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.”
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...
Like all good NYC Crimso fan-addicts, weeks preceding I had ticket in hand for the Town Hall show the next night [14th]. But then the word got out via the fan base - KC would play two essentially unadvertised warm-up shows at the Supper Club down the block, general admission, just get in line before the show. YES! Arriving a 7PM [for the 8PM shows] both nights got me in the front line at the edge of the stage [all standing show, no seats]. I could have reached out without stretching and touche...
Like all good NYC Crimso fan-addicts, weeks preceding I had ticket in hand for the Town Hall show the next night [14th]. But then the word got out via the fan base - KC would play two essentially unadvertised warm-up shows at the Supper Club down the block, general admission, just get in line before the show. YES! Arriving a 7PM [for the 8PM shows] both nights got me in the front line at the edge of the stage [all standing show, no seats]. I could have reached out without stretching and touched AB or RF [wouldn’t do that, of course] - the stage was that small, the club that intimate. I could now watch, very closely, the hands of all four musicians - including ’the shy one’. Now, during FraKCtured each night [my favorite piece from ConstruKCtion, I tend to gravitate towards instrumentals], the immensity of Fripp’s role in the performance of it blew me away - I had thought that AB and RF were playing their guitars throughout listening to the record. HOWEVER, except for the bridges between the long passages, AB would abandon the guitar to gesticulate over his theremin-like electronic pad. Robert was playing all 3 guitar lines - each at a different volume - simultaneously through most of the piece! (He has ventured the comment that during any performance there must be at least one piece in the repertoire that is so difficult to play, that one must actually be awake for it.) The audience swooned with this amazing feat of guitarrism, but the spectacle that topped it [both nights] was, when the piece ended, Fripp, grinning, dropped his left hand from the neck to blow on his fingertips as though he had scorched them..and then a puff of white smoke arose from his hand!!! Those who were close enough to see this, myself included, had to retrieve their jaws from the floor! He had hidden white [talc] powder in his palm before the piece, and not dropped even a grain whilst playing the entire piece! UNBELIEVABLE!!! [but true] One must seriously consider that this might be a technique for steadiness/economy of motion that he actually [sometimes] employs when practicing [?] - along with his admonition to players that they ’practice in the dark’ so that their hands are familiar with the fretboard without having to look at the changes in fingering (For a good example of this, watch RF’s performance in the French TV video that comes on the DVD portion of the Red 40th Anniversary package.)
Written by Michael Paulus
superb and innovative
One word - a splendid gig!! I attended the night before and had forgotten, how good it actually was. The only thing I missing here is a mesmerizing version of "One Time" they played the night before -- but this night is nothing short of surprises, too! Mind you, I am not a completist and with the great dgmlive website (thank you again and again) at hand there are many gigs I do not get. But this one ranks, in terms of its urgency and spontaneity high up with the "Concertgebouw" gig in Amsterda...
One word - a splendid gig!! I attended the night before and had forgotten, how good it actually was. The only thing I missing here is a mesmerizing version of "One Time" they played the night before -- but this night is nothing short of surprises, too! Mind you, I am not a completist and with the great dgmlive website (thank you again and again) at hand there are many gigs I do not get. But this one ranks, in terms of its urgency and spontaneity high up with the "Concertgebouw" gig in Amsterdam (1974) or the early concerts of 1981 when all material still sounded so fresh and was re-invented every night. All versions, even such well known numbers such as "Red" or "Elephant Talk" get new life blown in and are de- and re-constructed note by note. Simply great!! Compared to the 2008 concerts, even though they offered intersting takes on several songs -- such as "Sleepless" or "Level 5" -- this concert is miles ahead. This is a band that has sth. to say and they are eager to get it out. 2008 was a band that perfectly played their songs with sometimes interesting readings, but could and did not say much more as they already had done years before. What a difference! Fripp might have seen the 2008 tour as a start only and hoped for more, similar to the 1994 starts that turned into the 1996 tour and the Projekcts and double duo later on. Too bad, it did not happen... But do not wait, get this one, run, don’t walk..!!!! And enjoy! This concert made me fall in love with KC all over again!
