Frank Zappa 10: Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Another archival dig appeared only six months after Burnt Weeny Sandwich. If that album presented a comparatively easily digestible look at the Mothers, Weasels Ripped My Flesh lives up to its great title with a more, shall we say, challenging experience. The majority of the contents come from the various directed improvisations typical of Mothers concerts, once the band was big enough to keep things from getting too off-kilter.

Things get challenging right away with “Didja Get Any Onya?” An odd-metered stomp gives way to a monologue with a German accent, a few rounds of “MOO-AH” leading to the song title, and even a segment recognizable to owners of Trout Mask Replica as music from “The Blimp”. There’s an abrupt switch to “Directly From My Heart To You”, an obscure Little Richard B-side sung here by Sugarcane Harris, also on electric violin. Just as that dirty blues comes to a halt, “Prelude To A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask” crashes through atonal chords, snorks and Roy Estrada’s operatic yodeling over a Mozart piece tinkled on electric piano. “Toads Of The Short Forest” has about a minute of tightly constructed music from the studio, before going back to a stage where we hear, Frank tells us, “drummer A playing in 7/8, drummer B playing in 3/4, the bass playing in 3/4, the organ playing in 5/8, the tambourine playing in 3/4, and the alto sax blowing his nose.” A slow jam puddles along until Frank announces a short break. A good way to end the side.

The song titles alone will stick in your head long before the music does, and that’s certainly the case with “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue”, a tribute to the jazzman wandering from slow to frenetic. “Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula” would appear to be a leftover from Uncle Meat, the intro a nice little horn piece, the rest giving way to sped-up and edited tape. “My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama” is an alternate take of a song released the year before as attempt to crack the top 40, complete with tasty acoustic solo. “Oh No” is an old melody that had appeared a couple of times on Lumpy Gravy, here given a lyric skewering the “peace and love” statements of the time, with the return of Ray Collins on lead vocalizin’. There’s a seamless jump to “The Orange County Lumber Truck”, which itself seems to have evolved from jams on “Let’s Make The Water Turn Black” and “Harry, You're A Beast”. It’s one of the more tuneful parts of the album, so it only makes sense that it leads to the title track—two minutes of sustained noise before Frank bids the “boys and girls” good night.

It has yet to be determined what exactly else Frank had planned for his multi-disc Mothers retrospective, as he was soon distracted by a new version of the band, new material, and yet another movie. Although Weasels Ripped My Flesh isn’t as immediately accessible as Burnt Weeny Sandwich, the high points are enough to help you endure the more trying moments. Collectors will note that it was the first Zappa album not to be released in a gatefold sleeve; everybody else will agree that the cover is pretty hilarious.

The Mothers Of Invention Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)—3½

Jean-Luc Ponty: King Kong

One oddity that crops up in the Zappa discography is an album credited to jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. King Kong (subtitled “Jean-Luc Ponty Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa”) presents some familiar and not-so-familiar melodies in a modern jazz environment. Ponty had already appeared on Hot Rats, while Frank had been incorporating electric violin into the Mothers as well. The musicians are a cross between jazz cats and such Mothers as Ian Underwood and Art Tripp. The album’s also important to the history, as these were the sessions that introduced Frank to George Duke, who would go on to be a valuable contributor to the ‘70s version of the Mothers. Because of Frank’s involvement in the project, it can almost be seen as a cousin to Lumpy Gravy, without the dialogue, as a way to present himself as a serious composer. (In fact, several session musicians appear in the orchestras for both that album and this.)

The title track sounds much as it did on Uncle Meat, kicking right out of the gate, to the point where one might be surprised it’s not from a textbook Zappa album. George Duke’s electric piano fits right in, as he would for much of the decade. “Idiot Bastard Son” is a surprising choice, considering the original lyrics, but here the construction of the song shows off its musicality. “Twenty Small Cigars” makes its debut here, in a slow down-on-your-luck ramble that helps one find the melody on the Zappa version out soon. Frank himself appears to add some guitar to “How Would You Like To Have A Head Like That”—a Ponty composition despite the Zappa-worthy title.

