39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Making History, or The Death Of The Universe As An Art Form, July 14, 2006
This review is from: Epitaph (Audio CD)
Words fail me, but I will try, and please forgive me if this goes on longer than may seem necessary.
One can read about what it was like to be there when history is being made, but it's never quite the same as actually having witnessed it for yourself. Anyone who is even remotely interested in King Crimson, Robert Fripp, 1970's Art Rock (now called Prog Rock in an attempt to deflate it's meaningfulness by people who don't like it), the end of the Flower Power era and the onset of the Age of Aquarius simply *MUST* pick up this box set to compensate yourself for having missed out on being there, or as an at-times tearful walk down memory lane for those who were. As Mr. Fripp himself points out in his (as usual) highly detailed, insightful and endearingly stuffy liner notes, the recordings contained on this box set or the first King Crimson album "In The Court of the Crimson King" (or "ITCOTCK" for short), cannot come close to encapsulating the sheer power, majesty, and awe-inspiring terror that was King Crimson circa 1969. They were the perfect band for the end of that decade and it is a shame they did not continue as a unit beyond that legendary final show at the Filmore West -- recreated on this box set in it's completion for the first time ever -- but fate is often beyond the control of those who are destined to live it.
To sum up, those Crimson fans who may even be familiar with this band's work from "ITCOTKC" (and the followup "In the Wake of Poseidon") may very well not be prepared for what they will hear on the 2 CDs of music contained in the box set for the first time. There are reasons:
First, the recordings themselves were very primatively made at a time when the technology to record live music was not up to speed with the complexity of what was being played. The live impact of the sound is for the most part lost to time, and what was captured on tape & resurrected for this release is but a pale shadow of what it probably sounded like in person. One needs to listen to this actively with their imagination switched on to compensate for the technology's inability to represent what was going on when the band was playing -- and that doesn't even touch on the visual aspects of the performances. Don't bother with anything less than headphones either until the majesty of the live recordings becomes apparent. On anything less than a high-end speaker system it will sound tinny and harsh, but in the middle of your skull it will sound like the doors of Hell have opened up and guess who's playing the main stage?
With that apology or admission made, the second aspect of it that more casual Crimson fans may not be prepared for is how utterly overwhelming the performances are, especially the versions "Epitaph" which the set was so correctly named after. On the studio album it is a sweeping, post-Beatles pean to the disillusionment and confusion sweeping the world at the end of the 1960's when nothing of value seemed to have any worth; An idealistic conclusion that only a 23 year old bohemian could arrive at, and succinctly summed up in the song's inarguably timeless lyrics. Then you stop and realize: These were 20 year old lads playing this stuff. Live. With no overdubs, no correction passes to cover over bummer notes, and in front of live paying audiences. It was unprecedented stuff, and after hearing the three versions of the song (one a BBC demo with some double tracking but still very live) you will wonder not only how the heck they came up with it, but why they even bothered with the LP version at all. They are also Greg Lake's finest collective performance as a vocalist: I cannot imagine anyone else singing the song while keeping a straight face.
I still remember sitting in my room as a likewise idealistic 20 year old, head wedged between the speakers and mouth agog with awe at how forcefully put their communal disillusionment was. But hearing "Epitaph" performed live on this box set is like looking straight into the Abyss by comparison. Here is the soundtrack for the Apocalypse, circa 1969. The modern day equivalent does not exist (or at least I have never heard the likes) and it is only by placing one's mind in the context of the live recordings with other humans present that the sheer brilliance of the composition finally becomes clear. This was a band fighting against entropy, determined to succeed or take the whole ship of humanity down with them. The LP version of the song always had the power to move me to tears at times, but the 3 live cuts on this box set are utterly gut wrenching. Nearly forty years later we are still doomed as a species, and only King Crimson from 1969 was able to put their fingers on the reason why with this composition. It will demand to be heard again and again. Then again for good measure.
The third "hurdle" that modern day consumers familiar with the Crimson legacy will have to clear is the instrumentation itself. Robert Fripp plays some bummer notes, Ian MacDonald's flute solos sometimes crack & his mellotron developes a nasty case of hiccouphs, Greg Lake forgets his lyrics & makes up new ones or loses his breath, and there are contributions by the audience members in the form of conversations at a couple of breaks. In other words, these are human beings, not "gods" or saints or saviors. Fallible 20 - 27 year old blokes who had been trying to break into the pop music scene for a collective decade plus of frustration, commercial defeats and triumphant failures of the likes that have never been seen, especially when considering where they all ended up in good time. Modern day listeners who perhaps are displeased by the nature of the recordings need to remind themselves that what is being performed had never existed before even as a genre: This is beyond the scale of anything that The Beatles, Hendrix, Miles Davis or any of the great innovators of the age had ever attempted.
