#774: K is for King Crimson (1969)

In the 80’s, there was an SNL
knock-off on ABC called Fridays.
On one episode, the musical guest
was a band called King Crimson.
I don’t remember if, at the time,
I had any awareness of this band
or if I was hearing the name for
the first time, but I do know that
this was the first time I had heard
the music of this crazy group of
musicians. The mid-80’s iteration
was for me the perfect blend
of the things I loved most in my
budding musical preferences:
stellar musicianship matched with
an eclectic, madcap zaniness:
arty, nerdy progressive rock.
“Elephant Talk” was the first King
Crimson song I heard, and I was
over the moon with admiration
for its prog rock bonafides and
its new wave weirdness.
So I dove directly into the mid-80’s
King Crimson output, and only
recently, within the last decade,
have I ventured into the back
catalog. I think that now I have
every studio album from 1969
to 2019, mostly on vinyl with a
few titles on CD. Buckle up,
this will take me a few days.

Begin at the beginning with
the debut, In the Court of the
Crimson King from 1969 and
the opening track “21st Century
Schizoid Man.” Distorted vocals,
breakneck rhythmic complexity,
drumming that is all over the
map, precise breaks with dead
silences, and a cacophonous
ending. It might be accurate to
say that it was the most complex
and strangest rock tune in
the history of rock tunes,
followed by “I Talk to the Wind,”
which is so not that, but
mellow and beautiful, replete
with flute solo and Greg Lake’s
smooth, relaxed vocal. I had
forgotten about Greg Lake’s
participation in the origins of
King Crimson and remember
that the band was the launching
point for a number of illustrious
careers and also the destination
for some others. Greg Lake would
go on to form Emerson, Lake,
and Palmer, and within the next
year or so, Bill Bruford, one of
England’s greatest rock drummers,
would move from Yes to Crimson.

As experimental and proggy
as they were, this debut King Crimson,
after the spasm of that opening track,
is actually quite easy to listen to,
melodic, sensitive, even lovely,
notwithstanding the hippy lyrics
and the strange but quiet
improvisations half way through
“Moonchild” (including “The Dream”
and “The Illusion”).
And it sounds great, this reissue
and remix by perhaps the 21st
century’s most prolific English prog
rocker and accomplished engineer,
Steven Wilson, on big, fat, 200 gram
black vinyl. Unlike so many recent
pressings of new music and classic
albums on vinyl, here the silences are
silent; there are no pesky noise artifacts.

The album closes with the title track,
“In the Court of the Crimson King,” an
epic, anthemic piece complete with the
kind of fantasy-infused lyric that became
so typical thereafter of so much of
progressive rock lyric on both sides of
the pond. I love how the title of this
track and of the album is nowhere on
the front cover. Instead, we get this
iconic, crazy, cartoon, extreme close-up
of a face depicted it seems in a state of
abject terror. An interesting and cryptic
choice, dependent on a potential
costumer’s understanding despite the
lack of indicators that this is King
Crimson’s debut album. Inside the gatefold
finally on the left side as a heading
for the lyrics and liner note credits,
we see the title of the album and
the unusual attribution: “an observation
by King Crimson.” It may be the first
and only time I’ve seen a musical
artist or band name a set of songs as an
“observation,” a singular observation
across, in this case, only five long songs.
It might require a bit of study
and more time than I’m willing to give
to figure out exactly what that
“observation” is, whether it’s meant
to be synonymous with some kind of
conclusion, or rather a more pedestrian
description of something. I don’t know,
but it has that kind of intellectualism
that Robert Fripp, the band’s founder
and leader from day one, is kind of
famous for. He’s infamously maybe the
most “serious” musician on the planet,
even though, if you’ve been lucky
enough to see them, you wouldn’t
come to this “observation” about his
alleged seriousness if you had
watched any one of his covid era home
videos with his wife, Toyah Wilcox.
Surprisingly silly stuff.
Don’t believe me?

Just google “robert fripp and toyah sunday lunch”
or punch that into the YouTube search engine.
Go ahead, I dare ya.

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Notes on the vinyl edition: In the Court of the Crimson King, Digital Global Mobile Records, 2018 reissue and remix of the 1969 album, in a five album (six discs) box set, King Crimson, 1969 to 1972.

In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.