“Music For Electric Violin And Low Budget Orchestra” runs for over 19 minutes, and would appear another in a line of attempts to combine some of his long-gestating classical works, “Pound For A Brown” and “Duke Of Prunes” being just two of the melodies familiar to fans, with a few trademark honks placed in the score. “America Drinks And Goes Home” presents the chaotic Absolutely Free track in a somewhat clearer frame, but just as nutty.

We don’t know what jazz aficionados feel about this album, but for the Zappa story it’s as notable a footnote as any of his other tangents, if only as a document of his quest for respect as a composer. Its rating below should therefore be taken well inside that context.

Jean-Luc Ponty King Kong (1970)—3

Jimi Hendrix 7: Hendrix In The West

After two vault-scrapings, somebody decided that a live album might be a decent way to make money off a dead Hendrix. Rather than highlight a single performance, thus began the practice of siphoning songs from the hundreds of concerts he’d played, sticking in this case to the Isle Of Wight Festival and Berkeley from 1970, and San Diego and the Royal Albert Hall from 1969 with the original Experience. (We haven’t figured out the significance of the title Hendrix In The West, seeing as only half of the album was recorded on that American coast; from an overseas standpoint, he pretty much only performed in the Western Hemisphere, so the mystery remains.)

For the most part, the album doesn’t concentrate so much on the obvious, but does present him at the peak of his inspiration. The opening “God Save The Queen/Sgt. Pepper” medley from the Isle of Wight Festival (issued several times everywhere, but not in the US until 2002) is meant as a simple warmup, and the crowd responds happily. “Little Wing” is short but sweet, but “Red House” keeps your attention for thirteen minutes, from quiet to screaming, steady all the way. (It’s Jimi’s name and photo on the cover, but the excellence of Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding and even Billy Cox should not be underestimated.)

A more impromptu “Johnny B. Goode” is delivered with plenty of fire, followed by a blazing take on “Lover Man”, making its album debut. An incredibly funky groove somehow leads to a take on “Blue Suede Shoes” (from a soundcheck, which probably explains the fade) and the set closes with an especially hot “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, which also fades for some reason.

Hendrix In The West is a solid album, but our cynicism over the motivation is underscored by the sloppy presentation. Besides seeming to be in a different sequence in every country, the compilers tried to pull a fast one by crediting the Albert Hall tracks to San Diego, resulting in a legal issue that kept the two Albert Hall tracks from appearing when the estate reissued the album nearly forty years later (not surprising, considering how many times that show had been recycled on countless no-name labels). So “Little Wing” appears instead from the Winterland shows, and “Voodoo Child” comes from San Diego. Three more songs from San Diego fill up another 20 minutes on the CD, leading us to wonder why they didn’t use the other two songs from the show, which had appeared on an official box set in the early ‘90s, just before the estate took everything back. Since so many of the tracks are available elsewhere, the album’s relevance today has been lessened. But it’s still pretty damn good.

Jimi Hendrix Hendrix In The West (1972)—4
2011 version: same as 1972, plus 5 extra tracks (and minus 2 original tracks)

They Might Be Giants 1: They Might Be Giants

Arguably, a band can be considered successful when they divide the public into two distinct groups: those who like said band and those who hate them. Such has been the case for They Might Be Giants for close to three decades. Success hasn’t spoiled them—in fact, it’s barely touched them—and their champions are grateful for that.

TMBG (as their fans call them, and it’s a lot easier to type so we will too) began as two guys named John presenting a truly original version of geek-rock, with the accordion being a central instrument and their tendency toward songs about science and American history. Imagine Ween without the drugs and you’re almost there. With one John handling the stringed instruments and the other tackling keys and horns, their earliest shows were accompanied by a meticulously programmed drum machine. Considering the processing that real drums had received in the ‘80s, the percussive sounds heard on their self-titled full-length debut album don’t sound any more fake that many other records of the time.

The album crams 19 songs into a program just under 40 minutes, and it’s safe to say nothing sounds like anything else. Many of the songs debuted on their “Dial-A-Song” answering machine greetings, so brevity was the soul. As many of the songs are simply sketches and not Grand Works of Art, a brief synopsis of the more substantial ones will have to suffice.

