The Sept 8 show in Stuttgart was everything I had hoped for and then some. The venue was very comfortable, not crowded seating and there was not a bad seat in the house as far as seeing the band.
What can you say about a band that plays music like this? Progressive does not even remotely begin to describe it.
For this show, I took my nephew with me. It was his first concert and he has...different musical tastes than perhaps the average King Crimson fan does. The one word description he had for me was "heavy". I think that is a good one word descriptor. I told him that I thought it was symphonic, very European, angular and symmetric. He said heavy, and I like his descriptor better.
He was blown away by Fripp's guitar playing, particularly during the solo bits of augmented chord arpeggios he does during Fracture.
I told him he was quite lucky that King Crimson, at this level of power and skill with three drummers working so well in tandem together, was his first concert ever. He was completely blown away by the show.
I, being a much older fan, having starting my apprenticeship in the court in the '80s with Discipline and then working my way backwards to the Pete Sinfield days and being awestruck by Red, could not have happier with what I heard. This was mostly old school Crimson, with some of the uber difficult material from the "newest" albums included. No Belew here at all, and given the material that was chosen, he was not terribly missed, but of course being a Crimson fan I love all of the incarnations and I did miss that voice and those crazy guitar noises. It was Belew's tenure that I was most personally familiar with since I didn't know about Larks Tongue's in Aspic except as research material after I was caught by Discipline. So I did miss that. But the new inclusions made up for it in spades.
Jakko and Mel Collins were the biggest surprises of all. Mel is so good he makes you forget he's playing a flute over this serious racket and he makes it sound calming and soothing. Consequently, my nephew thought he made it sound dirty and nasty sometimes and thought he played like he imaged a satyr would. Top marks for my nephew, I should think. Jakko, on the other hand, is ridiculously good and I will seek out other things he has done before Crimson if that's how he sings and sounds and plays. He could stand toe to toe with Fripp on those blinding fast chromatic bursts of single notes and he made it sound clear and crisp.
The one thing that always struck me about Fripp was the ability to have that never-ending round single note sound almost seem like it wasn't a guitar but some other instrument, like a ondes martinet or an oboe with a dirty reed heard through a drainpipe. That was in full effect this evening. He had that going on and the other thing that I love about Fripp is that he could stay permanently in augmented scales and it would never need resolution. It's that particular scale that seems to wind it's way around your brainstem like a serpent and it can just go on and on and on and never seem to land, and Fripp exploits it not only beautifully, but powerfully and in an almost clinically cold and sterile fashion. It's very compelling.
The songlist itself was exactly what I would have expected. Standing out for me was Starless, Red and everything they did from Islands. That is a special album for me since it was one of the most "accessible" records they ever made, if you could ever call King Crimson that. I had zero complaints about anything they played.
The ONE thing I will say that I found a bit...off-putting for lack of a better word, is the drumming. It was over the top. It was very cool when they were doing the intros to all of the 3 sets, well, 2 sets and an encore. But when it came to the full band, sometimes the music was utterly drowned out by the drums. A bit better mixing would go a long way to making sure that no one in the back row was obscured by the percussion, but it never really lasted long and I think they got the mix better by the end of the night, so perhaps the mixers have a trial and error period due to each room's unique characteristics. But that was really my only gripe, and that has bugger all to do with King Crimson.
It was a magical night for me. My nephew thought it rocked. Need I say more?
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Childish Gambino
