“I wanna hear Jethro Tull, man,” a punter is heard saying after Crimson finishes their opening numbers, Waiting Man. The 80s quartet didn’t play too many festival gigs, but this one finds them mid-bill after Cheetah, Michael Schenker Group, and Melanie and just before Tull and headliner Neil Young.
However you cut it, that’s a rather diverse festival bill. Like the previous evening in Wiesbaden, the same package had wowed the large crowds, and Crimson’s shortened setlist served as a primer for the large majority, who just might have been familiar with the name but not the current lineup.
Lasting just under an hour the show provides a bite-sized chunk of Crimson from which a few adventurous listeners might go on to explore the band’s discography further although one imagines that Belew and Fripp’s whirlwind soloing in The Sheltering Sky must have provoked a few WTF reactions.
Compared to the Wiesbaden performance, there is a certain degree of raggedness apparent in the set’s execution. This is likely to have been down to less-than-optimal on-stage monitoring which might explain the car crash ending of Red, the ever-so-slightly scrambled coda to Matte Kudasai, Belew’s dropouts during the early parts of Frame By Frame. LTIA II ends so abruptly in what appears to be the plug being pulled, perhaps another unwanted hazard of being on a crowded festival bill. Nevertheless, this is a very listenable audience recording of this outdoor show.
3 February 2025
