The final night of the Larks’ Tongues quintet’s first and last tour of the UK. It had been quite a journey from one end of the country to another with a total of twenty-seven dates. Coming out of Book of Saturday the improvisation quickly goes from something amorphous to certain and direct with David Cross’s violin making strident headway across some solid funk-orientated grooves by Bruford and Wetton. Cross admits to being the most inexperienced member of the group but you wouldn’t know that from his work here. As he slides and glides melodies that intertwine with Fripp’s laser beam soloing the musical ground becomes incredibly turbulent thanks to the Herculean efforts of the rhythm section.
A beautiful rendition of Exiles provides the perfect palate cleanser after the rich improv but this being Crimson there’s little rest for the audience who, Schizoid Man as an encore number aside, was hearing an entire concert of completely unfamiliar music. As the band departs from a particularly rowdy Easy Money the transition into the improv is marked by Cross’s violent slashing harmonies on the violin. At this distance given the fuzzy nature of this audience recording it’s not easy to discern precisely what everybody is contributing early on though it’s possible that some of the high-frequency tones emanated from Muir’s habit of rubbing glass rods close to the microphone.
The final night of the Larks’ Tongues quintet’s first and last tour of the UK. It had been quite a journey from one end of the country to another with a total of twenty-seven dates. Coming out of Book of Saturday the improvisation quickly goes from something amorphous to certain and direct with David Cross’s violin making strident headway across so...
Jamie concerts are all great despite poor audio quality
Starting out with “Book of Saturday” is interesting, I’m more accustomed to hearing them begin the evenings with one of the high energy rockers. The more reserved start to the setlist leaves the following improv with a rather delicate atmosphere to it at first, but the rhythm section quickly gets bored, deciding to bring the energy up several notches, and the rest of the band cannot help but follow. John adds an extra vocal verse onto the end of the vocal section of “Exiles” and has ...
Starting out with “Book of Saturday” is interesting, I’m more accustomed to hearing them begin the evenings with one of the high energy rockers. The more reserved start to the setlist leaves the following improv with a rather delicate atmosphere to it at first, but the rhythm section quickly gets bored, deciding to bring the energy up several notches, and the rest of the band cannot help but follow. John adds an extra vocal verse onto the end of the vocal section of “Exiles” and has some particularly inspired delivery for it. The improv after Easy Money sounds like it has Fripp playing around with a tape loop machine at the beginning? Interesting! It doesn’t last long, tho, with the improv descending into an uncomfortable blurry mess of sound that is rather impressive when you realize that it’s being made with traditional instruments, tho still nearly like nails on a chalkboard to me. It trails off into a long section with just some trumpet blasts for a good long while, long enough that the audience got bored and it turned into a call and response section, with a punter yelling each time the trumpet horn blasted. This was the band’s way of transitioning into the bass+trumpet beginning of The Talking Drum, making the whole thing effectively the longest Talking Drum I’ve heard. Jamie adds quite a racket in Larks II, wish there was video! And of course, it’s awesome hearing Jamie play on Schizoid Man, that didn’t happen very many times. Altogether, great gig despite poor audio quality, I give it a 4.
