Merriweather Post Pavilion
This is the third gig of a tour that almost never happened thanks to the strained relationship between Fripp and Belew during the making of Beat three months earlier. That rift saw Fripp withdraw to Wimborne during the album’s final mixing and the future of the group hung in the balance.
With an uneasy truce declared between the parties the band hit the road and whatever differences there had been in the studio, out on the concert platform all that negative energy had been transformed into something far more positive.
This audience recording is a little boomy and tinny in places but it does present a perfectly acceptable audio snapshot of Crimson doing their thing and doing it very well indeed with Red sounding particularly impressive and magisterial. The Howler sounding a tad more vital here than on its studio counterpart is a good example of how the live situation alters or raises the state of a piece of music.
Even Frame By Frame, a track that already comes with its very own internal propulsion firing on all cylinders, sounds turbo-charged in this context. While Matte Kudasai and The Sheltering Sky feel perfunctory in places the same cannot be said for a dazzling Neal and Jack and Me and hearing the metrical conundrum of Discipline beautifully and perfectly falling into place.
With an uneasy truce declared between the parties the band hit the road and whatever differences there had been in the studio, out on the concert platform all that negative energy had been transformed into something far more positive.
This audience recording is a little boomy and tinny in places but it does present a perfectly acceptable audio snapshot of Crimson doing their thing and doing it very well indeed with Red sounding particularly impressive and magisterial. The Howler sounding a tad more vital here than on its studio counterpart is a good example of how the live situation alters or raises the state of a piece of music.
Even Frame By Frame, a track that already comes with its very own internal propulsion firing on all cylinders, sounds turbo-charged in this context. While Matte Kudasai and The Sheltering Sky feel perfunctory in places the same cannot be said for a dazzling Neal and Jack and Me and hearing the metrical conundrum of Discipline beautifully and perfectly falling into place.
