It’s long been a must-listen show from the Cross Fripp Wetton Bruford lineup, including as it does the only known performance of Guts On My Side. Frustratingly, it also happened to be one of only two concerts from the tour with reels missing from the board recordings. Only the last three pieces from Udine are from the official tapes, the rest coming from a slightly woolly sounding bootleg. Until now, that is. A much better audience tape has found its way to the DGM vaults, and with some excellent restorative work from Alex ‘Stormy’ Mundy the complete show can now be enjoyed by seamlessly combining the two sources.
From Sid Smith's original notes:
This is arguably the contender for the oddest download ever released by DGMLive.
Sometime between December 1973 and March 1974 King Crimson came up with a number called Guts On My Side. This was during the same writing sessions from which Starless emerged. Guts and Starless were premièred on this night but whereas Starless went on to become an integral centre-piece of the KC canon, Guts was only ever played once in concert - as far as we can tell - and totally forgotten about until 2006.
The track first came to our attention in January 2006 and although the last three tracks of the show existed on quarter-inch reels, the first reel which would’ve contained the rest of the show was tragically missing from the archive.
Later in 2006 and early 2007, better quality boots were sent to DGM HQ and Alex and David worked on restoring the show so it could be made available. Sadly, the SADIE equipment died under their very fingertips and the work was lost. The curse of Guts had struck! Undeterred, Alex has worked on the show when time permitted and eventually thanks to his efforts we now are able to make this one go live!
Aside from some first night nerves where various fingers fall to the right chords and notes but not always at the right time,or in the right order, this is not only a cracking performance but in light of the rarity of the Guts track, also a significant one. Our thanks to Alessandro Pizzin and also Mauro and Renzo in Uppotipo for their help in bringing this full concert into the DGMLive archives.
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