“Everything Right Is Wrong Again” is a built-in contradiction, using a plot point from the Lucy-and-Desi film The Long, Long Trailer as a key chorus element. Their first “hit”, “Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head”, crashes that away, and “Number Three” aptly delivers the third song in a transition to the next “hit” in “Don’t Let’s Start”. “Hide Away Folk Family” is one of the longer tracks on the album, with a round-style chorus, and the discovery too late that a backwards accordion doesn’t sound too different from a forward one. “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes” and “I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die” are full of the wacky lyrics, music references and rhythm changes fans love. “(She Was A) Hotel Detective” gets a way-over-the-top vocal for a song that doesn’t deserve one. Being good pioneers of modern recording, “Boat Of Car” includes a Johnny Cash sample, while “Absolutely Bill’s Mood” is built around a literally phoned-in guitar solo.

They Might Be Giants didn’t set the world on fire, but it fit in perfectly with the rest of the stuff on college radio before the term “alternative” was coined. Our general impression is that one of the Johns didn’t take himself as seriously as the other, but for the most part they complement each other nicely. The album is like the people who created it: you’ll either like it or you won’t.

They Might Be Giants They Might Be Giants (1986)—3½

King Crimson 16: Thrak

The digital era gave Robert Fripp another reason to assess the legacy of King Crimson, resulting in remasters of the catalog and some archival digs in box set form. But the big news arrived in 1994, with the announcement of yet another lineup performing as King Crimson. This time the ‘80s combo, featuring Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford—each of whom had kept very busy in the meantime—was augmented by drummer Pat Mastelotto and Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn, both of whom had most recently toured with Fripp and David Sylvian. This “double trio” format managed to contain enough elements of each previous incarnation of the band to earn the right to use the moniker.

The new album was preceded by a self-produced EP, which would recur down the line, and also confirm Fripp’s belief that the least label interference was best for him. VROOOM (yes, rendered in all caps) is mostly a first draft, teasing listeners with the potential of the band as they jam towards a result. (A further glimpse into the rehearsal stage would be provided in four years via the eighth volume of the King Crimson Collectors’ Club.)

Thrak (also occasionally given the all-cap treatment but we don’t want to) is a much more polished and better balanced program, building on the foundation of VROOOM. It begins the same way, with a quiet rumble and crashing in on the pounding theme of “VROOOM”, beginning with a melody right out of Red and pausing for a few fingerpickings. The second half of the track is now “Coda: Marina 475” ever descending to its end. The glorious sound of Mellotron strings heralds “Dinosaur”, the first vocal appearance of Adrian (and a very Lennonesque one at that) and a terrifically catchy should-have-been-a-hit. The Mellotron reappears halfway through in a suggestion of Barber’s “Adagio For Strings”, setting up a false ending before the chorus reappears. “Walking On Air” is another radio-friendly tune, with a lovely backwards-sounding solo. “B’Boom” is mostly a drums solo leading into the title track, another insistent riff.

The second half of the album is more vocal-oriented: the two halves of “Inner Garden”, the driving funk of “People” (which really takes off in the last couple of minutes’ solo), the slinky “One Time”, and the Peter Gabriel-ish “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream”. “VROOOM VROOOM” and its coda provide more variations on the opening salvo, bringing things nicely full circle.

By tempering Adrian’s voice (or piling more sound around him) the ‘90s Crimson seems to rock more than ever, pretty much picking up where the band left off in the ‘70s, without relying so much on the electronics of the ‘80s. They certainly sounded like they were having fun, and now that they had the technology, many of the concerts performed by the double trio would become available for purchase directly from Fripp’s website, while a few would get wider release. B’Boom documents a show in Buenos Aires that occurred just before the Thrak album proper was recorded, and rush-released to thwart bootleggers, while VROOOM VROOOM provides performances from each end of the lengthy tour to promote the final product, all without a lot of overlap. (THRaKaTTaK is basically a bunch of improv experiments from various shows, chopped and mixed Zappa-style, and for obsessives only.)

