Great listen through the fog
I especially liked The Sheltering Sky, one of my favorite KC songs. I did this this incarnation of KC at the Savoy in NY. That was a great show.
Just four dates into the American tour and the Crims are sounding relaxed and very much in the zone. For certain members of the band, things would peak just three gigs later at The Savoy in New York. However, there are some diamonds to be found in the rough of an audience recording with some serious distortion at the bass end of things, meaning that when Tony goes down deep and low it sounds like a chainsaw cutting its way through the music, leaving drums subsumed and guitar notes shredded in its wake. That said, this show hits some admirable heights indeed. The Sheltering Sky, always something of a magical sequence in the KC setlist, is especially good with Fripp’s second solo in particular standing out. The then-unreleased Manhattan (later to be titled Neurotica) has a bruising quality to it, with Levin’s rumbling bass sounding mean as it pushes forward. Sartori, another new non-album number for the crowd, initially nestles in moody dream space before erupting into the main slapback riff. Though sadly incomplete, it's a real highlight, showing how Crimson fashioned a new sound and identity as it established itself in the 1980s.
