Tuning a mellotron doesn't

To quote a certain Mr F. Mac, "Heroes are hard to find".  

Certainly, in my experience, musicians who start off as personal heroes often become or do something, that makes me think, "Nah..." However, I've had one constant musical hero, and that's King Crimson boss Robert Fripp. 

Fripp

He's always had a certain single-minded intensity that makes me want to listen to each new musical venture, even though I might not always like it. Yes, he seems cynical, rather cold at times, and cerebral, but how much of this perception is due to a conscious attempt on his part to construct a public persona? I suspect it's quite a bit, especially when the mask completely slipped during his lockdown videos with wife Toyah. Or was that, too, a mask?

 

Many rock musicians were and still are poor businessmen, and sometimes their choice of people to handle their business affairs is equally poor. However, some of them seem to have emerged from the morass of contracts, agreements, rights, royalties and advances relatively unscathed, and continue to make a comfortable living, with control over their own creations. Fripp is one such example and has retained the rights to his back catalogue, rather like the late Frank Zappa did eventually.

The two are also rather similar when it comes to their flexible use of recorded output - both studio and live.

Like Zappa, Fripp's attitude towards live recordings is that they are simply performances and, as such, are just as worthy of manipulation as studio sessions. So, live recordings may form the basis of "studio" tracks, as long as the finished product is a good performance.  

However, not everything Crimson is a mixture of studio and live, and Fripp's willingness to release mega box sets of the various Crims line ups' shows reveals plenty of Crimson in its raw live state, without studio overdubs.

He was well aware of the problems involved in recording a live gig and, indeed, wrote a list of them for the booklet that came with "The Great Deceiver" live set.

It's long been my belief that King Crimson were the greatest ever improvisatory rock band, and that the 1973/74 quartet of Fripp, Wetton, Cross and Bruford was its finest incarnation.

Choosing an example of this musical apogee - because that's where we're going - is difficult as there's so much to choose from. The "Starless" box set chronicling the band from my favourite period ran to 23 CDs, as well as several DVDs and Blu-Ray discs that included surround sound mixes and other fripperies.

After much deliberation, I've chosen the March 20, 1974 gig at the Palazzo dello Sport in Brescia, Italy. It's quite loose at times but it's also very frenetic and heavy.

TV studio - Paris 1974

Highlights, of which there are many, include an explosive "Improv II" calming down and then segueing ethereally into "Starless" - only the second time they'd played it live - and "Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part I)", which opens with Cross playing a simple but rather sinister violin riff, Fripp using feedback and Bruford demolishing his kit. Wetton, as always, is absolute bass bedrock and his voice is still strong, as it's early days for this particular tour to start taking its toll on his vocal cords. There's even a mellotron with rather "suspect" tuning.

  The Crims - "Starless" Paris 1974 - same performance as the "green screen" still above

Unfortunately, as with many Crims gig recordings, even soundboards, the show is incomplete - perhaps Fripp should have made one of his aphorisms all about having enough tape for the whole show...However, there's more than enough here to keep a Crims fan very  happy.

By the way, I said above that KC were the greatest ever improvisatory rock band ever - note the past tense. Nowadays, Fripp just seems content to take a group of technically brilliant musicians on tour and play numbers from the band's history, but I think the spark has gone for now. Why he needs three drummers just mystifies me and I find the whole exercise overbearing and a bit predictable, although some of the older material still occasionally surprises me with the band's new interpretations. Perhaps a future Fripp project will bring new Crimson music? Who knows?

However, for about a year back in late 1973 and early 1974, there was absolutely nothing to beat the Crims. Listen and marvel...