For even more fun, a box set devoted to the lifespan of the double trio contains 12 CDs, two DVDs, and two Blu-rays, presenting just about everything they recorded in the studio and several things captured onstage over the space of four years or so. Meanwhile, the 40th Anniversary Edition of the album stuck with the album as released, but piled various mixes onto the DVD. The streaming version adds only the single edit of “Dinosaur”.

King Crimson VROOOM (1994)—3
King Crimson Thrak (1995)—4
King Crimson B’Boom (1995)—3½
King Crimson VROOOM VROOOM (2001)—3

Robert Fripp 6: The Next Day

David Sylvian was best known as the dreamy frontman for the New Wave band Japan; he became better acquainted with Robert Fripp after doing a session together in 1985. At the turn of the ‘90s, Fripp had toyed with the idea of another incarnation of King Crimson, with Sylvian as lead singer. While that didn’t happen, the two did manage to complete a collaborative tour, which resulted in an album.

The Next Day is very much a collaboration, dominated by Sylvian’s croon, over loops as well as real drums and percussion, with Fripp mostly adding color on the side when he’s not driving the riff. Another key contributor is Trey Gunn, who’d graduated from Crafty Guitarist to proficient Chapman Stick player and had joined the duo on the initial tour. Veteran drummer Jerry Marotta is also on a few tracks, along with computer treatments from co-producer David Botrill.

The album begins with the funky (always a strange word to associate with Fripp) “God’s Monkey”. But for the experiments in meter, this is fairly mainstream, as is “Jean The Birdman” with its dense lyrics. “Firepower” brings in a lot more crunch, and sports more familiar Fripp soloing that livens up the second half of this ten-minute track. (Plus, what sounds like a violin evokes echoes of the Larks’ Tongues era.) Another snaky riff drives “Brightness Falls”, which is just too slow to be danceable.

The second half of the album is a little more indulgent, if frankly tedious. “20th Century Dreaming (A Shaman’s Song)” has promise at first, but soon devolves into ambient effects while the bassline burbles beneath. Not so for “Darshan (Road To Graceland)”, which explores the era’s ubiquitous “Manchester beat” loop for about 17 minutes. It picks up anytime Sylvian sings an actual verse or Fripp’s guitar comes up in the mix, but takes up a lot of space without really going anywhere, despite the title. If anything, it makes the Frippertronic soundscape of “Bringing Down The Light” more welcome.

To support the album, the duo plus Gunn recruited “infinite guitarist” Michael Brook and Pat Mastelotto, most famous for pounding the skins for Mr. Mister, for another brief tour. The shows at the Royal Albert Hall were released as a limited edition CD called Damage, which Sylvian remixed and resequenced in 2001 for a more widespread release. The first version gets points for beginning with the moody title track, while the second adds “Jean The Birdman” at the expense of “Darshan”, which also cuts six minutes from the total disc time. Both versions provide better performances of the album’s tunes, plus a few selections from Sylvian’s solo albums as well as a song from Rain Tree Crow, the eponymous Japan reunion from 1991. In both cases, the albums end with two more rare songs: the rocking outtake “Blinding Light Of Heaven” and the much more subdued “The Next Day”. (Completists will also want to seek out the two CD singles for “Jean The Birdman”, which include more subdued Sylvian tracks with Frippertronics, and the “Darshan” maxi-single with two commissioned remixes of the song that are actually shorter than the album track.)

Though the pair wouldn’t take their collaboration further, the rhythm section would continue to be useful for Fripp. And while The Next Day and particularly Damage very much foreshadowed his next adventure, that future would be very different indeed had Sylvian accepted the challenge of singing in King Crimson.

David Sylvian & Robert Fripp The Next Day (1993)—2½
Sylvian/Fripp Damage (1994)—3

King Crimson 15: The Great Deceiver

While it covered all the lineups King Crimson sported over the years, the Frame By Frame box set stuck mainly to album tracks, with the one disc of live material limited to three of those incarnations. The era of the band that begun with the Larks’ Tongues In Aspic album was particularly revered by both audiences and Robert Fripp himself, so he took the opportunity to curate another box set, this time devoted to that quartet. The Great Deceiver highlights six shows, some complete, throughout four discs. While the repertoire is similar, we get to hear just how differently Fripp, John Wetton, David Cross, and Bill Bruford approached each performance. Fripp makes no apology for including four versions of “Easy Money”, though it is something to experience two different audiences hearing “Starless” for the first time—and with violin.

