They say there’s no rest for the wicked and if that’s the case King Crimson must have been especially bad given that just two days after stepping off the stage in Tokyo they walk onto the boards at San Francisco’s Fillmore at the start of a marathon Fall tour.
With the first half of the concert presenting the bulk of ConstruKction Of Light, the opening run of numbers hurtles along at some pace. Highlights include Belew’s Dylanesque delivery of the vocal coda of LTIA IV, and the fast running lines of FraKctured sounding especially savage.
In the audience that night seeing King Crimson for the very first time was Aaron Deglanville, who shared his views on Elephant Talk. “It is immensely impressive to me in retrospect that KC began the first of their 3 SF shows (the very first show of the US tour, no less) with what may be the most difficult songs in their repertoire: LTiA IV, TCoL, and FraKctured were all played very early on--a ballsy if inadvisable choice. LTiA IV began unevenly, plagued by intermittent timing errors until finding its feet about halfway through.”
Though Aaron’s not wrong about some of the unforced errors here and there, this is a pretty strong opening blast. The first improv in the second set morphs from spacey abstraction into stomping tearaway soloing from Fripp’s fiery fretboard. Smokin’ as they say.
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