{"id":21611,"date":"2021-09-21T05:30:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=21611"},"modified":"2026-11-02T08:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T13:07:00","slug":"king-crimsons-brutal-finesse-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/09\/21\/king-crimsons-brutal-finesse-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"King Crimson’s Brutal Finesse, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Songs like \u201cIndiscipline\u201d have undergone nearly total reinvention: where in the \u201880s, Adrian Belew delivered the song\u2019s odd, inscrutable lyrics in spoken-word fashion, these days Jakko Jakszyk sings<\/i> them, applying a heretofore undiscovered melodic quality to the song. Yet the whiplash percussion dialogue (trialogue?) among Mastelotto, Stacey and Harrison keeps the composition well out of pop territory, closer instead to some unholy mix of gamelan, metal and jazz. Mastelotto mentions the tune as one in the Crimson set where he has a fair deal of freedom, something not to be taken for granted when a band has three drummers. \u201cI sort of improvise and throw the drumming around differently every night,\u201d he says. There\u2019s structure, \u201cbut the way the notes fall is different every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Four of the seven-headed beast. L-R: Jeremy Stacey, Tony Levin, Gavin Harrison, Jakko Jakszyk<\/p><\/div>\n

The band\u2019s 2017 tour featured three-hour shows, and those dates often explored more abstract musical frontiers. Owing in part to the demands of mounting a tour in the era of COVID-19, King Crimson\u2019s current tour features a shorter set. As much as Mastelotto enjoys digging into the more intricate works, he notes that recent sets built around some of the band\u2019s best-loved material (there are no \u201chits\u201d in King Crimson\u2019s world) \u2013 songs like \u201cEpitaph,\u201d \u201cIn the Court of the Crimson King,\u201d \u201cStarless,\u201d \u201cRed\u201d and \u201cOne More Red Nightmare\u201d \u2013 make for a more powerful show. \u201cWow,\u201d Mastelotto enthuses after citing that list of songs. \u201cThat\u2019s a power punch, man!\u201d<\/p>\n

King Crimson squeezed rehearsals in right before the current tour got underway in late July. Shipping snafus meant that the gear shipped over form England was late in arriving, so the rehearsal period was shortened. \u201cIt\u2019s not a band of musicians that are happy to \u2018just turn up\u2019 to the show,\u201d says Collins. He marvels at the memory of seeing UK punk heroes The Damned. \u201cThey never<\/i> used to rehearse!\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cWe can\u2019t do that, because of the complexity of the music.<\/p>\n

Even without the changes wrought by touring during a pandemic, for King Crimson, being on the road is different now than it was in the old days. The band travels by bus \u2013 three<\/i> buses, actually \u2013 and Mastelotto says that time spent together on the road has increased camaraderie among the band members. And that manifests in the music. \u201cAs things grow and you go through growing pains, bands just get tighter,\u201d he says. \u201cThe music gets tighter as the personalities gain more trust in their interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mastelotto thinks that the malleability of King Crimson\u2019s material \u2013 its ability to withstand being reinterpreted and reinvented \u2013 is a testimony to its greatness. \u201cI think that Robert [Fripp] in particular will be recognized as one of the great composers of the last century,\u201d he says. \u201cStuff like \u2018Larks\u2019 Tongues in Aspic\u2019 and \u2018Fracture,\u2019 those are serious compositions.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasizes that what audiences hear onstage, though, is the product of the creative commingling of all seven musicians. \u201cThe [whole] band contributes to it,\u201d he says. \u201cRobert doesn’t come in telling individuals directly what to play, with the exception of sharing his guitar parts between him and Jakko.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Robert Fripp<\/p><\/div>\n

Mel Collins notes that back in the early \u201870s when King Crimson was a quartet, they were playing challenging material. \u201cWe used to play \u201821st<\/sup> Century Schizoid Man, and as a four-piece, we played it really well,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not so easy with the seven-piece.\u201d Yet somehow, if the seven-headed beast doesn\u2019t make performance of the complex material look easy, it definitely conveys the impression that this lot knows what it\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old adage among musicians about the importance of the spaces between the notes. And that\u2019s one that the members of King Crimson have taken to heart. Sometimes the music is so dense that the best thing for one or another of the players to do is…nothing<\/i>. And that\u2019s a daunting prospect, especially if you\u2019re a drummer whose kit is set out near the front edge of the stage, well-illuminated and in full view of the audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love<\/i> to hear Jeremy and Gavin playing solo,\u201d Mastelotto says. But when he lays out of a musical passage, he\u2019s conscious of not wanting to be a distraction. \u201cIn the old days, the lights might go dark, and you could stand up and exit, or dry your face off with a towel,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we can\u2019t do that now.\u201d King Crimson made the collective decision that all members would remain onstage throughout the performance; no schmaltzy spotlit solo turns for this aggregation. \u201cWe decided to approach it like when you see an orchestra or symphony: the bassoon player doesn’t leave, even if he’s waiting 500 bars for his moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of moments, Mastelotto says that now is the time to attend a King Crimson concert.\u201dI don\u2019t know how much more touring we\u2019re going to do,\u201d he says. \u201cWithout getting too deep into it, I think that now is the time to catch the band.\u201d Collins chooses his words carefully on the subject. \u201cThis is not a farewell tour,\u201d he says. \u201cBut…we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nothing is guaranteed, especially these days. And Fripp \u2013 who has \u201cretired\u201d a few times already \u2013 is 75. Levin is the same age; Collins is about year younger. Even the group\u2019s youngest members Stacey and Harrison are nearing 60. And all seven are busy with myriad other musical projects outside of King Crimson. But as longtime followers of the band know, just because the group stops, that doesn’t mean it won\u2019t start again someday. Yet if one thing can be assured, if it does go away and reappear, King Crimson X will almost certainly be different than what came before. That\u2019s central to its…well, charm<\/i> isn\u2019t a word often applied to this band, so let\u2019s say character<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Now as ever, everything about King Crimson\u2019s music \u2013 its composition, its arrangement, its execution onstage, its history, its prospect of future activity \u2013 is a challenge. \u201cIt\u2019s the age-old thing,\u201d Mastelotto laughs as he twists a metaphor. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to get ten pounds of music into a five-pound bag.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Songs like \u201cIndiscipline\u201d have undergone nearly total reinvention: where in the \u201880s, Adrian Belew delivered the song\u2019s odd, inscrutable lyrics in spoken-word fashion, these days Jakko […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,56],"tags":[1250,1448,1652],"class_list":["post-21611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-prog","tag-king-crimson","tag-mel-collins","tag-pat-mastelotto","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32577,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21611\/revisions\/32577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}