The first disc presents the penultimate gig by the band, completed at the start of disc two. (Even the “Walk On” and “Walk Off” music from (No Pussyfooting) is included for posterity.) This show was the source of “Providence” on Red, presented unedited here, and “21st Century Schizoid Man” on USA, where it was overdubbed. In those days Fripp would actually engage the crowd with announcements, and here his introduction of a well-received improvisation called “A Voyage To The Centre Of The Cosmos” is peppered with his own chuckles.

The bulk of the second disc comes from nine months earlier in Glasgow, and includes the full improv that would be edited and titled “We’ll Let You Know” on Starless And Bible Black. Here the opening jam before “Larks’ Tongues Part One” is called “Sharks’ Lungs In Lemsip”; another improv gets the title “Tight Scrummy” and is built around an almost comically prominent rhythm machine. A surprising encore arrives with Fripp strumming “Peace: A Theme” before the band goes into “Cat Food”. Ten minutes of material from a later show at Penn State fill up the disc, and stay tuned for a hidden track wherein Fripp signals engineer George Chkiantz to change tapes.

Disc three is devoted to a show from Pittsburgh with a rowdy audience. Here the “Walk On” music is smacked away by a furious “Great Deceiver”, but having to tune the Mellotrons quiets the proceedings down quickly into one improv. “Exiles” builds the tension, but Fripp follows that with a pretty piece for guitar and violin dubbed “Daniel Dust”. Things pick up for “Doctor Diamond”, a mushmouthed original that never really gelled. An improv called “Wilton Carpet” moves into “The Talking Drum” and then an “abbreviated” “Larks’ Tongues Part Two”. (Another fourteen minutes from Penn State end the disc, consisting of another announcement from Fripp asking “Is there life out there?”, whence the following improv gets its title; another hidden track demonstrates further onstage tuning of two Mellotrons.)

Disc four opens in Toronto with a furious (there’s that word again) piece called “The Golden Walnut” that eventually dwindles to silence. After “The Night Watch” and “Fracture” comes another improv, cheekily dubbed “Clueless And Slightly Slack”, and a phrase used throughout the booklet. From there we go a Zurich show for plenty of improvisation, one of which is called “The Law Of Maximum Distress” and split into two parts due to a missing tape. As it turns out, that missing piece had been chopped out of the master back in 1973 to be overdubbed as “The Mincer” on Starless And Bible Black. Further dying Mellotron fuels the prelude to “The Talking Drum”, which ends abruptly, along with the entire set.

Once again design was treated with the same respect as the music, from individually unique disc titles and artwork to the comprehensive booklet that incorporated vintage Fripp diary entries from the period, which chronicle the eventual demise of the quartet whilst on the road. He also took the opportunity to expound on further corruption in the music industry, as was his wont, since his previous notes. There is some commentary from the other principals, but most space is given over to a continuation of the press clippings excerpted in the previous box—namely reviews, both positive and negative, of Frame By Frame. (In this century the set was reissued as separate two-disc sets with simpler packaging than the original box.)

Five years later, another important archival piece arrived in the form of The Nightwatch. This two-disc set presents the bulk of the Amsterdam concert that provided the bulk of Starless And Bible Black. Expanding on the background provided in the Great Deceiver booklet, the copious liner notes explain the conditions under which this particular show came to be, and how miserable the band members were at this point of the tour. The result is a portrait of a band pulling excellence out of despair.

Much of the material from this era would one day be parceled out as direct downloads, and in the Starless and Road To Red mega-box sets. These discs provide gradual steps into that well.

King Crimson The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-1974 (1992)—3
King Crimson The Nightwatch (1997)—3½

King Crimson 14: Frame By Frame

Even having explored new music and new ways of creating and performing it, Robert Fripp’s old band would not be forgotten. So when the EG label began the process of reissuing King Crimson albums on compact disc, he was determined to be involved; hence, the ten studio albums were emblazoned with copy proclaiming each “THE DEFINITIVE EDITION”.

