Jazz Articles about King Crimson

About King Crimson

Album Review

King Crimson: Live In Vienna, December 1st, 2016 (UK Edition)

Read "Live In Vienna, December 1st, 2016 (UK Edition)" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
March 30, 2018

Another year, another live King Crimson set? True, perhaps. But since reforming in a slightly shifting but conceptually constant form in 2013 to begin touring in the fall of the following year, the band's forward-looking, ever-growing repertoire of new music and revisitation of old music (from across its nearly half century career) made new again has been documented solely through live recordings. It's entirely appropriate, in fact, given the band's only remaining co-founder, guitarist/keyboardist Robert Fripp's longtime assertion that Crimson's ...

Album Review

King Crimson: Sailors' Tales 1970-1972

Read "Sailors' Tales 1970-1972" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
November 11, 2017

If it's a fundamental truth that adversity can sometimes bring the absolute best, creatively speaking, out of music and the people who make it, then the roughly 23 months following the release of King Crimson's classic 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King (Island)--and, after a single North American tour, the breakup of its first lineup--could always be argued as producing some of the group's very best. This, despite a revolving-door lineup and, even, significant doubts and frustration ...

Live Review

King Crimson at Lisner Auditorium

by Eric Thiessen
November 1, 2017

King Crimson Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University Washington DC October 28, 2017 The original King Crimson burst like a supernova upon the 1969 music universe, with talents from Jimi Hendrix to Pete Townshend extolling its virtues. The quickly departing band members ultimately would become integral parts of groups from ELP to Foreigner, Camel, and the Alan Parsons Project, as Robert Fripp's vision and acerbic personality became overbearing. As such, the continually ...

Album Review

King Crimson: Official Bootleg: Live in Chicago, June 28th, 2017

Read "Official Bootleg: Live in Chicago, June 28th, 2017" reviewed by John Kelman

by John Kelman
October 12, 2017

As many King Crimson fans eagerly await the November release of its latest 40th Anniversary Series box set--this time spanning the years 1970 through 1972, when saxophonist/flautist Mel Collins was a constant alongside band co-founder/guitarist Robert Fripp for three studio albums (1970's In the Wake of Poseidon and Lizard, and 1971's Islands) and one live album (1972's Earthbound)--along comes Official Bootleg: Live in Chicago, June 28th, 2017, another “warts and all" live soundboard recording along the lines of Live In ...

Live Review

King Crimson at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier / Massey Hall

by John Kelman
July 11, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 An Evening with King Crimson Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier / Massey Hall Le Festival International de Jazz de Montréal / Non-Festival Event Montréal, Canada / Toronto, Canada July 3, 2017 / July 5, 2017 Having covered the reunited, refreshed and reinvigorated “seven-headed Beast of Crim" for two nights each in San Francisco in 2014 and, again, in Montréal in 2015, was there really a good reason to see ...

Extended Analysis

On (and Off) The Road

by John Kelman
November 13, 2016

Sometimes the best music--and some of the best bands--are those that come from the most difficult of births. When King Crimson co-founder/guitarist Robert Fripp had the idea for a new band after dissolving the last incarnation of the '70s-era Crimson lineups seven years prior, it was a completely new concept and, with the exception of returning drummer Bill Bruford, a totally revised lineup. Gone were the mellotrons and symphonic leanings of old. In their place: technological advancements including ...

Extended Analysis

Radical Action (To Unseat The Hold of Monkey Mind)

by John Kelman
September 10, 2016

Plenty has already been written about King Crimson's surprise reemergence in 2014 at All About Jazz, beginning when the now 47 year-old progressive/art rock band commenced its first tour since 2008 (and its first extensive one since 2003) with a new, expanded lineup featuring a front-line of three drummers and a back-line of two guitarists (one, also, a vocalist), a bassist/stick player and a reed/woodwind multi-instrumentalist. From reviews of two nights at San Francisco's Warfield Theater in the fall of ...