I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 9, 2017] King Crimson

I was genuinely surprised to discover that my previous King Crimson show was nearly three years ago–it felt so much more recent than that.  But so it was.

I was pretty excited that they were playing in Red Bank, NJ at the Count Basie–a theater I’d never been to before. And I was pretty thrilled that my cousin Kate who lives nearby was able to get tickets without having to pay the bastard fees (especially since the tickets were so frickin expensive).  But she managed to get me a seat in Row G, which was just phenomenal.

Interestingly, since the theater slopes down (which is awesome, no one’s head is ever in your way), for this band’s setup, being that close meant that the drums blocked a lot of the view.  Because yes, the three (!) drummers were right out front.  The lineup was pretty much the same as last time except that since I saw them last, drummer Bill Rieflin took a sabbatical (and was replaced by Jeremy Stacey) and then came back.  So now there were eight performers!

The lineup: Tony Levin (bass, Stick, more); Mel Collins (saxes, flutes); Jakko Jakszyk (guitar, vocals),  Bill Rieflin (keyboards and effects–I’m led to believe he played drums earlier in the tour, but for our show he was just on keys): Three drummers: Gavin Harrison, Pat Mastelotto and Jeremy Stacey (also keyboards).  And of course, Robert Fripp (guitar).

My seats were right in front of Gavin Harrison, which was awesome.  It was so much fun to watch him.  But being so close to him meant that I couldn’t always see Fripp (Harrison’s cymbals were blocking him!).  I couldn’t really see Stacey much (he was blocked on both sides by his gear) and Mastelotto was on the other side, which meant I could watch his expressions and see him bash the hell out of things, but could never exactly see when he did subtle things.

The main thing I wanted to watch this time was Tony Levin’s bass and Stick playing.  But just like last time, I never knew where to focus because someone was always doing something interesting and my attention was easily swayed.

I looked at my prior write up and feel like much of it is the same, and that’s fine because the show was amazing, and I was delighted to have seen it again. But there were also a whole bunch of different songs at this show–for a band who is playing such complex music to mix it up so much is pretty cool.

So here’s what I said last time:

Mastelotto had a lot of weird percussion (sheets of metal and other effects) and when he wasn’t making weird noises, he was banging the hell out of the drums.  It was a little scary.  He is one of the most intense looking drummer I’ve seen.  And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone hit them harder.  And then Harrison was like the prog drummer he is–super fast, lots of rolls (a huge set) and really nice light touches.  Sometimes they all played the same thing (which was intense), sometimes they played off of each other (which was so cool).  At one point it looked like Mastelotto was challenging Harrison to a duel.  Sometimes one of them would do nothing but hit a cymbal every few measures while the other two went to town.  At one point they were all playing the same thing but timed their snare hits to within seconds of each other so it sounded like an echo. They even played some gentle percussion sections (on various electronic gadgets).  I never knew where to look.

And that was true again.  I’ll amend that to say that Harrison had some serious heavy metal chops–so much double bass work.  And he also had  a bunch of little tiny cymbals that he hit with huge drums sticks which I enjoyed immensely.  It was also fascinating to watch him do literally nothing for half of “Starless” while the other guys played the main rhythms.  And then he took over at the end and rocked the house.

The “new” drummer Stacey had the center drum set.  What amazed me was how much he played the keyboard/piano.  On a couple of songs he was playing the lead keyboard–his piano playing was excellent.  An his drumming wasn’t shabby either.

Continues from last time:

And that’s all going on in front of the other guys–the guys who are actually playing the (super complicated and intense) music.  There were times when the guitar and sax were wailing away and you could see they were doing intricate stuff but the drums were always out front drawing in your eyes.

Collins played a lot of solos (sometimes Fripp’s guitar sounded like the sax as well), and he used the bass sax like a bass guitar (while Levin was doing his own thing) a lot.  I really enjoyed the sounds he got out of his horns.  And I just loved when he busted out the flute a few times–a wonderful contrast to the guitar and drum noise.

He even used a bass flute–a huge monstrosity of an instrument that was very cool. During one song he had a lengthy flute solo and he played a riff although I couldn’t quite tell what it was.

Last time I said that it seemed that Levin got lost in the mix sometimes.  That’s certainly not true when he plays the bass.  But I think what happens is that the Stick has a lot of high notes so he might be playing the same thing as everyone else–or it’s so high that its sounds like guitar but is actually him.  Regardless, it was amazing watching him play it.  There’s a tour of his other band Stick Men that a guy was telling me I should certainly go see, but the local show is while I’m out of town.  Rats.

Like last time, the band started the show with the drummers playing around, and it was really intense to watch these three guys with very different styles bash away.