This is not the place to detail EG’s business difficulties, but before long the catalog had shifted to the Virgin label, and apparently the folks writing the checks felt the band deserved a box set. Using a programming method that would recur through the years and with advances in technology, Frame By Frame presented what Fripp and a subtitle deemed The Essential King Crimson, covering the three main periods of the band. The set is a good introduction for new comers, with packaging that garnered design awards and an exhaustively detailed booklet that updated the insert in A Young Person’s Guide To King Crimson, presenting a chronology of the band in all incarnations, including excerpts from reviews good and bad, plus the occasional rebuttal from Fripp.

The first disc covers the first four albums and three years, beginning with the entirety of In The Court Of The Crimson King, leaving out only the meandering portion of “Moonchild”, just as on Young Person’s Guide. As there, the single version of “Cat Food” is followed by the “Groon” B-side, while “Cadence And Cascade” now sports a lead vocal freshly recorded by Adrian Belew. Similarly, “Bolero” (the only track representing Lizard) has its bass part newly replaced by Tony Levin. Two tracks from Islands are supported by the coda from that album’s title track, as it had fallen off the previous year’s CD.

The second disc attempts to digest the three albums from the John Wetton/Bill Bruford era. Unfortunately, to accomplish this a few minutes were shaved from “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part I)” and “Fracture”, while an abridgement of “Starless” fades the song just before the middle section in 13/4 and 13/8, and parks it before “Red”—a very jarring experience for those familiar with the album. The third disc samples the three ‘80s albums, mostly straight, but leaning heaviest on Discipline, its selections bookending the others. For an extra bonus, “The King Crimson Barber Shop”, created and performed a cappella by Tony Levin, closes the disc.

Boldly, the fourth disc is solely dedicated to live recordings through the years, split between the more popular lineups. Many of these recordings would be expanded upon and reissued via the King Crimson Collectors’ Club, which would begin towards the end of the century, but for now rarities like “Get Thy Bearings” and “Travel Weary Capricorn” showed off the power of the 1969 band. “The Talking Drum” and “21st Century Schizoid Man” were further samples from the show that begat part of Starless And Bible Black, while “Asbury Park” was the first time anything from USA appeared on CD. The ‘80s lineup gets the shortest shrift, and shortest tracks, and ends the set with something of a thud.

At the time, the set was extremely well received, given that it presented a smart mix of key tracks and rarities. As the catalog would continue to be tweaked as new technologies to improve sound appeared, and various anniversaries mined the evolution of each album, the set has since been surpassed by further excavations and presentations.

King Crimson Frame By Frame: The Essential King Crimson (1991)—3½

Van Morrison 9: Veedon Fleece

Possibly because it doesn’t have a recognizable hit single, Veedon Fleece is one of Van’s lesser-known albums. Which is too bad, because it’s one of his most underrated. It also comes across as one of the more overtly Celtic albums in the canon. Not all of the songs have such touches, but there’s a pervading Irishness that goes right through to the green cover.

With a gentle acoustic strum over two chords and color from a piano, “Fair Play” is a sweet waltz, picking up whenever Van gets to scatting. Following in a similar mood, “Linden Arden Stole The Highlights” would appear to be about some kind of modern outlaw, a John Wesley Harding sort of character. Apparently, despite loving the little children, we’re informed at the end of the song that he’s “living with a gun”. That very predicament is bemoaned at the start of “Who Was That Masked Man”, which uses a shrill falsetto that only gets a little bit in the way. Only four songs in “Streets Of Arklow” manages to be a nice distillation of the entire album instrumentally and thematically, which is an odd setup for “You Don’t Pull No Punches But You Don’t Push The River”. Running at nearly nine minutes, it’s very much in the vein of Astral Weeks, picking that album’s meditations on various philosophies, with tense strings, a dancing flute, William Blake and the Eternals, as well as other spiritual ideas that will surface again and again over the years, on a search for the mysterious object of the album title.

