King Crimson
24 Giugno 2003 - Live in Roma

THE REVIEW

I am pressed against the barrier about a meter from the stage, alone with my 16 years and a Tool CD pulsating in my ears. I imagine that thirty years ago, many would have sold a kidney just to be where I am now: at a King Crimson concert. The band of Robert Fripp, considered by some to be the absolute creative genius - creator - of Progressive rock.

The Crimson King, at half past eight, makes his entrance onto the stage. He's wrapped in a black suit, glasses perched on his nose; his hair is gray. No greeting, nothing.
He sits on his stool, takes up his Les Paul, and closes his eyes, meditates.
I watch fascinated by this bizarre spectacle when I see his hand move on the bridge: a sound that seems like a celestial echo starts to slide from the amplifiers. A haunting harmony of whispers, muffled carpets, and ecstatic moans that intersect and blend: spine-chilling. He manipulates the sound until it becomes infinite, creating overwhelming emotional atmospheres. He leaves the stage, and his music will continue to permeate the air, heralding an incredible concert.

The band enters: the martial Trey Gunn: twelve-string stick and a bass-guitar resting horizontally on a stand; Adrian Belew, lead guitar, an old madman with a circle of long white hair; Pat Mastelotto, phenomenal hobbit-electronic-drummer.
The beginning has an incredible violence, sharp and acidic sounds make my ears bleed with joy, I hear them juggling hallucinatory rhythmic figurations that I can't interpret; Belew's guitar screeches and screams, in a rapid and long chromatic agony; the drummer is going crazy. Trey manages to extract a myriad of bass from his instruments played simultaneously, Robert is impassive, almost turning his back on the audience, immersed in shadow, playing his guitar with glacial calmness.

They perform tracks from their latest CD "The Power To Believe" and from "The Construkction Of Light". Belew performs an acoustic "Three Of A Perfect Pair" that alone is worth the 37 € of the concert.

They leave: recalled by the enthusiasm of the audience, they gift us "Red," the only old masterpiece they play that evening. I wander around "lost among the reverberations of the sounds" of the concert, clutching Belew's pick between my fingers.