Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There is no greater recognition of the art than that which reflects on its greatness, whilst looking at it from a different angle, of gaining a new perspective.
In an age where music is being redefined by the artist to include remixes, and in some cases what can only be described as adulterations, to the original cause, it is perhaps an idea in which can be seen as beautifully engaging, or arguably bemoaned by others as art for arts’ sake, and one that brought a new dynamic, an innovative flavour to the Liverpool Empire stage, as King Crimson brought their talent to an audience, which for many would have been their first live undertaking.
It was the live experience, but maybe not the one in which many might have envisioned, a celebration of the God Fathers of their chosen musical field, stripped to the core and only reliant on sound, no additions, no fumbling through an evening dominated by off the wall spectacular lighting, no flashes, fireworks or deviating chat, this was King Crimson just performing, but in such a way that it felt aggressively simple, who needs special effects when the music is special enough.
Split across two halves and at a mind boggling three hours in duration, the evening owed much to the pursuit of Jazz as a pure sense more than the appreciation of Progressive Rock. An amalgam of passions caught up in the net of symbolic gestures, and one that to have been played in Liverpool on what would have been Greg Lake’s 71st birthday, was always in the back of the fan’s mind.
Celebrating 50 years in any business or love is one to marked with sincerity, as well as a true reflection of the nature of the beast that inhabits the driven and the enquiring mind, and if you are going to mark such a passage of time, then where else would you do it but in the city in which gave rise to popular British music.
With the added attraction and depth of having three drummers play with the appreciative brain cells of the Liverpool crowd inside the Empire Theatre, Robert Fripp and the collected musicians took the audience down rabbit holes and alleyways of pure enjoyment in movements such as Cadence and Cascade, Lizard, One More Red Nightmare, Lark’s Tongues In Aspic (Parts One and Two), Radical Action (To Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind), Level Five and In The Court of The Crimson King, movements that held the breathe of those within its grasp, movements that held on to the beauty of respect.
An evening perhaps unlike any other, filled with majesty, King Crimson after so long still able to surprise and thrill a crowd.
Andrea Pennies-Roe.