Side two begins deceptively upbeat, as “Bulbs” offers more of the rock sound of his recent albums. The lyrics are fairly impenetrable, seemingly describing a baseball or (American) football game and referencing light bulbs—some of which turn blue, as they had for Jimi Hendrix—redeemed every time by the wordless “la-la-la” section. Whatever the story, it’s clear John Hiatt has heard this song. “Cul De Sac” contains a musical pun, being a rewrite of “Dark End Of The Street”, and hindsight would suggest it’s another look back at his home town. As the band vamps on the ending (still reminiscent of the closing theme from Saturday Night Live) Van grunts and emotes. Similarly simple chords carry “Comfort You”, another sweet love song, contrasted with the more intimate come-on in “Come Here My Love”. The distant drone of a hurdy-gurdy and pipes hover beyond the edge of “Country Fair”, which sports a melody that we’ll hear again, and ends on a completely unexpected fingerpicked flourish. (A later expanded CD added a more subdued takes of “Twilight Zone” and “Cul De Sac”, which don’t ruin the effect, but don’t add anything either.)

Besides being very quiet, Veedon Fleece is sneaky. It may not seem much at first, but the individual and collective qualities of each track emerge to present something very special. Without a clear “hit single”—the most obvious choice was probably “Bulbs”, if anything—it becomes a collective entity, and a fine album.

Van Morrison Veedon Fleece (1974)—4
2008 CD reissue: same as 1974, plus 2 extra tracks

Jimi Hendrix 6: Rainbow Bridge

Moreso than The Cry Of Love, the second posthumous Hendrix album was born out of greed. Tied to a mess of a film that Jimi wanted no part of, the cover of Rainbow Bridge pushes it as the official movie soundtrack, with a photo suggesting that it includes music from the concert featured in the film. It doesn’t. It’s still a decent collection of leftovers, providing two further sides of music that may or may not have been part of whatever his next studio album was supposed to be.

“Dolly Dagger” is a cool funky opener, and while “Earth Blues” is in the same tempo, the backing vocals make it seem less of a carbon copy than some of the tracks on Cry Of Love. A nice surprise is “Pali Gap”, a five-minute jam that develops from nothing into a tastefully played instrumental full of mood and meaning. If you can handle congas and slide guitar effects skidding around the stereo spectrum, “Room Full Of Mirrors” is another hidden gem. The trebly bass is very high in the mix, stopping only when he goes into the inspired chorus (“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah”). Less exciting for non-gearheads is the studio take of “The Star Spangled Banner”, recorded a full five months before its famous appearance at Woodstock, here more of a sound picture than performance art.

Jimi’s “old” sound returns on “Look Over Yonder”, a late-1968 studio recording by the original Experience. It’s played mostly straight, with some overdubs but not too many. That sits nicely next to an epic 11-minute version of “Hear My Train A-Comin’” recorded at Berkeley. Just as with “Red House”, his other original blues trademark, this song was rarely played the same way twice, and this one is as mesmerizing as any—the power trio, with Jimi wailing on top of Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox. Finally, “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)” begins with a complicated structure for about a minute, roughly switching gears into a more simple theme with a descending bass line (think “All Along The Watchtower” crossed with the end of “Stairway To Heaven” with a D major thrown in). After a minute of that, complete with sleigh bell percussion, he asks if the microphone is on and begins singing a verse. There’s even a chorus of sorts, and something of a resolved ending.

As an album, Rainbow Bridge holds together very, very well, making it even preferable to Cry Of Love. Unlike that album, however, it wasn’t reissued on CD until 2014, and until then couldn’t be as easily replicated at your local CD emporium. Half of the songs would surface on First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, while the rest were spread between two compilations and a pricey box set. It’s moot now, while the quest for authenticity required that the bonehead decision to put the tiny dialogue transcription in orange on a busy background is even more maddening in the jewel case format.

Jimi Hendrix Original Motion Picture Sound Track From Rainbow Bridge (1971)—3½

R.E.M. 18: Accelerate

It actually happened—for the first time since the start of the creative decline that coincided with Michael Stipe shaving his head, R.E.M. produced an album that encouraged repeat listens. Accelerate sounds like them again, rocking like Lifes Rich Pageant and the better parts of Green—and nothing like the muddy glam of Monster. This was the R.E.M. we’d been waiting for since that misfire, still clogging the used bins nationwide.

