We saw King Crimson last Thursday night at the Nokia Theater in NY. My second rock show in 2 month, how about that! The Nokia is a weird little theatre in the basement of my building. KC of course is once of my all-time favorite rock bands, giants in the prog pantheon, with their layers upon layers of guitars and percussion, copious use of dynamic contrast, dissonant chords and out meters, all resulting in an oeuvre of epic, angular anthems.
I’ve seen these guys a few times, as a quartet and a double trio, but this is first time I’ve seen them in a five-piece lineup, and I’d say it was the best version of the group I’d seen. It was Fripp and Adrian Belew on guitars and the inimitable Tony Levin on stick. He really is fantastic! In addition they had two drummers. Neither of them was Bill Bruford, but between them they made just about as much racket, and did some really nice back-n-forth polyrhythmic phase jams.
It was their 40th anniversary tour, but as usual they didn’t play anything from the Greg Lake era, or even any non-instrumentals from John Wetton era (understandably so, even though that is some of my favorite stuff and it would’ve been a treat for the fans.) They did some instrumentals off of Lark’s Tongues, Starless and Red, leaned heavily on material from Discipline and Three of a Perfect Pair, and Vrooom/Thrak. Thela Hun Ginjeet, Indiscipline, Frame By Frame Elephant Talk were some favorites. Lots of dual drum solos, and did mention that Tony Levin is fantastic?
A few downsides: One was the venue, which was a bit weird to get into, down a super long escalator. It felt claustrophobic and did not have well marked fire exits. Next was that Fripp basically hid behind his rack the whole show. I know he likes to be weird, but come on Bob you’re there to put on a show! Stand up once in a while and move. This is rock’n’roll after all. Third was that there was no opening act, but the band only played for an hour and forty-five minutes. I mean, they should’ve gone on another hour. They have enough songs after 40 years already!