Birchmere

Things don’t always go according to plan and when they don’t you sometimes have to improvise. When Adrian Belew fell ill on the third night of King Crimson 2003 tour the band was faced with cancelling the gig or going ahead in their ProjeKct 3 incarnation. Happily, they chose the latter and treated the audience, who were offered a refund if they didn’t want to see P3, to a night of improvisation around some well-known themes.

Pat Mastelotto recalls the last-minute decision was a challenge. Whereas normally in the ProjeKcts he would have had banks of loops and samples prepared and available at the right tempo and volume, this being a King Crimson tour none of those were available. Another ingredient thrown into the pot of uncertainty was they were still acclimatising to their newly-commissioned in-ear monitors. ‘It might sound like a small detail but it’s monumental since how and what we hear is what we react to. Between new gear and in-ears monitoring I was not at all prepared for a free-improv show,” admits Mastelotto.

After a shortened set the band also gave an impromptu Q&A session, something which delighted the audience. So, on the third night of the tour, on the third day of the third month in the third year of the new decade, three musicians took the stage and something magical happened.


Though the music and the Q&A were both officially recorded, when it came to compiling the Birchmere gig for release as part of the KCCC, the Q&A session was missing. We know Pat had a copy of the talk which he sampled and used in Crimson shows later in the tour.

The master however had vamoosed. Following an announcement on the DGMLive news page when the Birchmere gig was released, an audience recording of the Q&A was sent to us courtesy of the mighty Vargan.

So, now as a perfect compliment to the Birchmere gig, here’s that Q & A session added to the end of the show, which famously includes Robert playing Fracture accompanied only by Pat and Trey on handclaps and other percussive parts!