Having decided shorter is better, the band keeps it simple here, with eleven songs coming in at under 35 minutes. These songs don’t meander, and barely give you time to catch your breath before the next one kicks in. “Living Well Is The Best Revenge” fires out of the speakers, Stipe sounding good and pissed off—at haters, perhaps? “Man-Sized Wreath” is especially reminiscent of Pageant with its guitar attack, “Taxman” bass and drums that actually sound like the much-missed Bill Berry. “Supernatural Superserious” was an iffy choice for a lead single, but it comes off more solid when heard within the sequence. Guitars drive these songs, as opposed to the keyboards from the last few albums. Although “Hollow Man” starts with piano and threatens to slow things down, it soon accelerates (sorry) smoothly to an urgent rocker, like Pearl Jam filtered through R.E.M., of all things. “Houston” has what sounds like a distorted organ, but it’s mostly an effect used on a song likely about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The title track begins with one of those great atonal Peter Buck riffs, before turning into an urgent rocker akin to ‘90s Rush (and that’s meant in a good way).

“Until The Day Is Done” rivals their best acoustic moments, and delivers their meditative side much more effectively than anything on their last three albums. Most of the words on the album are jumbled, which is good, since close listens haven’t always proved to be rewarding. Stipe does sprinkle political statements throughout the tracks, and it’s tough to listen to “Mr. Richards” without thinking of Cosmo Kramer. “Sing For The Submarine” could have used a little more ambiguity too. But overall it’s about feel, with the top speed of “Horse To Water”, ending with the Blur-like “woo-hoo” interjections on “I’m Gonna DJ”—a song previewed on the previous year’s live album, and luckily overcomes any potential of being this album’s “Shiny Happy People” or “Stand”.

The original version of this review ended thusly: “Time will tell if this album has staying power, but for now, it’s great to have them back.” We stand by that statement. Accelerate is an excellent return to form, and their best effort since Automatic For The People. So there.

R.E.M. Accelerate (2008)—3½

Neil Finn 1: Try Whistling This

After Crowded House disbanded, Neil Finn found himself without a band for the first time in decades. So rather than start over with a new combo, he worked from the ground up, mostly on his own, embracing new technology to explore his more experimental side.

The first thing we hear on Try Whistling This is a primitive drum machine, which continues under the pleasantly picked acoustic guitar and sunny melody of “Last One Standing”. Altogether, a good start. “Souvenir” is reminiscent of the lo-fi experiments on the Finn Brothers album, right down to the octave harmonies. With a keyboard and verse right off a ‘70s Eno track, “King Tide” is off-putting at first, but once the other instruments come in, the song rises. Following the moody title track, which comes into its own during the last minute or so, the album’s clear highlight is “She Will Have Her Way”, which could have been a smash hit nationwide had it only gotten airplay. If it wasn’t so slow, maybe “Sinner” would have impressed some programmer, based as it is around a cocktail piano and strings loop.

Knowing how these musical geniuses come up with ideas, we’re going to assume “Twisty Bass” was a working title that stuck. Whatever the story, it’s too long and draggy to keep interest. Luckily, “Loose Tongue” sports one of those infectious riffs; if not for the modern effects, it could be a Crowded House track, and it’s got a cool coda too. “Truth” and “Astro” are further buried gems, and much more straightforward than the middle of the album, but he dumps out the effects bag for “Dream Date”, which is otherwise catchy. “Faster Than Light” suggests that he and R.E.M. were listening to some of the same producers for ideas around the same time. Finally, “Addicted” wanders around a simple tack piano, before winding slowly down to a stop.

Try Whistling This was underwhelming upon release, for those of us still stuck in the sunny power pop of the House. It’s improved in retrospect, with many melodies emerging from the murk. Kudos to him for taking the chance.

Neil Finn Try Whistling This (1998)—3

Crowded House 5: Recurring Dream and Afterglow

After ten years, four albums, and the addition and subtraction of new and old members, Crowded House called it quits with a farewell concert and a hits collection. