Seven days into the American leg of the tour a lithe and limbered up Crim begin a two-night run in New York’s Town Hall.
If you had to pick just one track from this concert then Vrooom might well be it. Bruford is on devastatingly clattering form as he roves around the kit in his perspex prison like some pent-up animal. Levin is driving home the bass notes like they were six inch nails and Fripp opens out a beguiling piano motif in the coda that suddenly transforms into the laser-beam sound of yore.
B’Boom is taken at something of a sprightly lick which continues apace in a thrilling improvisation that for a while evokes the electrifying mutant jazz heard on Beat’s Requiem.
Commenting on the fact that this gig represented Crimson’s first return to New York in ten years, Neil Strauss writing for the New York Times noted “It was hard to believe that the band had lost little of its power, depth and flow in a decade apart.”