And even though this seemed like a continuation of the same tour that I saw in 2014, the setlist was really quite different.  They opened with “Neurotica” a song from Beat, an album I never would have guessed they’d play anything from.

We got a new song “Radical Action III” and then some unexpected older songs: “Cirkus” and “Lizard” (but not all of the parts of it).

They played two songs in a row from Red.  Before the tour started there was a rumor that they were going to play all five songs from this album.  They actually wound up only playing three. We didn’t get “One More Red Nightmare” (which is fine because I saw it last time) and “Fallen Angel” was a nice trade off.

I was surprised (again) to hear “Islands” from an album that many fans have a love/hate feeling about. But I was thrilled that the first set ended with “Lark’s Tongue in Aspic Part 2.”

There was no intermission last time, and the intermission meant they played for even longer than last time–about 3 hours.  During the intermission I was chatting with a guy in the front row (he bought the VIP package and came all the way down from Connecticut.  I don’t usually chat too much with other people at shows, so this was a fun opportunity to geek out (he told me about the Stick Men shows).

What I said last time was true again:

Speaking of the crowd…  you could hear a pin drop, (and there may have even been one with all that percussion).  At one point the percussion was so quiet and we all focused as each drummer delicately hit the side of one cymbal followed by another and another going on a circle.  And no one breathed while each note rang out.  Best audience ever.  By the end of the show they were a bit more raucous between songs, but in the beginning it was pure reverence.

After the intersession, they returned with “Lark’s Tongue in Aspic Part 1” and we went berserk, of course.

I get the feeling that a lot of fans don’t really like the newer music that much (they go nuts for the old stuff).  But I really like the new stuff, so I was thrilled that they played the instrumental section of “The Construktion of Light” and later on “Level Five.”

Even though I like Jakko’s voice and I think he does a great job “covering” so many of the band’s past singers, I really enjoy the instrumental sections a lot.  I love the complexities and cool time changes and the way the whole band moves together.  It almost makes the few times that Jakko sings feel even more special.  He does an incredible job with the Greg Lake and John Wetton songs.  And this time with the Adrian Belew songs as well.

The middle section of set 2 was really surprising to me because they played “Easy Money,” a “funny” song that I just never would have guessed would be played by this line up.  And then came “Discipline,” from the beloved album Indiscipline.  They didn’t play anything from that album the previous show so I was thrilled to hear that opening section (from Tony on the stick).  What was really interesting was that on record the song is more or less spoken word, but Jakko made up his own sung melody for the lyrics.  It changed the song quite a bit and made it really new.

They ended with “Starless” which was once again awesome. It was during this song that they slowly bathed the set in red lights which was pretty cool, too.

During the intermission the guy I was talking to said that they would definitely play “Schizoid” because that’s where Fripp gets to show off and solo (he learned that during the Q&A), so it was interesting to pay attention to him in this show.

But the first encore was their version of David Bowie’s “Heroes.” I should have guessed they’d play it since they just released the EP, but I hadn’t even considered it.  It sounded great but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed because the song is so plain compared to the rest of the band’s music.  I keep forgetting that Fripp played guitar on the original, so it all works out fine.  The crowd went pretty nuts for it though, so that’s good.

But they went even crazier for “21st Century Schizoid Man.”  Like last time, there was a drum solo (Harrison) in the middle which seemed to be a way for him to show off any drums that he hadn’t hit yet (it even got a round of applause from Pat Mastoletto).  And Fripp’s solo was really interesting–he played some crazy weird off-unsound notes for a bit—slow chords like he didn’t exactly know how to play the guitar.  He was just goofing around and then all of sudden he just burst forth with some incredible soloing.  I wished I could have seen him better, but alas, I could only watch him peripherally.

As I said last time

Like last time there was a request that were no photos taken during the show.  Unlike last time there was no funny opening about it. Rather, there were serious signs up on stage asking that people not use their cameras or they might get thrown out.  About three songs in I actually saw someone get thrown out.  I have to assume he was filming (why else would he get ejected).  He was in the $175 seats too, and he saw about 15 minutes of music.  He must hate King Crimson (or  the Basie) now, but it’s not like he wasn’t warned.

The announcement said that as soon as Tony takes out his camera, that’s the sign that we can all take out ours,  which we all did.

So I got some fun pictures of the guys, and after the show (since I was so close), I got some close ups of their drums.  I also found out that I am visible in Tony Levin’s group shot after the show–that was cool too.

It was such a great show, I was buzzing all the way home.

The fact that they just announced another go around and that I just bought a ticket to their return trip to Philly (in front of Pat this time) is testament to how great the show was.  Both times I’ve seen them I considered getting tickets for the following night as well, but I never did.  This allows me to feel like I did.