Prologue in Prose: This is the first time during this particular endeavor (it won’t likely be the last) when I am able to listen for the first time to and write about a record I have recently purchased. I bought this triple live record by the supergroup BEAT a few weeks ago and I abstained from listening the first time until I reached them in the alphabet in this nutty and ambitious listening and writing project. Tickets to see them were too expensive, so I waited for the live album. Adrian Belew, Steve Vai, Tony Levin, and Danny Carey playing in 2025 King Crimson’s 80’s catalog! Typically, I would much rather listen to studio recordings than a live one almost any day, and these records are some of my favorites, but there’s something about adding Steve Vai (from the early eighties Zappa band) and Danny Carey (most famous as the drummer for Tool) to the mix that makes this record special. Let’s hope they keep going. Studio album of new material, please. And it’s also cool to listen to the music from a favorite K band while I’m just starting with the B’s.
B is for Beat
Frippertronics without Robert
Fripp. I’m okay with it. It appears
he has given Beat his blessing.
Steve Vai has said
how hard it was to play
those crazy guitar parts.
Danny Carey is one of the best,
but Bill Bruford’s drum work
could not have been easy to learn.
I missed all of the earliest
King Crimson records.
After Adrian Belew joined,
I heard them the first time
in a live t.v. performance
of “Elephant Talk;” that bass
line from Tony Levin was
about the strangest and
most wonderful thing
I’d ever heard on the instrument,
which wasn’t really a bass, after all,
but a bass/guitar hybrid thing
called a Chapman Stick.
And Adrian Belew added a humor
and a kind of new wave energy
to the prog rock that made
my teenage heart just hum.
In the 80’s, it seemed, all
my favorite artists were
conspiring to make me happy.
Adrian Belew played with
Talking Heads and Bowie,
Fripp played with Bowie
and David Sylvian, and
Tony Levin was Peter Gabriel’s
guy. Danny Carey, at the time,
just a tad older than I was,
must have been woodshedding
in preparation for the 90’s.
This record brings everything
together. It’s a bit crunchy, not
as clean as the original band,
but how could it be, a live
performance, and 40 years later?
Notes on the vinyl. edition: Neon Heat Disease, Live in Los Angeles, Inside Out Music (Sony), 2025, triple translucent red vinyl, 180 gram.
In the event this is the first time you’ve seen a post in this series:
- I’m listening to every record in my collection in alphabetical order and writing a poem-like-thing for each artist represented there.
- It took me only 11 days to listen to all 29 record albums in the “A” section, but it might make sense, to make room for other kinds of writing on the blog, and to give my ears a rest, to attempt a single letter of the alphabet over a month’s time. I don’t know if that will work either–as I’m looking at the vast “B” section ahead. Nearly the entire Bowie catalog is in this section!
- I have made some decisions about how I might cheat. I may not listen again to a record I have played recently but out of order. I may also allow myself to skip redundancies. For example, a couple of my Bowie boxes include alternative versions of the same album with identical track lists. That’s just dumb. I will choose one. I might also skip compilation records or live albums in those same boxes or by other artists along the way–although I don’t think I have many of those. Not a greatest hits fan. Not a B-side collection fan. Not a fan of incessant remixes. Only an occasional fan of the live album.
michael jarmer 