Plumpton Festival Plumpton England

AUDIO SOURCE: Bootleg Cassette

DGM AUDIO QUALITY

AVERAGE CUSTOMER RATING

For King Crimson’s appearance at the 9th National Jazz, Pop, Ballads & Blues Festival, the band were placed low down on the bill with Idle Race, Dry Ice and Groundhogs, and situated in a tent well away from the main stage. “Can I tell why we played there?” Fripp explained to Vic Garbarini in 1981, “The agency that booked it hadn't been completely straight with us, so we said, you're no longer our agents. So instead of putting us on front stage -where we'd wipe out anything they had- they stuck us in the tent, so we wouldn't touch anyone. It was a deliberate agency move to fuck up our careers.”

Captured in this audience recording, the incendiary rendition of 21st Century Schizoid Man opening the show suggests that Fripp’s assertion that Crimso would wipe out anyone else is pretty much on the mark. Aside from the shock and awe of the bone-crunching opening, the fiery details in the ensuing piece are really unlike any other of the rock acts appearing that day. The telepathic qualities between the Giles and Lake are quite extraordinary. Check out the audacious slow-down in tempo under Fripp’s solo. Just as it seems they’re about to grind to a halt, the pair take off again, adding to the drama underneath Fripp’s angular workout, ahead of the transition to Ian McDonald’s frenzied burst.

An incendiary sequence of improvisations within Donavan’s Get Thy Bearings, Mantra and Travel Weary Capricorn showcase a determination to break away from the verse-chorus-extended solo, the accepted norm of the day, and adopt a collective approach that was open-ended and above all, open-minded. Runs and phrases are sometimes swapped, openings are sometimes ignored or dropped as one member of the quartet pulls in another direction altogether. And if all this sounds rather serious and sombre, there’s plenty of examples within these fascinating pieces where the band is clearly smiling and having a lot of fun.

Please note this concert was originally released as part of the Epitaph 4-disc box set.
Plumpton Festival Plumpton England

AUDIO SOURCE: Bootleg Cassette

DGM AUDIO QUALITY

AVERAGE CUSTOMER RATING

TRACK
TIME
01
21st Century Schizoid Man
07:37
02
Get Thy Bearings
11:05
03
In The Court Of The Crimson King
07:02
04
Mantra
08:48
05
Travel Weary Capricorn
03:58
06
Improv Including By The Sleeping Lagoon
08:55
07
Mars
08:02

KC19690809Plumpton1

KC19690809Plumpton2

KC19690809Plumpton3 - Ian McDonald

KC19690809lumpton4

Written by Andrew Thomas
Fearless and highly...thrakked?
A must-have show from the original Crimson, with quality fidelity and exceptional performance. All live recordings of this lineup can be a bit dodgy in terms of sound quality, but this one is better than the average. It's good enough that the subtleties of Lake's bass and Giles' drumming can be appreciated, and that's about as good as it gets from this time period. Even better, the mellotron stays in tune throughout! As for the performance, one can only marvel at how good this band was right...
Written by David Freshman
Intense music that challenges!
This recording of King Crimson from the Plumpton Festival, Aug. 9th, 1969, shows the band on fire.  The recording itself is a bit lo-fi, but the playing is superb! When King Crimson take chances and really play straight from their souls, there simply is no other band on Earth that compares. At this time, King Crimson were really taking fantastic risks and challenging themselves and audiences nightly. Joe Strummer mentioned in an old issue of Musician (1981 I think), that...
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