King Crim­son is my favorite band.

There, I said it. The more music and films I’m exposed to, the more point­less it seems to pick favorites. (Isn’t it kind of absurd to say that King Crim­son is “bet­ter” than, say, The Mahav­ishnu Orches­tra? While I’m on this par­en­thet­i­cal tan­gent, has any­body else ever noticed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between John McLaughlin’s jazz fusion group and the 1972–74 “Larks Tongues” incar­na­tion of King Crim­son?) Time and again on The Dork Report, I feel silly enough try­ing to con­dense my opin­ions about movies and con­certs into a five-star rat­ing tem­plate, and now even more so that I’ve seen Crim­son blow the top off my scale (just like the back cover to the album Red). So, yes, they’ve earned a rare Dork Report 5-star review, an honor I hope the Crims appre­ci­ate (yes, I’m kidding).

I absolutely enjoyed Thursday’s show at The Nokia The­atre in Times Square, New York City, as I hope was clear from my review. I wasn’t there on Fri­day, but Sat­ur­day night’s was some­thing else alto­gether, an extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance that rivalled the best of Crim­son that I’ve heard on record, be it live (with­out ques­tion B’Boom — Live in Argentina) or stu­dio (that would be Thrak — I invite read­ers to counter-argue in the com­ments below). So much so that my reluc­tance to play favorites is tem­porar­ily on hold; King Crim­son is finally, offi­cially, My Favorite Band.

Bend­ing the “No Pho­tog­ra­phy” rule, Part II

So who’s going to give cre­dence to the biased opin­ions of an acolyte pre­dis­posed to pos­i­tively rave about his heroes? In defense, I cer­tainly don’t think they can do no wrong; I am pre­pared to declare their 1971 album Lizard an almost unlis­ten­able piece of crap. But I hope that I can con­vey some of what made last night’s show an order of mag­ni­tude “bet­ter” than Thurs­day. The band was incred­i­bly tight, hope­fully putting to rest fans’ often-expressed fears that they have been a bit sloppy across this tour (a gripe I indulged in myself in my Thurs­day review). The crowd seemed more appre­cia­tively rowdy and keyed-up than before; indeed the over­all energy level was high. Per­haps it was just my dif­fer­ent van­tage point (slightly fur­ther back, and almost per­fectly cen­tered), but even the venue’s sound qual­ity seemed bet­ter; I didn’t have the impres­sion that Fripp and Belew were fight­ing to find the few audi­ble fre­quen­cies left untram­meled by Har­ri­son, Mas­telotto, and Levin. The video cam­eras were turned off this time, being some­thing of a trade­off. On one hand, the flat panel TV screens scat­tered about the venue had made it pos­si­ble to see all sorts of details invis­i­ble to the nose­bleed seats on Thurs­day, but on the other hand, the glow­ing screens were dis­tract­ing intru­sions to my periph­eral vision. But more likely, the band prob­a­bly objected to the intru­sion upon their performance.

The show began with a real treat not part of Thursday’s New York debut; when I walked in at about 7:30, Robert Fripp was already on stage per­form­ing Sound­scapes. For the unini­ti­ated, Sound­scap­ing is Fripp’s term for the ambi­ent, loop­ing class of his solo work, orig­i­nally chris­tened (tongue-in-cheek) Frip­pertron­ics dur­ing his orig­i­nal 1970s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Brian Eno. When I saw Fripp live with The League of Crafty Gui­tarists at the New York Soci­ety for Eth­i­cal Cul­ture in Novem­ber 2007, it was clear from the gen­eral audi­ence chat­ter around me that some were unaware that Fripp ever played any­thing other than burn­ing, shred­ding rock gui­tar. So I wasn’t sure how much of this audi­ence would be open to this avenue of Fripp’s work, but there was enough applause at the end of each piece to indi­cate that peo­ple were lis­ten­ing and appre­cia­tive. It helped that these par­tic­u­lar Sound­scapes were of the more beau­ti­ful and melodic vari­ety, as opposed to the dis­so­nant and night­mar­ish sort heard on the album Radio­phon­ics. It was a rather low-key opener, cer­tainly in com­par­i­son to the supremely fun Cal­i­for­nia Gui­tar Trio that toured with Crim­son in 1995.

For this Dork Reporter’s ears, the high­light of the evening was a shock­ing new arrange­ment of Sleep­less. It was a wild, more omi­nously threat­en­ing rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the slightly poppy orig­i­nal. Mas­telotto and Har­ri­son kicked it off with some utterly insane dum­ming (which I mean as a com­pli­ment), soon joined by Levin rock­ing the famous bassline to roar­ing approval from the crowd. Levin used his famous inven­tion the funk fin­gers instead of the orig­i­nal slap­ping tech­nique I’ve seen on the live DVD Neil and Jack and Me. Does any­one know if he also used the funk fin­gers for it in the 1990s, as heard on the live album B’Boom? It seems they had long since dropped the song from the setlist by the time I saw them in Philadelphia.

