Liederhalle Stuttgart Germany

The 6th night into the tour and Crimson are up and running from the first note in Stuttgart. Belew’s soloing throughout the first half of the set borders on runaway manic. ProzaKc Blues has a real swing and swagger to it and although One Time moves slightly out of kilter, it nevertheless creates a spellbinding magic all its own. FraKctured is a savage blast of Crim particularly on the fast-running lines. Tonight’s improv revisits Seizure with Belew once again delving into the his ganderbag of strangulated distortion and clanking chords. He doesn’t have it all his own way as Fripp lets rip with a late surge of molten ferocity and the two are briefly locked in a surging, swirling duel before Fripp edges out into the front. The doomy Heavy ConstruKction chords break down into a frenetic burst of fretwork. Despite the apparent chaos they all end at the same point, making this a particularly satisfying. An edit of this track was first released on the triple live album, Heavy ConstruKction. At the end of Oyster Soup the guitarist can be heard yelling encouraging noises to his colleagues. In his dairy he noted “The venue tonight was a symphonic hall. Probably superb for an orchestra but utterly inappropriate for a rock group. The reverberation was to forever. So, technically, a very hard evening for the players onstage. But the audience were superb: enthusiastic & supportive. This revived my spirits after last night.”