard / Islands era is maybe the least appreciated KC period, but I like the jazziness of Formentera Lady. Little bit of a Can-esque vibe going on too.

I was a "fuck everything they did before Larks" person for many years, heard Lizard in like 93 and strongly disliked it, but finally bought Lizard and Islands two years ago. "Sailors Tale" is a major major achievement, but I'm afraid I still think the rest of Islands is pretty lousy, particularly "ladies of the road." Lizard is so maximalistically misbegotten that its kinda fun…

Of the bands I'd call my "favorites," King Crimson probably have the most songs I wish were instrumentals.

I used to quite like Ladies of The Road as a quirky Lennon-esque piece when I was younger.

Juno selling KC vinyl for around £16-£17. Very tempting. I definitely want Poseidon, but deliberating between Red, Larks Tongues and Lizard. Red is song-for-song their strongest but I know it reasonably well despite the opening three songs being among my faves. Larks Tongues on the other hand is less known to me but always impresses

Have we ever done a KC poll?