I’ve got to devote a least a para­graph to Mastelotto’s shout-outs to his pre­de­ces­sors. Dur­ing Neu­rot­ica, he res­ur­rected a sam­ple of the lit­tle elec­tronic “tink!” sound Bill Bru­ford scat­tered all over the 1982 album Beat. Frankly, I find the omnipresent “tink” sound makes Beat very annoy­ing to lis­ten to, but I nev­er­the­less invol­un­tar­ily laughed and clapped in appre­ci­a­tion when I noticed the sam­ple last night. He also busted out some very Jamie Muir–esque sound effects to add a lit­tle extra sonic color to The Talk­ing Drum / Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II one-two punch. I also really loved the elec­tron­ica drum sounds he added to the (rel­a­tively) quiet bits in Indis­ci­pline. Who could have guessed, but it was exactly what the song needed.

I men­tioned in my review of the Thurs­day show that I con­sider Level Five to be among Crimson’s most “dif­fi­cult” pieces for the audi­ence to lis­ten to, and judg­ing by the furi­ously fly­ing fin­gers, also obvi­ously so for the band to play. But while I’m still try­ing to find my way into the song as a lis­tener, it clearly went over like gang­busters, earn­ing one of the most appre­cia­tive ova­tions of the night. If noth­ing else, hun­dreds of jaws dropped at the insanely rapid runs shared by Fripp & Levin. That kind of play­ing just isn’t human.

Worse seat, bet­ter sound?

Which reminds me of another thought I’ve always had about King Crim­son. Need­less to say, most mem­bers have been known as among the best-ever prac­ti­tion­ers of their instru­ments. Fans often gush about how dif­fi­cult the parts are, as if how speed­ily fin­gers move is directly pro­por­tion­ate to how “good” the music is. But I’d like to pro­pose the idea here that that is to miss the point. The high level of musi­cian­ship in Crim­son is not the goal, but rather a pre­req­ui­site to be able to play what­ever is required, be it one note or a thou­sand. I’d argue that some of Fripp’s best play­ing is actu­ally slower than what he is phys­i­cally capa­ble of, when unleashed at max­i­mum veloc­ity. If that’s what fans of tech­nique look­ing for, might I direct you to Level Five or the 900 MPH solo to Sar­tori in Tang­ier. But to my ears, Fripp’s most affect­ing play­ing is in the gut-wrenchingly emo­tional solo in the Sylvian/Fripp song Wave and the slow-motion under­wa­ter solo in the Robert Fripp String Quin­tet piece Blue.

Fur­ther evi­dence the band was more ener­getic and con­nected: dur­ing the drum duet (as yet unti­tled?) at the begin­ning of the first encore, Levin elicited a some laughs by the­atri­cally drum­ming along on the top of his amp with his funk fin­gers. Har­ri­son & Mastelotto’s duet was infec­tious enough to get Belew’s head bob­bing, and, shock of all shocks, I could see even the top of Fripp’s head rock­ing to the beat.

Any­one fol­low­ing the reviews being posted on DGM­Live will be aware that Fripp does not join the band in com­ing to the front of the stage at the end of each show, instead stand­ing off in the shad­ows. He very point­edly chooses to applaud his four band­mates, at once show­ing his appre­ci­a­tion for them and direct­ing the audience’s atten­tion to the play­ers. To indulge in a lit­tle arm­chair psy­cho­analy­sis, per­haps he wants to avoid fans’ wor­ship or rebuke, and instead direct the audience’s pos­i­tive energy towards the band.

I’d like to close with two anec­dotes, past and present. A minor but amus­ing inci­dent from Thursday’s show I for­got to include in my review was an early cameo appear­ance by Adrian Belew. Long before show­time, Belew entered the venue through the crowd, mounted the stage and walked acriss into the wings, all the while tot­ing his dry clean­ing over his shoul­der. When the audi­ence noticed him and applauded, he hammed it up a lit­tle bit, pre­tend­ing to sheep­ishly tip-toe across the stage. True story. Don’t venues have trap­doors and secret pas­sages for the per­form­ers to sneak in and out? Per­haps he got acci­den­tally locked out, and maybe Fripp’s ongo­ing comic book saga blog will tell us the full tale of how Belew was acci­den­tally beamed out­side the Crim moth­er­ship on an extra­plan­e­tary away mis­sion to the space sta­tion dry cleaners.

And also, one telling moment I still recall from a Pro­jekct Two show in 1999 at Irv­ing Plaza, New York. Fripp had been typ­i­cally focussed on his play­ing through­out, out­wardly unemo­tional, until one moment between pieces when he sprung to life, turned to Belew and Trey Gunn and announced “Guys, I want to rock out!” He then turned to face the audi­ence for the first time and repeated “I want to rock out, you guys!” And they did.

Offi­cial site: DGMLive.com

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