King Crimson

And King Crimson is still a touring band - the current version played in dc last October and nailed all the old hits from court, Islands, etc (we had front Row seats at Lisner Auditorium).
The first pix is the band as the show ended - they had 3 drummers out front !!
The mighty Fripp is on the right side of the photo, camera to his eye ...

The 2nd pix is a photo from the bass player, Tony Levin - showing us in the front row!
(I'm wearing an old T shirt with his record label - Pappa Bear records in Woodstock!)

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The mighty Fripp is on the right side of the photo, camera to his eye ...

Indeed he was and so he remains.

I was not aware that performers were (now) in the habit of photographing their audience(s). It's become a two-way thing, all this (phone-based?) "lens work", both photo and (maybe) video, I'd imagine? Interesting. Just imagine the scenes acts like Zappa, The Sex Pistols, and the Plasmatics might have captured @ their shows...
 
Well, Fripp has this whole thing about no picture taking during the performance - he feels its distracting to the band's focus with flashes going off.
Also, there is a psychic thing about focused listening (to the band) feeding into their creative energy as they play -
and how that is disrupted when you are more concerned with capturing pictures instead of being fully present and listening.
They post signs requesting folks do not take pictures during the performance.
Fripp has actually walked the band offstage mid-show and left when his no pictures request was ignored.
They give the audience plenty of time to take pictures (like mine) afterwards.
Anyway, I first saw the Band taking pictures years back with the California Guitar Trio
(who are connected to Mr Fripp via Guitar Circle classes he used to run).
One of the 3 players in that band, Hideyo, would take pictures of the audience at each of his shows, since 1999 - http://cgtrio.jonlybrook.org/roadcam/

(We didn't show up in Hideyo's pictures until 2004 ... this one was at a little pub in VA called Jammin' Java)

cgtrio20041110viennavirginia_04.jpg
 
And King Crimson is still a touring band - the current version played in dc last October and nailed all the old hits from court, Islands, etc (we had front Row seats at Lisner Auditorium).
The first pix is the band as the show ended - they had 3 drummers out front !!
The mighty Fripp is on the right side of the photo, camera to his eye ...

The 2nd pix is a photo from the bass player, Tony Levin - showing us in the front row!
(I'm wearing an old T shirt with his record label - Pappa Bear records in Woodstock!)

View attachment 1303019 View attachment 1303020

It seems he is allowing himself to be lit and seen onstage now. I saw them a few years back when they toured with John Paul Jones, and also in the 80's "Discipline/Beat" era, and he was in the dark!

GJ
 
Yep, I saw the Double Trio and the Double Duo bands in the 80s and 90s,
and Mr Fripp always sat on a stool on the side,
near motionless as he shredded like nobody's business!
He was a bit more animated during a Frippertronics presentation at the Washington Ethical Society many years back,
(or at presentations at Gaston Hall or Penguin Feather during the Exposure solo album era - late 70s).
But he's usually soft-spoken and dry, not your typical raging ego guitar hero stereotype ...
 
The last few months, I have "re-discovered' KC and am enjoying a lot of the newer recordings.

Picked up all of the Elements box sets, Live in Vienna, Travis and Fripp "Between the silence" and eagerly await the "Meltdown in Mexico" box release next week.
 
I've been really into them since the mid 70's. It's really hard to put them into a category or equate them with anyone else. As personnel changed, so did the sound. From hard rock to more prog rock with some jazz sound and on and on. The only constant is Fripp and his guitar. You can always tell his playing. Both for the processing with his "Frippertronics" to his style of playing. I really like it all. The 80's issues, Three of a Perfect Pair, Beat, and Discipline are awesome, but very different from earlier stuff like Court, which is different from the next phase like Lark's Tongue. Later stuff, like his side projects, are different again.
 
To cite a KC album that IMO is decidely NOT "ELP-ish". in fact there are a whole lotta KC albums circa 1969-1974 that are very unlike ELP. First, no synth, rather Mellotron; second, Robert Fripp geetar and Wetton bass -- HEAVY PROG man. The compositions @ this period of KC couldn't, IMO, be further from ELP than is possible, other than the fact each is a collection of humans playing music of some "progressive dimension", the KC material being much more aggressive in manner and tone, and not keyboard-oriented, rather guitar-bass-violin (David Cross) heavy. And then Bruford vs. Palmer: no comparison beyond 'we're both drumming here". And the jagged, asymmetry of KC's time signatures during this period (almost) defy logic. Find anything in the ELP ouvre that sounds even remotely like the albums Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Starless And Bible Black, or Red, and I'll guarantee you've accidentally stumbled onto listening to KC, not ELP, cuz ain't nuthin ELP ever released what sounds like those three KC releases.

Exactly. King Crimson is serious shit or as Bill Bruford himself called it "tooth-pullingly difficult music". ELP is grandiose wanking, and I say that as somewhat of a fan of the latter.
 
There are several copies of A Young Person's Guide to King Crimson 2 Record Set with the booklet for sale on Amazon.

I have been a fan of King Crimson since the early 1970's. I think one of the best LP covers ever is "Lizard" (1970}. I have one with the LP inside framed on the wall.

LizGatefold.jpg
 
I took my wife to one of the Lisner shows last Fall, I'm not sure she has recovered from it. We saw the CGT guys at a local church about a month ago, Hideyo got us in the middle of the audience at the end of the show. They talked quite a bit about their time with Robert's Guitar Craft project in West Virginia years ago. Heather, did you happen to see the League of Gentlemen show way back when? It might have been at the Bayou?
 
Not the League - if memory serves, it was either a weeknight or a period of low money ;)
 
Exactly. King Crimson is serious shit or as Bill Bruford himself called it "tooth-pullingly difficult music". ELP is grandiose wanking, and I say that as somewhat of a fan of the latter.

A perfect assessment. I, too, am a fan of ELP but would never place them alongside KC in @ any but the barest level of PROG similarity. First time I've seen reference to Bruford's "tooth-pullingly difficult music" statement, which perfectly captures KC, especially the "In The Court Of... through/including Red" eras, but also the Belew/Levine, Two drummer / three drummer eras to follow. KC were capable of all the myriad musical complexity -- key modulations, time-signature changes, theme variations (including inversions), etc. -- as ELP and Yes, but with a "harder", almost "menacing" edge never achieved by the other PROG acts. That Fripp was/is really something. And then there's .... wait for it ...
The Mellotron. Oh sweet bliss in/around above/below/behind the crushing rhythm section and Fripp's wicked geetar (rhythm and/or lead - he was a master player @ both levels) as he sat/sits calmly upon his stool. I seldom use the term "amazing" but the fully-realized Crimson @ the live setting are just that.

And I've said it before and I'll say it again" for his work in KC, one Mr John Wetton ough to have a planet named after him. What a bassist, what an improvizationist, and what a vocalist.
 
....

The 2nd pix is a photo from the bass player, Tony Levin - showing us in the front row!
(I'm wearing an old T shirt with his record label - Pappa Bear records in Woodstock!)

TLevin-wash2audtshirt-w1440.jpg

Seems like the guy sitting on the far left really enjoyed the show.

:rflmao:
 
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He's part of our party - tho I think Crimson may have been a leap too far -
We kid him mercilessly for that image, but its not how it looks, he was actually setting his camera ...
I thought so. It just looked like he was in snooze-ville.
 
No sleeping through that show!

Yes, I can tell Emma loves me very much after her attending that show with me!
I bet you have no doubt your wife loves you too!
(But I suspect both might skip the next Crimson show, given a chance) ...
 
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