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Live Review: King Crimson, ‘Music is Our Friend’ in New Jersey, Sept. 4, 2021

Posted in Reviews on September 6th, 2021 by JJ Koczan

King-Crimson

As well as with reasonable consistency over the last seven years and intermittently throughout the last half-century-plus, King Crimson have been on tour since late July for a run that’s been dubbed ‘Music is Our Friend.’ Perhaps needless to say given the parties involved in the lineup and their level of expertise at their respective crafts, but yes, music is very much their friend. It’s nice to have friends.

I do not know what touring in the age of Covid at the amphitheater level might entail in terms of precautions on the back end. Most of the concessions at the PNC Bank Arts Center — which I think I was last at for Deep Purple quite some years ago; it’ll always be the home of my teenage Ozzfests in my heart — were shuttered, but merch was open and cans of water were five bucks at the bars, so commerce was happening at some capacity. The venue holds 17,000 people. It was not full and I wouldn’t expect it to be. Frankly, if the show was sold out, I probably wouldn’t have gone. Every time I was around more than five people, even outside, the mask went on. So it goes.

That is underselling the apprehension I felt in being among other humans to such a degree, but music, it turned out, was my friend too and offered some comfort. Still, I’ll admit to some light disenchantment in finding out that openers The Zappa Band in fact contained no Zappas. Nary a Zappa. Not a Dweezil or an Ahmet or maybe even a next-generation Zappa being introduced at this point. One could imagine them setting up family franchises, spreading the legacy of the mighty Frank like the Marleys for weirdos. Alas. The cast of Zappa veterans and and a couple Zappa Plays Zappa types were not a hardship. You like xylophones? They got ’em. I’ve never been a big Frank Zappa guy, which I assume is because I don’t play guitar, but the band was tight and earned the bow they took when they were done.

Speaking of earned, King Crimson earned all three of their drummers. Pretty much immediately. You think three drummers is excessive? You’re right. It’s damn near Blue Man Group at times. But, Jeremy StaceyPat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison — the last of whom I once saw with his former band, Porcupine Tree, at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park supporting 2005’s Deadwing; a surreal thought 16 years later — were no less intricate in arrangement than they were spectacle at the front of the stage, beginning the showon their own while waiting their cue on risers behind were jack-of-many-trades Mel Collins (sax, flute, various keys, etc.), bassist Tony Levin, vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Jakko Jakszyk and of course, founding guitarist Robert Fripp, seated off to stage left before sundry keyboards, Mellotrons, mysterious consoles, and so on: his quiet, should-probably-be-knighted presence understated and crucial in kind.

It was a ’70s-heavy setlist, with “Pictures of a City” from 1970’s In the Wake of Poseidon following the opening drum solo, “Hell Hounds of Krim.” Jakszyk, who has been with King Crimson-proper since they started touring again, did nothing but nail parts on the older songs, which was especially satisfying as they dove into “The Court of the Crimson King” from the prog-genitor 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King. A signature piece if ever there was one — “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the encore, notwithstanding — I have memories of listening to it flying back from my honeymoon, my first international trip as an “adult,” at the age of 23. That sweep can’t help but call to my mind orange and pink sunrise over the Alps from the air looking out the window; still one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, 17 years after the fact. They haven’t played it every show, and I was nervous they wouldn’t at PNC. They hit it early. After that, everything was gravy.

Even better, gravy with Mellotrons.

The precisely-how-I-feel-about-commercial-air-travel-despite-the-noted-memory “One More Red Nightmare” from 1974’s Red led into the brief, maybe-improv “Tony’s Cadenza,” a bass solo from Levin, who is the second-longest tenured member of the band. It is no mystery why he has remained as others have come and gone. He is a genius, and he plays like a genius. If you’ve ever seen someone who has found their natural purpose: Babe Ruth swinging a bat. Simone Biles doing backflips. That is Tony Levin holding and playing a bass. You could not imagine who this person would be not holding or playing a bass. I’ve never seen him play before, in our out of King Crimson. It was a joy to behold, spiritually. With a bassist like that in your rhythm section, you need three drummers.

“Red,” from Red (duh), followed and its heavy-adjacent push brought about much nodding from the seated audience, grinning in their largely-unmasked it-digging. The subsequent “Islands” was, well, a bit much, and sent a slew of nodders off to the restrooms, to refresh beers, whathaveyou. If that was a gimme, so be it. They did touch on the ’80s-era odd-time deep-dive fare as well, in “Neurotica” from 1982’s Beat leading into “Indiscipline” from the prior year’s Discipline, which was Levin‘s first LP with the band. “Epitaph,” also from the first record, was a bonus later in the set, following the all-out-we’re-a-seven-piece-band-and-every-single-one-of-us-is-unfuckwithable “Radical Action II,” which gave way to “Level Five” from 2003’s The Power to Believe. That left “Starless” to turn the lights red, as it apparently will, thus capping the regular set with its build, gradual to the point of you don’t know it’s happening until you’re consumed by it.

And the aforementioned encore? Well of course. What do you do with that other than absorb it? My first time seeing King Crimson, probably my last if their retirement is to be believed (never say never), and I left feeling like I’d just received the classiest ass kicking I can remember. As many acts as their work has inspired across generations, and continues to inspire, if some of the young heads in the crowd were anything to go by, they’ve never been duplicated, and how can you credit that to anyone other than Fripp at this point? He was the maestro, all night, up there on the stage, serene but not at all inactive. The venue didn’t have the big screens on the side turned on, and photo/video was strictly prohibited, but even from where I was sitting up in the cheap seats you could see the man in his element. It was humbling in one way, righteous in another. I walked back to the car with The Patient Mrs. and even tired as I was, couldn’t help but feel rejuvenated.

King Crimson, “Starless” from Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind (2016)

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