For
the next few installments here, I will be working through some
reflections on the great musical institution known in rock music
circles by the name King Crimson. It's weird, but I don't think of
Crimson as a typical band, per se. It isn't exactly a collective
either. Crimson is more of a creative landscape under the watchful
guidance of Mr. Robert Fripp who, if anyone has taken the time to
read some of his fascinating blog posts, seems to have a fairly
complicated relationship with his “garden”. Hmmm. That isn't a
bad analogy – King Crimson is more like a musical garden than a
“band”. Fripp is the master gardener - the gatekeeper. Crimson is
a carefully manicured garden where some plots are allowed to grow
wild – as long as the carefully controlled chaos suits the
aesthetic of the master gardener. Sometimes the undergrowth gets out
of hand and the garden goes on lockdown only to be re-opened to the
public in a newly remodeled form. Yet, the essence of the garden
remains consistently tied to a particular aesthetic which can only be
defined as Crim.
As
usual, I am grossly ill-suited to be telling this tale. I haven't
even heard all of the music from this region. Well, it would be kind
of tough to do though not impossible. There have been solo albums and
offshoots – many pathways winding through the Crimson Forest. Yet,
a curious realization emerges – the lifeblood of the land is tied
up with other elemental components – often associated with other
landscapes and regions. There is an odd sense of dislocation that
permeates through the Crimson Garden. A slightly less romantic
analogy for King Crimson might be the family across town who lots of
folks are related to though they don't always admit it. There is an
element of elite yet outlaw status with this motley assortment Mr.
Fripp has presided over since its inception......which goes back to
1969 when it was still just a band – and not even HIS band,
initially.
To
move this analysis forward, I will be using the above visual to
represent the four major time shifts associated with the Historic
Crimson Identity. Those familiar with the music will understand what
the four compact discs represent. Everybody else will have to keep
reading, of course.
NOTE:
There is a recent permutation of King Crimson which toured in the
fall of 2014. This version of the band has so far been represented
with a live CD which I have not yet ordered or heard. True to form
for me – I totally missed the opportunity to see this new version
of Crimson just like every other time. Sheesh. So this newest edition
is not represented quite yet here.
My
journey through this region commences not in a chronological manner,
but in a geographic one. I will begin in the southwest quadrant of
the map since that is where my own journey started. How I wound up
there is related to an article I read in Musician Magazine in August
1984. The
article is highly entertaining and worth spending the fifteen minutes
or so it takes to read. See here:
The
residents of Crim at this time were Fripp (of course), Bill Bruford
(who to me was the first Yes drummer), Adrian Belew (who I knew only
from Frank Zappa's band at that point) and bassist Tony Levin (who I
heard on countless records without knowing who it was – like John
Lennon's last album). For some reason I found that article
interesting enough to want to just buy some King Crimson without
worrying about what the music sounded like. So it was that I wound up
at my favorite record joint and purchased the Discipline album on
compact disc (new in the blister package!) without having heard a
note of the music.
Never mind that the record was about 4 years old by the time I got to it – this was still “new music” as far as I was concerned. And was it EVER! To this day, I have not heard anything remotely like what the Discipline album was then and still is. It is uncanny to me. Discipline was love at first listen. I was thirsty for a new music and King Crimson delivered in a way no other musical entity could at that time.
I was
so enthused with Discipline I set out later in the summer to bag
another Crimson album – the one profiled in the article that, for
reasons I don't remember, I initially passed up in favor of
Discipline. Good thing too, since Three of a Perfect Pair was not
quite the same experience – and one I nearly paid an ultimate price
for (had I not been as fortunate as I was). You see, all this
pre-dated my ability to drive an automobile. Trips to the record
shops were dependent upon a willing parental lift and were therefore
infrequent. Until I got it in my brain that I could ride my bicycle
to the record shop on a clear, non-rainy day.
Having
some LP-spending cash on hand I reasoned I could steer the bike with
one hand while holding the LP with the other on the trip back. Of
course, certain parts of the return trip involved a few intense
downhill maneuvers which might complicate the process. No worries –
just go! The trip to the shop was unremarkable except I got the LP
this time (would have been smarter to get the CD, no?). The return
trip was also fairly unremarkable – even down the really BIG hill
which should have been the scarier prospect. It was the second
biggest downhill where things went awry. My street was on the left at
the bottom of a down-hill dip in the main road – right after going
under an overpass built for a train-track elevated above the road. No
problem except I was riding into oncoming traffic, one-handed and
didn't count on some rather large debris which had accumulated under
the bridge which was hard to navigate
and............................. holyshitivehitalogwherethefuckdidthatcomefromiamnowfallingoffthebikeintooncomingtraffic!
What's the first thought when I realize I am going down off the bike
like this? “Oh my God! SAVE THE RECORD!!!!”
See
that bend in the LP cover? Well, that was the extent of the damage to
the record, thank heavens. My own damage was also mercifully slight.
No cars managed to run over me thank goodness. So I arrived home
bruised and shaken, yet undeterred. I later would bring Three of a
Perfect Pair to parties and put it on when other guys tried to dance
with the girls I was interested in. Heh heh! Yet, that LP would be
the end of Crimson Mark III and I never got to see that edition live
in concert. It would be many years later before I even bothered to
purchase the Beat album.Not
because I didn't want it, but because I KNEW – I knew it was going
to be great and I was holding out for when I needed to hear it. I
know – I am such a weirdo I just didn't want to rush into the last
LP from that era of the band. I wanted to SAVOR it.
Last
summer I got to experience the ultimate re-creation of this era of
Crimson when I saw the double trio act of Adrian Belew's and Tony
Levin's bands together performing Crimson music up in Woodstock at
the Bearsville Theater. I was totally blown away. I cannot wait for
the next performance next summer. I was enthralled once again –
even though that Fripp guy was not present. I was also
semi-yet-not-quite starstruck to discover the great Tony Levin
mulling around the bar before the show – standing right next to me!
I'm sure I could have blathered on to him about how his contribution
to the Discipline album changed and energized my life as a young
listener (and still does), but any knucklehead can come off like
Waynes World, right? Just being that close in proximity to such an
important musical figure was enough of a buzz for me. So enjoyable it
was to see him then, I returned to the Bearsville later in the season
to see Tony Levin's Stickmen group. I could watch and listen to him
play all day long – he's a true musical treasure of our times. It
is no surprise that Mr. Fripp let him in the Crimson Garden all those
years ago.
Every
single release from this 40th
Anniversary series is so stellar, they've raised the bar as to what
real progressive excellent music is really all about. The 5.1 remixes
have breathed so much new life into the back catalog of Crimson
albums, they have forced a re-evaluation of even the more marginal
records made under less-than-ideal circumstances. Its almost as if
the sonic unfolding of those records sheds new light on what those
Crim residents were really up to – while everyone thought they were
imploding, they were re-defining the potential of the future. What
may have baffled listeners in stereo back in the early 70s comes to
life in surround sound in the present era. King Crimson has always
been a cutting edge ensemble. Technology has made it possible for the
music to be re-discovered and re-evaluated for newer generations of
listeners.
