With only seven more gigs left to go of its short life, the P2 roadshow rolled into Detroit on the last night of the current tour to wow an excitable but highly supportive crowd in the appropriately named Majestic theatre. As with the previous night in Chicago, Gunn’s soloing is second to none. On Heavy ConstruKction he appears to reach back into the Crimson catalogue and draw upon the flailing guitar solo to Sailor’s Tale, re-imagined here as an astonishing rush of deranged chordal blitzing.
Indeed, Gunn is often heard dominating and taking the lead. With Fripp sounding slightly burnt-out after the opening section of SustaynZ, it’s Gunn who sweeps in to drive the piece forward with a solo that soars and sears. Mind you, boppin’ Bobby picks up the baton a few moments later to deliver his own scorcher.
After the transcendent tranquility of Thrush, Gunn stomps XchanynJiz into the ground, slicing and dicing against Belew’s frantic rhythms and Fripp’s bassline underscoring. The handover from Gunn to Fripp at 5.09 into the track is reason alone to be nabbing this gig. However, it’s Trey who wins the man of the match award. “Detroit demands power; and on this we delivered” noted Gunn in his diary at the time. “It wasn’t my favourite playing of the tour (we had to leave a certain dimension of subtlety out of the picture), but it was a very strong and heavy show.”
