“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for that generous simmer of enthusiasm. It’s very exciting for King Crimson to be back in New York. There are times when I didn’t think we’d make it, I’m glad we did. The first piece for this evening was a new paranoic, mind-blowing, cosmic, cataclysmic King Crimson song, Doctor D,” says Fripp to a highly appreciative New York audience after the tongue-twisting opener and a finger-blistering rendition of Larks Part One.
In between those two numbers, we hear an excited punter shout a request for Cirkus. If the difference between the last incarnation of the band performing Cirkus in early 1972 and the new formation on stage that night in 1973 hadn’t been immediately obvious then it would become so after LTIA. Providing so many springboards for some remarkable moments. the number really is a tour de force.
After setting something of an exacting standard for the evening the team sweeps through Easy Money and comes out in a terrific improv albeit one with borders and framing devices which ensure they all turn on a dime. The remaining numbers are also played with the same vigour and commitment.
After some short vectoring beforehand, the build throughout The Talking Drum doesn’t disappoint, providing the perfect setup for LTIA Pt 2 wherein it’s especially gratifying to hear the audience applaud David Cross’s frantic soloing near the end of the number.
As audience recordings go, this one is pretty damn good and as such affords us a pretty decent audio snapshot of the band in action on the ninth date of their first American tour as a quartet.
