The second night of Crimso’s Autumn tour gets underway with a strong opening with Pictures and Cirkus as knock-out punches. As Formentera gives way to Sailor’s Tale, Fripp unleashes a scalding solo after which, Collins flute solo isn’t quite able to maintain the momentum. A feature of this not-so-hot sounding bootleg recording is how ‘on’ the audience are. The Letters gets a huge reception after Boz’s unaccompanied vocal on the end verse after a rather dramatic moment of silence, and ‘O’Rafferty’s Pig’ (as Ian Wallace wittily re-titles Cadence) also gets a large round of applause as the guitarist plays the opening chords. Despite being handicapped by the sonic murk, this is a barn-storming version of Ladies of the Road which Fripp introduces, as was his long-standing habit of the time, as being about ‘rude ladies’. Groon has an almost reflective, introspective quality after the main theme and first sax solo have blown themselves out; a guitar riff which Fripp occasionally deploys sets up another demonstrative section that seems to reprise the Sailor’s Tale with the guitarist switching to pianet just ahead of the drum solo. The squalling blow towards the end of Groon swirls like some gathering tornado as Wallace whips up a white noise roar on his cymbals, and Collins shrieks dementedly. Fripp’s sustained solo carries over some of the mayhem before fading out and reintroducing the main theme which then executes a rather snappy ending. An enthusiastic crowd even briefly joins in with The Devil’s Triangle surely the most inappropriate clapalong song there ever was!
