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

UPDATE I: Wel­come to all vis­i­tors from DGM­Live, and many thanks to Sid for such a high-profile link to this hum­ble blog. I appre­ci­ate the kind com­ments, and espe­cially wel­come what is cer­tainly The Dork Report’s first and only celebrity guest, none other than Patri­cia Fripp!

UPDATE II: I’ve also posted my thoughts about the Sat­ur­day, August 16 show. As pos­i­tive as the below review of Thurs­day is, Crim­son blew it away with a real corker on Saturday.

Last night was the first in the extended grand finale of King Crimson’s 40^th Anniver­sary Tour: a four-night stand at The Nokia The­atre in Times Square, New York City. I hope any ran­dom read­ers that stum­ble upon this blog entry look­ing for a blow-by-blow review will excuse this Dork Reporter as he indulges him­self with a few obser­va­tions on Crim­son in gen­eral before get­ting around to talk­ing about last night’s concert.

I turned my phone off after this pic­ture, I swear

Despite the band’s con­sid­er­able longevity, the leg­endary King Crim­son has never enjoyed fame or com­mer­cial suc­cess on a par with many of their so-called “pro­gres­sive rock” peers (the pejo­ra­tive term has never really fit King Crim­son any­way). Wit­ness, for exam­ple, the mas­sively lucra­tive 2007 world tour by Gen­e­sis, itself orig­i­nally influ­enced by King Crimson’s 1969 debut album In the Court of the Crim­son King. Crimson’s rel­a­tively low pro­file is nobody’s fault but their own, and it is no acci­dent. Crim­son has been aggres­sively uncom­pro­mis­ing from the very begin­ning, rarely will­ing to coast on past glo­ries or cash-in with grand reunion tours (although many of the orig­i­nal mem­bers have toured under the name 21^st Cen­tury Schizoid Band). It’s worth not­ing that Crim­son has made cer­tain half-hearted for­ays into the real world of com­mer­cial­ism, hav­ing filmed at least one music video (for Sleep­less in 1984) and lip-synced their eccen­tric pop nov­elty Cat Food on Top of the Pops in 1970. But even so, King Crim­son has proven time and again that it would rather break up (some­times leav­ing real money on the table) than repeat itself. Huge chunks of their song­book are resis­tant to casual lis­ten­ing, and let’s be hon­est, many fans take a snooty pride in Crimson’s low pro­file and high bar­rier to entry.

King Crim­son is in a con­stant state of evo­lu­tion, and many suc­ces­sive incar­na­tions made rad­i­cal breaks from the past: the orig­i­nal 1969 con­fig­u­ra­tion of the band was born in the hip­pie era, but had a unique blend of proto-metal aggres­sion (21^st Cen­tury Schizoid Man) and Mellotron-driven dirges (Epi­taph). The 1971–72 band shed much of this por­ten­tous weight in favor of jazz-rock impro­vi­sa­tion and filthy jok­i­ness (Ladies of the Road). The 1973–74 ver­sion dove even deeper into jazz fusion (dri­ven in part by mas­ter drum­mer Bill Bru­ford), but also unleashed some of the most intense metal instru­men­tals of Crimson’s entire life­time. Crim­son flamed out in 1974, but reap­peared in its most rad­i­cally new form yet in 1981–84, explor­ing gui­tar and drum syn­the­siz­ers and giv­ing birth to a genre that didn’t even have a name until decades later: “math rock.” King Crim­son reap­peared yet again in 1994, this time as a “dou­ble trio” com­prised of paired gui­tars, drums, and basses. Later, a stripped-down quar­tet pro­duced two albums of its most dif­fi­cult (in a good, chal­leng­ing way) music in 2001–2003.

