“This next song is aptly titled Circkus” says Boz with a slight edge in his voice. Here’s the band at the half way point of what they know is their last tour together. [endtease] Certainly there’s a lot of clowning around that masks some of the unresolved tensions and resentments that were part of the Crimso chemistry at the time.
“I feel lost, I feel out of control, I feel I’m going MAD!” declaims Fripp as he fails to quell a call to party from the rest of the troops on stage. A case of many a truth said in jest perhaps? Alongside such psycho-drama there’s some good music; Formentera Lady is a rootsy, gutsy affair, with Boz’s crooning especially good over Mel’s thorny soloing. For fans of the vintage sustained laser-beam tone that Fripp made all his own, The Sailor’s Tale will not disappoint.
Ladies Of The Road features some laugh-out-loud banter between Boz and Fripp’s blues guitar pastiche. Perhaps because of all the fun and games throughout the gig, Groon lacks the bite of other versions that are available, and whilst Schizoid Man rescues things with a revved up guitar solo, the encore improv is probably Fripp’s most uncommitted performance of the era. Cadence and Cascade is robbed of a proper conclusion when the tape runs out. It could almost be a metaphor.