And again, it is all being done live, by just four musicians and one off-stage roadie/light show/sound board operator. The collective group's liner note contributions provide exhaustively fascinating detail of how the complete (or not) performances are often composites made from more than one source recordings digitally edited together to create a closer approximation to what was going on at the shows, and for that matter the CDs are a marvel of modern day sound engineering that was not possible until 1997, which is already almost a decade ago. That the music is still relevant now seems prophetic, leading me to the conclusion that this release was an act of destiny. In spite of all the carelessness, indifference and logistical obstacles, these performances were meant to be heard again thirty-seven years later, contemplated over, debated and argued about, then listened to again for good measure. It is not happy music or party music, but to paraphrase a published review of Crimson from 1970 or so, you get the impression from listening to the band that if Wagner or Beethoven had been alive at the time they would have been in King Crimson.
Which leads me to my favorite aspect of the collection, which is hearing the great Bob Fripp play as an equal amongst peers who at times shame his musicianship. Especially drummer Michael Giles -- his influence on Art Rock or Prog Rock cannot be overlooked, and these live recordings speak more as to why than the LP tracks he contributed while a member of the group. When people discuss the great percussion of the Art Rock years you usually hear names like Neal Pert or Bill Bruford, both of whom owe a great debt to Giles for making the role so much more than a mere "drummer" who keeps time. Ian MacDonald also comes off far more impressively than one might expect for the keyboardist from Foreigner, and only after hearing these live recordings does one realize what a soul wrenching body blow his decision to leave the band must have been to Fripp, Greg Lake, and Peter Sinfield. The band was as much his as it was Fripp's, maybe even more, but MacDonald was brilliant enough to know that his work in the band would eventually have led to a musical confrontation between the two. You can sort of hear it during the live performances of Holst's "Mars: God of War" with Fripp bending his power chord strings to wail like a crazed soprano over MacDonald's abyss-spanning mellotron waftings. They were not merely competing with each other but the whole of the Cosmos, and the only consolation that might be found in MacDonald's departure from the band is the commercial success he found with Foreigner, a band that I will always be repulsed by & which could not be more different in philosophy that Fripp's vision of King Crimson. Fripp may have won that battle but MacDonald torched the ship before bailing overboard, and as history has written the resulting wreckage was not pretty, but is powerfully summed up by these live recordings.
As for the tracks themselves, the BBC demos are probably the most traditionally appealing -- the BBC version of "In The Court of the Crimson King" is especially evocative of what the band probably would have been like in person. It is not the disjointed, freaky trip anthem as heard on the LP of the same name, but a powerful statement about the era that was so ahead of it's time that I have had people ask me if I was playing something by Oasis. The concert renditioning of the song is somewhat less satisfactory but like hearing Queen play a tape of "Bohemian Rhapsody" at a concert & bookend it with live portions it sort of re-inforces how that song was really a studio or rehearsal room creation. Fortunately the audience was forgiving enough to refrain from making too many comments so the humanizing aspect of the performance -- that means the near awfulness of it -- cannot be overlooked. But the live shows more than compensate for any discomfort caused by the band's collective...
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Promise and the End, October 7, 2002
This review is from: Epitaph (Audio CD)
OK yes the sound quality is not great, but how else are you ever going to hear Crimson live with GREG LAKE!!! The concerts were recorded by a guy in the audience with a tape recorder in his lap! I've heard worse. However you can hear everything well enough, and the big revelation of these recordings is that Crimson was truly an EXCEPTIONAL band at the time. Every member of this band is a top player, and Fripp extoles their virtues in the well-written booklet. If there is anyone who falls short, by his own admission it is Fripp, who's guitar playing is not what it was on later recordings. This is however no bar to enjoying this album. Lake is the real star of this show, and his voice was great, possibly the greatest voice in rock at the time. Fripp states that Lake's vocal performance on the title track of the Court album is the best he ever recorded. The live tracks are full of energy and a nervous urgency that excel even the recorded album versions. There are several tracks that were never recorded that are interesting, like Greg Lakes tune with the refrain "Let's all get stoned!". There is more than one performance of some tunes, but the first section is a BBC live-in-the-studio recording with excellent quality, though "21st Century" was from a different source as BBC lost the masters. This album makes the statement that this band was a major force and never has a debut promised so much. The demise of the Court version of Crimson was due to the youth and inexperience of it's members, as tensions were high and they all quit on Fripp after the gruelling first tour. Fripp states that the thing to do would have been to take 6 months off then reform in the studio. Hindsight is 20/20. Later albums would be more introspective and less even, as the original version of Crimson was a writing collective, everyone contributing equally. After this, Fripp was left holding the bag, doing most of the writing with Pete Sinfield providing lyrics, in live shows having to play the mellotron as well as guitar (Ian MacDonald was the original 'mellotron-ist') and riding the momentum of Court but never living up to this momentous debut. But as we all know Crimson continued to make great music, though the styles changed. Epitaph delivers on what it was like for the band in their year of 1969, when they were the hottest band going, and in context people were right to take notice. Epitaph is an apt title, for despite being a recording of King Crimson at their very beginning, it was all over by the end of this tour. Fripp's notes in the booklet are required reading for fans of Crimson, but also of ELP and Greg Lake, as it tells of all the influences that were pushing the band at the time, and relates Lake's famous meeting with Keith Emerson of The Nice which led to the formation of ELP.
The final chapter in the book tells the story of Fripp's battles with the music industry for over 30 years, and is not light reading. The age represented by this recording is past, when the musicians and their music were more valuable than their marketing possibilities.
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