Desert Island Crim

Stewart Lee is a man of many talents.  Stand-up comedian, author, director, music critic, writer of the controversial Gerry Springer The Opera and er, Crimhead.  Over the years he has reviewed various aspects of Crim continuum and been very generous in his praise.  So, I asked him to name the must-have Crim he would grab a hold of if the ship went down next to the proverbial desert island.

"My favorite KC track is Red, which I know is an obvious choice.  I'd always had this idea that there was nothing for me musically, outside of jazz and free-improv and The Stooges, between 1970 and 1976, and was dismissive of friends who liked, for want of a better word, progressive rock.  I loved old 60's psyche, and loads of things from punk onwards.

Then, around 1991, friends I was living with (the comedian Al Murray and Simon Oakes, currently of the group Suns Of The Tundra) gradually wore me down via a wall of attrition based on King Crimson's Red album. I could no longer deny that many of the things I loved about American 80's hardcore types who'd got into wierd time-signatures and baroque structures - Bitch Magnet, Tortoise and such like - had been in some ways beaten to the post a decade and a half earlier by this band I was supposed to hate. And there was Jamie Muir too, who was hard to dismiss, with his british Free jazz credentials and Derek bailey collaborations.

Red utterly captivated me, especially the title track, despite the occasionally histrionic vocals, which totally pre-empted Radiohead's third album too, for example, and Crimson's 80's stuff chimed beautifully with much of the New York No-Wave scene it shadowed, which was the roots of so much of the music I liked. Now I'm a VDGG convert too, but I still can't succumb to yes, Genesis and the rest. I guess we all have our limits.

You can keep up to date with all things Stew over at his website and myspace site.