King Crimson on November 24, 1971 in New York

King Crimson

	November 24, 1971

	Academy Of Music New York, NY

Notes
“Ladies and gentlemen you see before you a phenomenon which is interesting if not rare; it’s a mellotron which has just broken down.” Eight gigs into the North American tour and Fripp’s mellotron has given up the ghost forcing him to valiantly comp for all he’s worth during an otherwise storming reading of Cirkus. There have been equipment bugs throughout the tour but thanks to some on-stage support from the crew normal service is soon restored. This is a bright and often hissy audience recording but it clears up nicely for Formentera containing some choppy picking from Fripp as though he’s slightly impatient and wanting to get on to the next track. When he does he opts for the sustained laser beam tone intially. Possessing the sleek beauty of a scalpel Fripp slices the air with before reverting to the chordal sledgehammer that stomps everything in its range flatter than a tentpeg. The outro is momentarily chaotic with Collins’ brass setting ‘tron being somewhat swamped by Fripp’s scorching tone. A superb Schizoid Man with Collins setting the place on fire gives the punters in New York the kind of clout they were cruising for all along. Another powerful gig by a band who definitely know what they’re doing.

Tracks

Disc Number 1
1.	Cirkus	[PREVIEW]	9.18
2.	RF Announcement	[PREVIEW]	1.30
3.	Pictures Of A City	[PREVIEW]	8.40
4.	RF Announcement	[PREVIEW]	1.04
5.	Formentera Lady	[PREVIEW]	6.40
6.	The Sailors Tale	[PREVIEW]	13.47
7.	21st Century Schizoid Man	[PREVIEW]	8.28
8.	RF Announcement	[PREVIEW]	0.55
9.	The Devils Triangle	[PREVIEW]	7.03

All previews are MP3 192kbps

Personnel
Robert Fripp
Mel Collins
Boz Burrell
Ian Wallace

Audio Source: Bootleg Cassette

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Fan Reviews

Start here!, Thu., Jun 6, 2013
Written by jeffoaster
At the time of writing this review, I have about a dozen concerts by the Islands lineup - pretty evenly divided throughout the band’s year as a performing entity. This concert is my favorite, and while I intend to download a few more in the future, it will be a difficult task to top this concert. So what makes it so good?

Obviously, the sound needs to be good and it’s quite decent on this: B/B+ would be my rating and it is perfectly sufficient even if you don’t have "bootleg adjusted" ears.

The performance is quite spirited as well. Collins, as usual, sets the bar very high, and the rest of his mates are more than equal to the task.

The setlist? Apparently the band was running a bit late - Fripp apologizes before the Devil’s Triangle about the short set and encourages the fans to come back the next night for a longer set (shrewd move, Mr. Fripp). As a result, the band did me a favor and cut out some of my lesser favorites - I really do not like Ladies of the Road. Between the lyrics, the bluesy riffs that Fripp doesn’t seem comfortable playing and the fact that Boz and Wallace seemed to clown around too much, it just doesn’t work for me. And hey, they skipped it tonight! Groon also is a song I can do without - too disjointed, scattered and meandering.

So what we’re left with is a good rendering of Cirkus, complete with a wobbly mellotron. Pictures is solid. Then the band kicks it up a notch. A solid Formentera Lady hands off to the best version of Sailor’s Tale that I’ve heard. Mel Collins solos during the transition, and you can see that he is starting to feel out the extended handoff that would appear in the ’72 recording. Once Fripp takes over for the solo.... pass the goosebumps please. He starts the solo with the laser-beam-scalpel-like precision and then switches halfway through to the "chordal sledgehammer" (love that term) that is more familiar to the studio recording. Absolutely brilliant. The brass mellotron kicks in and the climax spills over into the drum solo. While I am not a fan of drum solos, it seems quite an appropriate ending after that ending. Fripp resumes soloing after Wallace is done battling the VCS3 before the band finishes with a jaunty little jingle. Whew! Schizoid Man is equal to the task with an incredibly intense version as Collins tears the roof off the place (he can’t let Fripp outsolo him, right?)

So yeah, I rather like this one.

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