A partial King Crimson retrospective this Sunday, which I expanded upon in the Twittersphere (@eddybamyasi) last week with a run through of all their first phase albums. That's from In The Court...(1969) through to Red (1974), plus the live albums (Earthbound and USA).
King Crimson In The Court Of The Crimson King
King Crimson Islands
King Crimson Larks' Tongues In Aspic
King Crimson Red
Broken Social Scene You Forgot It In People
Band Of Horses Infinite Arms
King Crimson Discography In The Prog Era:
In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)
In the Wake of Poseidon (1970)
Lizard (1970)
Islands (1971)
Earthbound (1972) (live)
Larks' Tongues in Aspic (1973)
Starless and Bible Black (1974)
Red (1974)
USA (1975) (live)
KC were prolific in the beginning. Their first three albums appeared between 1969 and 1970 despite numerous distracting personnel changes. (Some might say the second one didn't count as it was a near replica of their debut!).
My overall impression was they were surprisingly jazzy in those days - especially around albums 3 and 4, Lizard and Islands. I say "those days" but actually the jazz influences remain as when I saw them live a few years ago I was struck by how freeform jazz their current 3 drumkit incarnation was.
Before albums 3 and 4 they were classic mellotron heavy prog - the first two albums were amazing at the time, and when I first discovered them in the 80s, although the most dated now.
There wasn't really anything else out there like it (The Moody Blues were probably the closest but they were much more mainstream). Songs like Epitaph from the debut In The Court... were simply monumental. I Talk To The Wind was beautiful (also check out some interesting lo-fi outtakes of this gentle song). 20th Century Schizoid Man was audacious, and Moonchild (especially the avant garde middle section) revolutionary. And then there was that album cover too! It's not surprising that Fripp and Co. decided to repeat the formula practically track for track in the follow up In The Wake Of Poseidon (which could have been titled In The Wake Of The Crimson King!).
Album number 3 Lizard surprises with its jazz honkings and avant garde piano (Keith Tippett) and No. 4 Islands, although not generally so critically acclaimed, is now one of my favourite KC albums and probably the one I play the most. The jazz continues with Mel Collins' saxophone but there is also plenty of excellent guitar riffage which would pave the way forward towards the later albums.
After albums 3 and 4 they became heavier, less mellotron and strings, more guitar, heavy bass and drums, first with Larks' Tongues... which was my favourite album of theirs (and almost anyone else) when I was growing up, then the very underrated Starless And Bible Black, and then their final first phase album, many fans' favourite, the very powerful Red.
Not convinced they would ever be able to reproduce their symphonic sound live I largely ignored their live albums but both are pretty good actually (especially on the heavier material) and each offer new tracks unavailable on the studio albums.
A 7 year hiatus followed which ended in 1981 with the release of Discipline which was completely different. At the time prog fans (including me) recoiled but in long term retrospect this album (and some that followed) have become classics in their own right, and Robert Fripp (ever the outsider) proved again to be ahead of the curve leading his band forward where contemporaries floundered.
Not much space left for the other two albums in the player today. Band Of Horses I was tipped off about after seeing they were headlining this year's Black Deer Festival. It's a jolly good album with excellent harmony singing and melodic tunes. It's quite light but the strength of the songs carries it. Closest contemporaries would of course be Fleet Foxes, the band that seemed to appear at the forefront of this new harmony folk/americana/soft rock movement at the turn of the last decade (albeit there were obviously 100s of other bands doing the same thing at the time - Infinite Arms came out in 2010).
Sadly it's a thumbs down on the Broken Social Scene album. This album appeared in 2002 and really sounds like it. Why is that? I don't know. I can't even remember what sort of music was popular in 2002 and am guessing the era was confused. Post-rock possibly? Anyway the record is the sort of indie guitar heavy rock that was started by bands like The Pixies in the 80s, and continued through grunge, shoe gaze and britpop in the 90s, and has been done 1000s of times before, during and since (it is interesting how music from the 60s and 70s now sounds less dated than the music from the 80s and 90s - the cycle of fashions I guess).
There are some interesting almost krautrock like instrumentals in the latter half of the album but on the whole I'm afraid to say it was just a bit unoriginal and boring (the caveat here being I was only moved to play it once so there is a possibility, certainly reading some glowing reviews on amazon, I may have missed something?).
With you on Islands. That and Red my most listened to. Ladies of the Road, despite the exquisite structure and guitar solo, is looking a bit iffy lyrically-speaking nowadays though. Peace.
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter. Islands is a really interesting album albeit somewhat overlooked in the Crimson canon. Some beautiful tracks like the title song and great guitar on Ladies and Sailor's Tale.
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