Proof pos­i­tive: I was there! Should’ve sprung for a bet­ter seat, though…

But all this is pre­am­ble. Now, the 2008 King Crim­son is all about the rhythm sec­tion, and it was reflected in last night’s live mix. Bassist Tony Levin and drum­mers Pat Mas­telotto and Gavin Har­ri­son were very LOUD in the mix, some­times rel­e­gat­ing gui­tarists Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew to sup­port­ing roles. Mas­telotto and Har­ri­son played three pieces alone (B’Boom and two new unti­tled drum pieces), and dom­i­nated sev­eral oth­ers (includ­ing whole chunks of the thrillingly rearranged Neu­rot­ica and Level Five). I’m a huge fan of Trey Gunn (touch­style gui­tarist in King Crim­son between 1994–2003), hav­ing been to two of his solo shows, but boy is it great to hear Tony Levin back in the band. No one stands astride a stage like Levin, play­ing the bass like the lead instru­ment it so rarely is.

Although Robert Fripp has been the one con­sis­tent mem­ber of King Crim­son over its 40-year his­tory, it has never been entirely accu­rate to call it his band (one might even say it’s Adrian Belew’s band, con­sid­er­ing his mas­sive song­writ­ing con­tri­bu­tions over the years, not to men­tion his respon­si­bil­i­ties as live front­man). Truth be told, Fripp might be fairly described as eccen­tric, cer­tainly among other rock gui­tarists. His com­po­si­tion and style of gui­tar play­ing are utterly unique, born more from the Euro­pean clas­si­cal tra­di­tion than blues or jazz. He has also stood apart for his cru­sad­ing stance against exploita­tion of musi­cians by record com­pa­nies (long before it became cool). Fripp, now 62, has been blog­ging for years and mak­ing noises about retir­ing from tour­ing for some time now. On the last League of Crafty Gui­tarists tour in Novem­ber 2007, he per­formed par­tially obscured by his infa­mous impos­ing rack of elec­tron­ics dubbed the Solar Voy­ager. Evi­dently, he was road-testing a new mode of play­ing live, and I would sur­mise that this new con­fig­u­ra­tion is part of how he con­ceived of mak­ing this lat­est King Crim­son tour pos­si­ble for him on a per­sonal and pro­fes­sional level. He also now wears large head­phones, prob­a­bly just as much to hear the rest of the band clearly as he does to blot out the sound of dopey audi­ence cat­calls. Regret­tably, it’s a long-standing King Crim­son tra­di­tion for the Douchebag Brigade (whom Fripp would call “Base­ment Dwellers”) to call out face­tious requests for songs they know well Crim­son will never play (“Moon­child!”) and some­times just the last names of their heroes, whether or not they are cur­rently in the band (“Bru­u­u­u­u­ford!”). Fripp’s new level of dis­con­nec­tion from the audi­ence may allow him to focus on his band­mates and the music, but it also served to only increase the amount of cat­calls from the Douchebag Brigade: “Fripp, show your­self” etc.

Last night, Crim­son came right out of the gate with one of their most chal­leng­ing pieces, The Con­strukc­tion of Light. Frankly, it was notice­ably wob­bly at first, prob­a­bly even to peo­ple who weren’t famil­iar with it. The band’s fum­bling was wor­ri­some, but I shouldn’t have doubted; the first sec­tion of the piece is by its nature a long, min­i­mal­ist tension-and-release build-up, and Belew was suf­fer­ing from tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties (some very notice­able snaps, crack­les and pops). A gui­tar tech solved his trou­bles before the song kicked into high gear and I was prac­ti­cally danc­ing in my seat (well, as best I could, con­sid­er­ing its odd time signature).

The Con­strukc­tion of Light was impen­e­tra­ble to me on first lis­ten in 2000, but Level Five remains a mys­tery. I still, even now, can’t wrap my brain around it. It was by far the most chal­leng­ing piece they played last night, in a set list made up largely of what passes for pop­u­lar favorites in the King Crim­son song­book. Level Five is frankly hard work to lis­ten to, and def­i­nitely not some­thing I would select to intro­duce a novice to Crimson.

