This previously unknown soundboard tape was discovered by ex-KC crew member Chris Kettle and passed on to DGM in 2017. The mad, savage beauty and heroic sense of adventure that made this period so magical is caught on the fly in wonderful up-close and pristine detail by Chris Kettle on this soundboard cassette. The improv that follows on from Daily Games (or Book Of Saturday as it would later be titled) moves into something that could pass for a West Coast-like ‘peaceful vibe.’ With a laid back groove from Bruford, burbling percussion from Muir and a meandering almost mellow solo by Fripp with yearning annotation from Cross on violin.
When Fripp comes in with his laser-beam sustain as the pace hots up, Bruford can be heard yelling his approval. As the velocity increases there’s a line from Fripp that could easily be mistaken for the opening of Fracture suggesting that this future-classic was spiralling around him even at this early stage.
Bruford can be heard yelling more as the tension and grooves build between Wetton’s percolating bass and his drumming. The blow prior to a beautiful reading of Exiles is brimming with invention and a level of collective attention that is especially impressive.
The brutal stop of Easy Money gives way to an amorphous improvisation that centres on a lot of percussion and allsorts with some Fripp-powered Mellotronic surges and swoops which ultimately herald the way out of the nightmare/frightmare zone and out towards The Talking Drum and the climax of the main set, LTIA Pt II.
Though the visual element of Jamie Muir’s contribution is lost in all of this, his presence as a kind of agent provocateur within the music comes over loud and clear throughout. Tragically as Muir flails chains on his sheet metal toward the climax of the last verse of LTIA PT II the tape runs out and this hitherto unheard gem from KC ’72 comes to an abrupt end. Regardless of missing the 21st Century Schizoid Man encore, this is a superb-sounding recording of this incarnation in full-flight.
This previously unknown soundboard tape was discovered by ex-KC crew member Chris Kettle and passed on to DGM in 2017. The mad, savage beauty and heroic sense of adventure that made this period so magical is caught on the fly in wonderful up-close and pristine detail by Chris Kettle on this soundboard cassette. The improv that follows on from Dai...
This is a solid show. I love the early live versions of the Larks' songs and I absolutely love the long improvs from the Muir era which they should have made a track on Larks'. I own this show and the Beat-Club show and I just love this incarnation. The audio quality is really not that bad, and this is definitely worth a buy. Interesting on the improvs someone is like, moaning, or humming, or whatever into the microphone as a part of the music. Probably Jamie. 9/10
Written by Daniel Lincoln Jr
Great show !
I’ve purchased a couple shows now from the wetton and 3 from the muir era and this by far is my favorite. The improvs are so interesting the first one has a very unique vibe and sound that not many i’ve heard do and the quality of sound is really pretty good , great cali try on the guitar and vocals and the RF announce me to is able to be heard even in a car stereo system which is really a testament to the quality of the audio in the recording. If your here to check it out and are thinking a...
I’ve purchased a couple shows now from the wetton and 3 from the muir era and this by far is my favorite. The improvs are so interesting the first one has a very unique vibe and sound that not many i’ve heard do and the quality of sound is really pretty good , great cali try on the guitar and vocals and the RF announce me to is able to be heard even in a car stereo system which is really a testament to the quality of the audio in the recording. If your here to check it out and are thinking about it .. it’s definitely worth the purchase a more than perfect show show of one of the best eras of crimson.
Written by Andrew Kahn
A Brief Trip to Agartha Miles Before Miles
You love live music or you don't, you love improvisation or you don't, and you love free jazz or you don't. If you do, get ahold of this recording most immediately. The Crimsoid evolutions, obviously, touch upon many "genres" and both consume and exhume influences in great gasping gulps. The fan of "Sleepless" or the more modern, orchestrated (if controlled violence in said orchestration, at times) KC may or may not find this sort of lightning in a bottle immediately compelling. As a huge fan of...
You love live music or you don't, you love improvisation or you don't, and you love free jazz or you don't. If you do, get ahold of this recording most immediately. The Crimsoid evolutions, obviously, touch upon many "genres" and both consume and exhume influences in great gasping gulps. The fan of "Sleepless" or the more modern, orchestrated (if controlled violence in said orchestration, at times) KC may or may not find this sort of lightning in a bottle immediately compelling. As a huge fan of Miles Davis in the 70s, Mahavishnu, Zappa, and Jerry Garcia, this is a revelation, and will be in heavy rotation for the forseeable. In particular the Improvs, which predate Miles' (then) "final" two live albums Agartha and Pangaea by three years, but contemporaneous to McLaughlin's intergalactic explorations, are astonishing in many ways and fit perfectly in with the beautiful chaos of those albums. The guitaring here is splendid. The Mellotron has never sounded better - and I am in the small crowd who thinks the Mellotron has never sounded bad. In the "California" section of Easy Money, you'd be forgiven for thinking Zappa or Garcia jumped in, California's two greatest home-grown players IMO, though RF wasn't copying anyone then or ever, it's a vibe (dude), and one that could only be in '72. All in all Kettle is a hero for finding this in his shoebox or wherever, and should DGM/KCCC decide to start doing limited vinyls of some of these shows this should be top of the list. As longtime Dead, Phish, Zappa fan as well as KC, the slightly warbly tonality at times, John's pitchy vocal, and the abrupt cutoff are small prices to pay for the expression around and preceding them. Larks congealed into what it congealed into, and this lineup lasted about ten minutes past this gig, but we've got this, and as the phrase goes IT WAS GOOD.
Written by Keith Ewing
Special.
There is only one other recording that without fail grips me and hauls me in and will not let me go like this release. I will mention it at the end of this review as a teaser, so to say, and you can all disagree with me. Meanwhile, this Newcastle recording, its curious little origin story aside, appeals beyond measure and not least because Broof's otherwise wonkily insistent coconut tom sound is somehow mostly absent here. Whew. Everyone seems confident without being arrogant; experimentally ten...
There is only one other recording that without fail grips me and hauls me in and will not let me go like this release. I will mention it at the end of this review as a teaser, so to say, and you can all disagree with me. Meanwhile, this Newcastle recording, its curious little origin story aside, appeals beyond measure and not least because Broof's otherwise wonkily insistent coconut tom sound is somehow mostly absent here. Whew. Everyone seems confident without being arrogant; experimentally tenacious without grandstanding, crimsters will understand what I mean. And it may be that Muir's shamanic charisma as saw-massaging-leaf-flutterer is captured at its enchanting best - close listening makes it seem as if he perhaps has a pet chimpanzee helping with the percussion duties. His performance, even sans the visual, is paleolithic in the only good way it could be. Where crim of this period is too often and understandably, given their 20-something testosterone levels, a pissing contest this show communicates a marvelously irresistible EBULLIANCE. Yes, we adore crim for their ceaseless menace. But I'm going to take a leap and declare this release definitive. It's magic and likewise it's magical that it arrived from a long-lost cassette, the sound quality is far better than serviceable. If a newbie asked me where to begin with crim I would without hesitation point them here. High praise indeed for I appreciate aspects of all crimiterations. The other recording I alluded to? The hair-raising Ladies of the Road compilation with its Bozzy brilliance and unhindered free-jazz-hard-bop skronk is almost exactly equally brilliantly arresting for its Schizoid improvs alone. More remarkable, then, that Newcastle transcends the injury of the Schizoid amputation. It's so good it doesn't need it.
