Although it took a little while from conception to arrival on stage, this band was pretty fast movers once they got going. By the time they play their first big London venue, they had just 8 warm-up gigs and a day’s production rehearsals at Shepperton Studios under their belts.
Still called Discipline, there’s a mix of the familiar and the strange in this poor-quality audience recording. The familiar, to many of the fans there on the night, would have been seeing Fripp and Bruford back sharing a stage in the UK capital for the first time in eight years.
The strange would have been seeing Tony Levin and another guitarist in the shape of Adrian Belew sharing the performance with the two old Crimson stalwarts. It’s perfectly possible to imagine how exciting this potent mix would have been for fans and it’s possible to hear the energy crackling through each of the numbers as the new band works through their setlist.
However, the appearance of Red would have been the most unexpected inclusion of the night. Never having been performed during the lifetime of the Larks era Crimson, you can make out the roar of shocked approval as the opening chords claim the air. A very special evening indeed.
