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Rating: A long-awaited reissue of an album that for years (before the recent countless offerings from DGM) was the only official live album by King Crimson (not counting the embarrassing "Earthbound" ('72), which Fripp himself has rather defined as the first official bootleg).
Released in 1975 as a headstone marking the group's disappearance - which was then believed to be definitive -(and indeed the back cover bore the small inscription R.I.P.), this live album (mainly recorded during the concert in Asbury Park, on June 28, 1974) nevertheless left a bitter taste for many. On one hand, the sound quality of the recording was impeccable (and certainly remains the best of the period) yet some post-production choices appeared questionable, if we can put it that way. The first bone of contention was the decision to have the violin parts in "Larks Tongues in Aspic Part II" and "21st Century Schizoid Man" overdubbed in the studio (by the virtuoso Eddie Jobson, accustomed to the role of substitute already for Curved Air and Roxy Music). This choice, probably due to the fact that the muscular rhythm section of the renowned Wetton-Bruford duo tended to inevitably overpower Cross's violin, has however made these tracks somewhat "artificial" (and this certainly clashes with the "live" concept). Other grievances included the fading out of "Easy Money" (perhaps because Fripp's solo was a bit too "rarefied") and Wetton's "manipulated" voice in "Schizoid Man," an effect that suited Greg Lake's choir-like voice but was inevitably cacophonous in this case.
Despite all these criticisms, the album (and especially this CD reissue that adds two excellent tracks from the aforementioned concert) definitely deserves four stars.
The highlights for me are the version of "Starless" that closes the album (the best I have heard, although still inferior to the studio version since it lacks Ian MacDonald's killer solo), that of "Exiles" (which I would rank on par with the one on the third disc of "The Great Deceiver"), and the unavoidable improvisation "Asbury Park," powerful and corrosive. The reissue of the staple "21st Century Schizoid Man" is certainly noteworthy too, but after hearing the farewell concert at Central Park, I wouldn't consider it the definitive version.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Lament (04:05)
I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar
And publishers would spread the news
And print my music far and wide
And all the kids who played the blues
Would learn my licks with a bottle neck slide
But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line
And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage
I'll thank the man who's on the 'phone
And if he has the time to spend
The problem I'll explain once more
And indicate a sum to lend
That ten percent is now a joke
Maybe thirty, even thirty-five
I'll say my daddy's had a stroke
He'd have one now, if he only was alive
I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide
I like the way the music goes
There's a few good guys who can play it right
I like the way it moves my toes
Just say when you want to go and dance all night...
03 Exiles (07:04)
Now in this faraway land
Strange that the palms of my hands
Should be damp with expectancy
Spring, and the air's turning mild
City lights and the glimpse of a child
Of the alleyway infantry
Friends - do they know what I mean?
Rain and the gathering green
Of an afternoon out of town
But lord I had to go
The trail was laid too slow behind me
To face the call of fame
Or make a drunkard's name for me
Though now this better life
Has brought a different understanding
And from these endless days
Shall come a broader sympathy
And though I count the hours
To be alone's no injury
My home was a place by the sand
Cliffs and a military band
Blew an air of normality
05 Easy Money (06:32)
Your admirers on the street
Gotta hoot and stamp their feet
In the heat from your physique
As you twinkle by in moccasin sneakers
And I thought my heart would break
When you doubled up at the stake
With your fingers all a-shake
You could never tell a winner from a snake
but you always make money
Easy money
With your figure and your face
Strutting out at every race
Throw a glass around the place
Show the colour of your crimson suspenders
We would take the money home
Sit around the family throne
My old dog could chew his bone
For two weeks we could appease the Almighty
Easy money
Got no truck with the la-di-da
Keep my bread in an old fruit jar
Drive you out in a motor-car
Getting fat on your lucky star just making
Easy money.
06 21st Century Schizoid Man (07:32)
Cat's foot iron claw
Neuro-surgeons scream for more
At paranoia's poison door
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians' funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man.
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