12th September
“Let it begin” shouts a punter in the audience at Philadelphia’s Verizon Theatre, a venue more usually associated with the esteemed Philadelphia Orchestra. Well, we can hear an orchestra of sorts tuning up but that’s coming from a recording session during the making of Islands in 1971 making a clever meta-reference to the act of tuning the air as much as the instruments. In the first minute of Pictures Of A City, a number Robert Fripp had last played on stage over 42 years ago, one of the guitarists takes a wrong turn and arrives at the verse section before everyone else. It would be ungentlemanly to name him but it’s the one with the Dorset accent. As drilled an ensemble as this particular Crimson is, a band which Tony Levin would point out enjoyed a longer rehearsal time than all of the 2008 incarnation’s entire existence, that Clams Crimsonique are still on the menu is something of a joy for KC connoisseurs
