King Crimson: Classic Or Dud

had a re-listen to Lizard last night and I'm still blown away by what a strange album that is. I don't really think there's anything like it in rock history really. the whole band basically fell apart, minus Fripp and Sinfield, the former of whom didn't really write songs, and the latter was just the lyric/vibes guy. so I think what happened is they just made an album based on Sinfield's "psychedelic circus" idea that he seems to use on everything he does, but nobody quite knew what they were doing, so they all just kind of added their own interpretation of what freaky jazz carnival music should sound like. actually a lot of the playing on this is really good, Collins and Tippett get so much leeway to just honk around. Fripp gets some decent guitar work in but it's his mellotron stuff that's really odd. Gordon Haskell gets a bad rap for this but honestly he's just trying his best. If you listen to his solo album the man actually *can* sing but not like this and I think he's just doing what he thinks should be done. He doesn't really get the music either. Apparently everyone involved hated making it and don't much like the final product either and you can really get that. I mean listen to "Happy Family", who mixes a track that way? It's like the sole direction was "fuck it up".

which is what I think makes Steven Wilson's remix of it arguably one of the most successful remasters ever, he gets what makes the album special and knows how to clean it up without smoothing over any of the album's weirdness. wild that they've reissued this several times with the original mix, even Fripp has said SW's was way better!

it's odd that this album and particularly Islands got so much attention from the most recent KC lineup but I'm glad they did since they were the albums that actually deserved a second look.

iirc fripp had all the parts to lizard all sorted, recorded the bass and drums together telling them exactly what to play, and then the rest improv'd on top of it. it was his baby.

someone shd do a radioshow w/fripp where he plays music by all his favourite singers and lets us know what he thinks good singing is and i can not go anywhere near listening to it

yeah I fully believe Fripp was mainly responsible for the uh...."structure" of Lizard. I also think he didn't really know what he was doing and thought the final result was a trainwreck (not hard to read between the lines in his interviews on the subject). I'm kind of interested in what Fripp's songwriting consists of exactly, I think he's a good guy for direction and obviously he's a master of gnarly riffs but by and large it seems like he lets the other guys write the songs. even on his solo record Exposure you get the impression that the actual tunes are coming from outside. I guess that's what makes Lizard & Islands so fascinating, there really was no one else at that point.

I still enjoy Lizard a lot, odd as it is, though mostly for "Cirkus" and the title track.

for me "Happy Family" is the best, that descending instrumental bit at the end where Tippett starts going mental on the piano is one of the most terrifying sections of music I can think of

the second side of Lizard is quite a composition, I guess I disagree with you that it sounds like chaos; I'd say only maybe only Cirkus and Happy Family sound chaotic.

i think Islands is the only 70s one I don't play much and even it I don't hate.

the first half of it is remarkably pretty (though how often do you hear free jazz played upon a marching rhythm like that?) - second half kinda goes to hell in a cool way. it's that same brassy swinging jazzrock they do on Schizoid Man and Pictures of a City but those are a lot more structured jams, where the whole band starts and stops on a dime. here there are long sections where everyone's just playing at once - like from 15:30, I hear two separate lines from Mel Collins, mellotron howling all over the place, dissonant guitar, and then eventually some piano over the top...but they all sound like they're playing a different song! like some of the bits interact well together, but all at once? it's wild. the only thing keeping it grounded is Andy McCullough. (btw, one great thing about the remaster is you actually get to hear all this fairly clearly)

also Indoor Games, while not "chaotic" exactly, still makes a lot of really odd choices. when you break it down it's quite a bit like "Easy Money"

lizard still probably my favorite king crimson, agree Haskell gets a bad rap for no reason, it's a super weird record and he did his best, shame he never got to try it live, probably didn't want to, but I feel like the live crimson show was always better than the record

I do really like the clips I've heard of the islands lineup playing Cirkus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMojknXvF4

Fripp going to be on this season of Live from Daryl’s House on Nov. 15: https://variety.com/2023/music/news/daryl-hall-live-from-daryls-house-returns-1235772685/

since i'd not really listened to the label-killed hall tracks off exposure til like two days ago, i'm pretty up for that it like, feels current to me

yesssssss

love Sacred Songs so much

often wonder about the alternate timeline where Hall is singer of 80s crimson

In that fever dream, Matte Kudasai turns back into North Star.

I am stoked for this as well.

The new movie was way more interesting than I thought it would be. I'd write more but my brain isn't allowing me to string two sentences together coherently this week.

Two alternate timelines: Hall singer for 80s Crimson, Sylvian for the 90s one.
In both cases I wonder what they would have gotten to do during all the extended instrumental parts that are a given in KC's music. Be the band's resident keyboard accompanyist? Could (have) be(en).

sylvian plays guitar and not poorly; obv he's not belew, but he's on par with jakko if he wants to be.

I don't think so, respectfully. Jakko is on a par with Belew technically. Sylvian's proficiency level with instruments is on a par with Bowie's, I'd say. He can be very creative with guitar sounds and looping and pedals use, and conjuring up interesting chord progressions on it, but that's a whole other ball game we're talking about that doesn't earn you Crimso membership/staying power. Still, if Fripp saw Crimson material in him...

Sylvian played guitar and keys on the Sylvian/Fripp tour, and while he was not on par with the other people (few are), the fact that he could keep up in that context is still impressive. So, probably a bit better than Bowie, who iirc rarely bothered to play much on stage.

i think about the film a lot

yeah, I mean, I think that a Crimson with Sylvian would have essentially been The First Day/Damage, probably more stuff that sounded like Firepower and Darshan.

