There are some gigs where, to borrow a phrase, “when it all comes together it is as if the angels descend from heaven on their silver clouds and play their golden trumpets”, and there are others where such heavenly ambitions remain elusively out of reach. The band sound tired and irritable on the 12th date of their last tour together.
An incomplete LTIApt2 is marred by the band not being able to hear each other properly resulting in different players being left on the wrong side of the beat, and the violin irksomely flat. Lament doesn’t fare much better with Cross’s ‘tron being out of tune and other missed cues abounding in a somewhat dashed-off Exiles.
Although improvisations are a normally a speciality of this incarnation, the main one between Exiles and The Night Watch somehow never quite catches fire. It’s driven by a restless Bruford trying out a series of speculative beats, as though taking the temperature of the band. With Cross developing abstract clouds on the electric piano and Fripp sounding strident notes, it’s not until around 3.00 minutes before they settle on a fast-moving direction. Yet even at this juncture there’s a degree of diffidence evident and none of the flying sparks more usually associated with this band.
Live versions of Starless are enough of a rarity to make each of them somewhat special. Wetton’s vocals on Starless come at a point when the words had yet to be pinned down and so he’s heard to what amounts scatting his way through the verses. Fripp and the bass / electric piano sections struggle to stay on target during Bruford’s percussive excursions, and as Starless concludes, it sounds more of a stumble than a dramatic resolution. This soundboard tape is missing the set-finishing Schizoid Man but perhaps that’s a good thing given the below-par performance overall?
