The 20th gig on a 28 date tour, the second night at the Supper Club in New York throws up an interesting Crimson performance. There’s a rough edginess to a lot of the music performed tonight with band nerves also being tested by some (thankfully)brief equipment failure here and there. LTIA IV rumbles into view, and interestingly is taken a quite a slow pace compared to other outings. The relatively slow speed only serves to emphasise the lumbering, thudding content.
The Mastelotto / Gunn-led Interlude after Frying Pan has echoes of the ProjeKcts, creating a varied and ambiguous territory from which FraKctured cautiously emerges. This particular rendition really flies by the seat of its pants with Ade’s guitar occasionally missing out and Fripp’s moto perpetuo becoming something of a tightrope walk that frequently teeters ominously over the abyss.
The real drama however comes when it kicks into the distorted rock section and the furious finger-picking erupts into an uneven but totally thrilling flight. The Supper Club erupts into spontaneous applause and shrieks of delight after Fripp completes an erratic but compelling execution of this fiendishly difficult piece. When FraKctured finally comes to rest you hear the place go bananas.
A stonking improv around a Drum ‘n’ Bass-style Siezure confirms the sky-high energy levels here and you can’t help but smile at Ade’s manful coping in problem-plagued Dinosaur in which he breaks a string, urging the audience to fill in the vocals on his behalf whilst he tends to his stricken pickin’ thang. No wonder he laughs “We made it!” at the end.
Fripp’s verdict in his diary: “a more fun show for me. Once again, a very enthusiastic audience.”