That would have been dope. I like Belew, but Sylvian is clearly a much better songwriter.

xp to self - kind of feel the film is fascinating in how it explores the psychological landscape of the band (and by extension bands generally - although KC of course a particularly interesting subject)

but also - something implicit about the tired tour bus old men vibes, and the "end of Crimson" vibes, and the stuff with Bill Rieflin -

it feels like it speaks to something wider in the culture, about rock music being this form that a few generations raised to this exalted level, and imbued with youthful hopes and dreams and ideals of freedom

and now all the old gods are dying and there is maybe this sense of the house lights coming on and the whole thing being seen as a collective delusion, which of course it is/was

like, i'm almost 50 and have been extremely invested in music (playing/watching/listening) - it has defined my life like nothing else

and this film feels like it is quite equivocal about that commitment, there is an air of "was it worth it?" that floats around everything and it withholds a final opinion on that question in a way that really vibes with my own feelings at this point

OR maybe i'm projecting

for me it's not even a question of "is it worth it?" it's more a question of "why?" why is this band still around after fifty years? what is it that drives them to keep performing? why does fripp still practice 4-5 hours a day?

and the answers _are_ equivocal i think. it does reflect on me, i'm someone who's spent a lot of her life listening to them. they've made a pretty big difference in my life, as bands go

and to me it brings to light the ways in which i've changed. fripp is all about being in the moment but to him that like... requires everything to be perfect. it takes tremendous effort, for him, to meet the moment, and every time he doesn't, he feels like his mother's just died.

i try to be better at accepting failure, these days.

great posts you two, I think about this stuff whenever I go to the local prog night. there are some younger folks (I mean people like me who are still under 40) but most of it are people who were there. I've heard stories about buying The Lamb on release day, about getting stoned and playing "Echoes" by Floyd so loud you get the cops called, about seeing ELP in 1973 when they were the absolute shit. like they were playing stadiums and arenas, I can't even imagine what it would be like to hear young people going absolutely mental over music like that. but, y'know, that was 50 years ago. I wonder what's gonna happen once these dudes all start kicking it. there are still prog bands out there and some of them are really good but so much of it clearly harkens back to that date.

that said I did see Steve Hackett with some of these folks a couple weeks back and it ruled. actually made me pretty emotional in spots because I never thought I'd get to see music like that. idk I think in some sense as bands like The Beatles, Van Halen, the Stones, Zep etc. start to lose their cultural cache prog still lives on somehow. like I think Steven Wilson is probably more popular at the moment than any other 70s imitators, minus maybe Greta Van Fleet. I haven't thought about this much though I admit

Fripp on Live From Daryl's House: A VIBE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PAHYXc3gcw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkb783rNjO0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd7BdzzY8BQ

Truly life-giving content!

O_O hell yes

i love how fripp presents as an awkward weirdo who is trying his best to mimic authentic human behaviour (i identify) - and then this colliding with the also weird LA session vibe - and everyone doing their best to make it feel natural and cool for the bonhomie vibes of the show - and then the music totally rips and suddenly the vibe is authentically golden - so good!

The bits before and after the playing are definitely the best

The image of Daryl Hall and Robert Fripp attending a Ramones show together is gonna stick in my head.

convinced that fripp is a much more normal person than he likes to portray himself.

that's an incredible "babs and babs," damn

it's great but I wanted fripp's solo to be like 5x longer

to be fair, you could say that about almost any song with a Fripp solo

convinced that fripp is a much more normal person than he likes to portray himself.

Having spent some time with him I can attest to the fact that you’d never mistake him for “normal” (his affect and way of speaking/carrying himself are just too otherworldly) but he’s incredibly funny (like, constantly) and he has a very big heart.

Goddamn that Bab and Babs!

Can't wait to watch that. But did watch the first minute or so in the kitchen, and come on, what are the odds that the chef's name would be Belew?

A. Belew, even!

convinced that fripp is a much more normal person than he likes to portray himself.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm)

idk the vibe i get from him is similar to the vibe i get from autistic folks who do not give a shit about what neurotypicals expect from them, they will fucking stim in public if it makes them comfortable

This is awesome. I think I mention this previously up thread, but the one tome I saw a Robert Fripp solo performance, he was like stand-up comic funny.

What a wonderful audience.

I went to the circus the other day and I hear two people whispering. I think they're talking about me and I start to get angry then I walk by one of the cages to confront them and this creature with big ears apologizes and says "sorry sugar it's just elephant talk"

that was great, didn't think I was gonna watch the whole thing but I did. I didn't know Hall's voice was still that great. also the boogie-woogie piano on top of "Red" was really cool, certainly KC never would've performed it that way. I agree the vibe there is great, feels like one of those performances where everyone's trying to elevate the game because they're all so damn good.

when I first got into KC I read a lot about Fripp and he seemed like a massive prick but yeah I think he's one of those guys you have to actually hear talk and interact with others to get a sense of what he's really like. because nothing he does really translates well to the written word, like he's incredibly funny in a way that might feel awkward and mean if you just read about it. and yeah I'd wager he's def somewhere on the spectrum, as I suspect a lot of these weirdo perfectionist musicians are

That was a great watch. Touching, even. Would love a Sacred Songs tour with this crew.

Maybe he was just caught up in the moment, but Daryl mentioned multiple times throughout the show working together further with Robert. In fact, they end on the whole band talking about learning five more songs to keep it going.

Anyway, agreed with what everyone is saying here. The music was great, the arrangements were interesting, and the whole thing was really quite touching. And then, after all the great band performances, concluding with The Farther Away I Am—a Daryl-Robert duet on piano, vocal, and Soundscapes—just seemed to reinforce how unique and special the connection between these two is and remains almost five decades later.