King Crimson

ROBERT FRIPP Guitar ADRIAN BELEW Guitar & Voice

TREY GUNN Stick TONY LEVIN Basses & Stick

PAT MASTELOTTO BILL BRUFORD

Acoustic and Electric Percussion

King Crimson was recently described in a Boston Phoenix review of “VROOOM” as an indie rock group. It probably always has been. One constant throughout Crim history is the intensity of polar response: respect facing off loathing, with little indifference. But the most significant single factor, constantly repeated, is that Crimson decisions fly in the face of industry conventional wisdom and commercial advice generally. I have noticed that when Crimson is about to get successful in a big way it breaks up, regularly.

The shock of this group’s performances in England, from its debut on April 9th. 1969 at the Speakeasy in London, is difficult to convey 25 years afterwards to someone who wasn’t part of it: something like the explosive impact of punk seven years later. A considerable influence on the musicians and groups of its generation, it is also the only Crimson which could have had massive commercial success. Inevitably, it drew as much hostility as support.

The only record from this period – “In The Court Of The Crimson King” – failed to convey the power of its live performance but does have the intensity which characterises classic Crimson of any period. Contemporary ears might find the music part of another era until they listen THROUGH the music rather than AT it.

This generation of rock became known as “progressive.” Bombast, exaggeration, excess, self-indulgence, pretension and long solos (by any instrument in the group) came to characterise the archetypical “prog” outfit.

Among all these musicians and their groups and projects, the live Crimson in 1973/4 was on its own territory. It drew mainly on a European vocabulary both for its writing and improvising. Increasingly it needed improvisation to stay alive: this was its life blood. But that didn’t show much in the studio albums. In concert, it stepped sideways and jumped. It went places where other musicians of that rock generation mainly avoided. This team looked into the the darker spaces of the psyche and reported back on what it found. The 1969 Crimscapes were bleak and written; the 1973/4 Crimscapes were darker, and mainly improvised.

The present incarnation, the Double Trio, is the fifth live ensemble since the group’s birthday on January 13th, 1969.

This King Crimson has been a long time in preparation and formation. The first full studio album since 1984 – THRAK – was recorded in six weeks at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.