If the previous evening had suffered slightly from the band searching for their groove to some extent, how did they get on with the second night of the tour at the Newport Music Hall? “Ah...now this is more like it,” writes Trey Gunn. “I remember what it means to be a musician.”
The mood is certainly wild and mercurial with the soloists passing the baton to each other, one minute comping, the next leading. There’s a white-hot rendition of Sus Tayn Z tonight in which Gunn and Fripp excel themselves. If you like your soloing scary and untamed, and your beats robust,then this is a winner. And boy, does the jaw drop when they hit the stop button on this sucker!
Anyone who has ever seen P2 in concert will tell you that there’s a lot of smiles between the players, and tonight is no exception. Gunn recalls in his diary that they had some fun moments on stage. “Robert and I egging each other on in the Exchanges...Adrian shifting to an entirely different tempo in the middle of a piece...And we ended with the mood that we usually begins with.”
After the main theme, Heavy ConstruKction descends into some furious soloing with lead lines writhing and wriggling around like a nest of vipers. It’s intensely concentrated stuff that fairly takes the breath away. The fiery mood continues into Contrary ConstruKction, where, as Trey mentions, Adrian shifts the tempo down and then hits the accelerator once again.
Adrian’s complete solo spots are included in this recording, including a galloping rendition of Young Lions and Men In Helicopters, and later in the set, Dinosaur.
Gunn’s plaintive offering during Thrush must surely count as one of his best.
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