#kc50

[childoftheriver]

So beautiful.

[longliverockback]

King Crimson Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two [KC50, Vol. 38] 2019 Discipline Global Mobile ———————————————————————

* Long Live Rock Archive

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: King Crimson - “Larks‘ Tongues In Aspic (Pt. Two)” (KC50, Vol. 38)

Even unfinished and cut short, “Larks‘ Tongues In Aspic (Pt. Two)” is an engrossing piece of music, one Robert Fripp describes as “following the contours of the sexual process,” but that really sounds more like a tone painting of a lumbering, destructive home invasion.

Whatever pictures the 1973 instrumental conjures in a given listener’s minds eye, the track - released in truncated, demo form for the KC50 series of anniversary releases - also illustrates King Crimson at work on what would become one of its most-played-live numbers. The band, still fleshing the arrangement, is tentative - the drums have yet to be cleaned up, the bass is at the fore and the guitar gritty and not properly mixed.

It could’ve gone out like this - it did in 2012 on the Larks’ Tongues in Aspic box set - and it would’ve worked anyway. As a template for the finished version, it’s enlightening as well as engrossing.

Grade card: King Crimson - “Larks‘ Tongues In Aspic (Pt. Two)” (KC50, Vol. 38) - B+

Read Sound Bites’ previous KC50 coverage here.

9/30/19

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: King Crimson - “Travel Weary Capricorn/Mars” (KC50, Vol. 15) (Live, Dec. 13/14, 1969)

Jazzy improvisation with vocals from Greg Lake and spacier playing that finds the music dropping to virtual silence before roaring back to life are the disparate elements of King Crimson’s latest 50th-anniversary release.

A spliced-together concoction of weirdness, “Travel Weary Capricorn/Mars” ends with the original King Crimson - Lake, Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald and Michael Giles - playing literally its last notes as the second part of the track crashes to a close on Dec. 14, 1969, and McDonald says, simply, “Goodbye” to the audience.

The instrumental “Mars” is more soundscape than song - a wash of feedback, noise and nothingness - while “Travel Weary Capricorn,” recorded the previous evening, flitters along on McDonald’s flute as Lake imitates a comedian imitating a lounge singer.

The description makes it sound awful. But this Frankenstein medley is actually quite pleasing and Crimson’s uncanny ability to make something pleasing out of discordance and dissonance is the unlikely magic of the band in its many iterations.

Grade card: King Crimson - “Travel Weary Capricorn/Mars” (KC50, Vol. 15) (Live, Dec. 13/14, 1969) - B+

Read Sound Bites’ previous KC50 coverage here.

4/19/19

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: King Crimson - “Dinosaur” (1995 Single Edit) (KC50, Vol. 17)

If John Lennon was the Walrus, Robert Fripp was the “Dinosaur.”

The 1995 King Crimson track, one of four singles released from THRAK, was obviously inspired by Lennon’s Magical Mystery tune. Lyricist Fripp and music co-writers Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, Trey Gunn, Tony Levin and Pat Mastelotto had also probably been listening to ELO when they wrote the number.

Backward guitars, sweeping orchestration and grinding rhythm are the musical hallmarks of “Dinosaur.” The lyrics are personal, but surely also an allusion to the 1960s-era band’s status in the 1990s.

Ignorance has always been something I excel in/followed by naivety and pride/doesn't take a scientist to see how/any clever predator could have a piece of me/ ... I’m a dinosaur/somebody is digging my bones

The radio edit chops nearly three minutes off the album cut to make it more palatable for programmers; as such, it’s less adventurous than the original. But this rarer specimen is keeping with King Crimson’s stated mission of digging up long-buried tracks in its ongoing series of weekly 50th-anniversary digital releases.

Grade card: King Crimson - “Dinosaur” (1995 Single Edit) (KC50, Vol. 17) - B-

Read Sound Bites’ previous KC50 coverage here.

5/6/19

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: King Crimson - “Ladies of the Road” (1991 Remix) (KC50 Vol. 7)

According to King Crimson producer David Singleton, engineer extraordinare Tchad Blake believes “Ladies of the Road” is the perfectly mixed track.

That may be why Singleton and Robert Fripp found their 1991 efforts to repurpose the song for a box set hopeless and nixed the idea.

The unfinished rework sat unused until 2006, when the aborted remix was made available as an online tribute to singer Boz Burrell, who died that year. Re-released in 2019 as the latest in the ongoing series of King Crimson rarities celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary, it’s now dedicated to Burrell and drummer Ian Wallace, who died shortly after the bassist.

This is King Crimson as sex-starved roads dogs and employs thumping bass, sultry sax and falsetto background vocals that clearly inspired Queen to create its ribald, burlesque-show antmosphere. But it’s the lyrics that would’ve gotten “Ladies of the Road” banned by the BBC in 1971.

Stone-headed Frisco spacer/ate all the meat I gave her/said would I like to taste hers/and even craved the flavor

“Ladies of the Road” would be a novelty if not for its musical complexity and Robert Fripp’s string- and mind-bending fret work. And it’s dated, not for the music, but because groupie songs are cringeworthy today in a way they weren’t in the past.

But as a relic of its time and an example of King Crimson’s almost unbelievably diverse sonic palette, it’s essential. And this new(ish) mix does no harm to Blake’s career template and teaching tool.

Grade card: King Crimson - “Ladies of the Road” (1991 Remix) (KC50 Vol. 7) - B

Read Sound Bites’ previous KC50 coverage here.

2/24/19

[fartofthesunrise]

🎉 SOTD 50: King Crimson - Radical Action/Meltdown (Advance Mix)

8-30-21

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: King Crimson - “Radical Action/Meltdown” (KC50, Vol. 50) (Advance Mix)

And so it ends.

King Crimson wraps its KC50 download series with an advance mix of “Radical Action/Meltdown,” a hybrid track performed live for a film crew that’s making the forthcoming documentary on the long-running, ever-changing band.

And with this number, KC50 goes out with a three-drummer bang - a fiery amalgam of guitar-driven, instrumental prog and jazzier, sax- and vocal-led song craft that reinforces the point made over the past 50 weeks of rare and and previously unissued anniversary gifts to fans that Crimson is Crimson is Crimson even as the years and members roll by.

Grade card: King Crimson - “Radical Action/Meltdown” (KC50, Vol. 50) (Advance Mix) - A

Read Sound Bites previous KC50 coverage here.

12/23/19