But as I said, most of the rest of the night was true to its billing as a 40^th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion: Crim­son rev­eled in many of the most rock­ing pieces they’ve ever com­posed. The Talk­ing Drum, a piece that starts from total silence on record, now blasts out intensely from its very first note, and builds to a lit­er­ally scream­ing cli­max that in turn explodes into Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II. Larks, together with Red, can always be counted on to blow everyone’s hair back, and maybe the doors off the venue. I believe Fripp has a famous quote about Crim­son being able to shred wall­pa­per at a dis­tance of miles?

Heat in the jun­gle streets

The beau­ti­ful bal­lad Walk­ing on Air pro­vided a break from all the inten­sity, but it didn’t last long. Fripp, play­ing more of a sup­port­ive role than ever before, stepped out for once and truly cooked in Dinosaur. Dinosaur is also, inci­den­tally, the one song that sep­a­rates the true Crim­son fans from the week­end war­riors: any­one who claps dur­ing the false end­ing is a n00b. Crim­son closed with a rip-roaring ren­di­tion of Vrooom, but Fripp’s lead melody lines in the coda were sadly omit­ted (he did, how­ever, play them with The League of Crafty Gui­tarists when I saw them last Novem­ber). Although I’m fully aware that the evening was not about me and I don’t get to choose, I have to admit I was bummed to not hear Sleep­less. I had read on DGMLive.com that they had played it ear­lier on the tour, and as I loved the 1995 arrange­ment of the piece heard on the live album B’Boom, I was very much look­ing for­ward to hear­ing this ver­sion of the band tackle it.

A few notes about The Nokia The­atre: it was a mas­sive movie the­ater once upon a time (I recall see­ing the hilar­i­ously hor­ri­ble Ana­conda there in 1997), but is now a huge, mod­ern con­cert venue. I love a good pint of beer as much as the next guy, but my heart always sinks when I attend con­certs at venues that serve alco­hol. There is always a con­tin­gent that overindulges and acts out in a way that is evi­dently amus­ing to them but annoy­ing to every­one else. I noticed a bunch of obese bald dudes on the lower right of the floor that were obvi­ously drunk and/or high, and no doubt ruin­ing the expe­ri­ence for every­one around them. Also, the venue had video cam­eras trained on the stage through­out, which very much sur­prised me, given Fripp’s emphatically-stated objec­tions to the obstruc­tive process of film­ing con­certs. They even man­aged to cap­ture him on screen at one point, despite his being largely obscured from view (dur­ing Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II, I believe). Per­haps some­one from Crimson’s road crew had a word with the video­g­ra­phers, because he never appeared on screen again.

One lit­tle bit of trivia: a noticed a familiar-looking guy pac­ing up and down the aisles before and after the show. I thought at first that maybe I might have known him from some­where, pro­fes­sion­ally or per­son­ally, until it sud­denly hit me it might be Tony Geballe, for­mer Crafty Gui­tarist and mem­ber of The Trey Gunn Band. What was he up to? Was he, as a mem­ber of the extended King Crim­son fam­ily, tasked by the band to police the audi­ence for illicit boot­leg­gers? Any­way, whether it was him or not, Geballe is a great gui­tar player, and I rec­om­mend check­ing out his album Native of the Rain.

I’ve now seen King Crim­son three times, first in 1995 in Philadel­phia and then in 2001 in New York City. It was a delight to see them again last night, in a slightly rough-and-tumble but exhil­a­rat­ing per­for­mance. I look for­ward to catch­ing them again tomor­row night, and plan on post­ing some more thoughts on The Dork Report later.

Thanks for read­ing, to any­one that made it this far! Please leave a com­ment if you have any­thing to add.

Offi­cial King Crim­son site: DGMLive.com

Must view: Tony Levin’s pho­tos of Thursday’s concert

Must read: David Fricke’s Rolling Stone review of Thursday’s concert