A quick glance at the Crim calendar reveals that the Larks’ Tongues quintet had made their way down south from Hull and York, to wow the crowd at Guildford on November 13, 1972.
Their last time at the Civic Hall had been August 23rd the previous year, where they’d been playing in the new material that would be featured on Islands. In the intervening months a lot had changed and it’s hard to imagine just how different Crimson would have been to the crowds gathered in Guildford that night.
These days we would have had a rehearsal ep or a live
recording, diary entries and a whole bunch of on-line speculation ahead of the
tour with plentiful advice for Fripp and co.
Back in 1972 the good folks of Guildford only had a few comments in the music press to go on. Earthbound, released earlier in the summer gave no clue as to what they could expect that night and hearing the group open with Larks’ Tongues must have been a jaw-dropping experience.
The surviving soundboard tape for this show was released in
2003 as part of the King Crimson Collectors Club.
Though incomplete it shows Crimson were on spectacular form that night. The standout track is the lengthy improvisation “All That Glitters Is Not Nail Polish.” When you compare it to the Bremen Beat Club “Rich Tapestry” improv, we can hear Crimson’s new musical vocabulary being assembled right out there on the hoof.
Little tricks, riffs, phrases and motifs are liberally deployed in both as signposts, prompts and points of navigation. Both blast-off with a belligerent fanfare which gives way to a kind of musical skirmishing; the stop-start bass duet between the mellotrons, Bruford and Wetton locking down a groove and setting it free again, Muir deftly moving between the main parties, descending ‘tron flute phrases drenched in echo down with echo.
But what gives this one the edge over the German recording is the fact that it happens in front of an audience rather than a sterile confines of a TV recording studio.
The Muir-era line-up has always been surrounded with an air
of mystery partly due to the lack of reliable documentation which has been
available. However, the small but
growing number of releases and interview material which have begun to emerge in
recent years has put the spotlight of scrutiny on this line-up.
Were they as good as everyone claims? Listening to this album it’s clear that the power
that swept off the stage and into the unsuspecting audience in the gloom of Guildford’s
Civic Hall remains undiminished and nothing short of astonishing.
If you were there that night then you were
very lucky indeed. The rest of us have to make do with the recording which is available at the DGM mail order shop.
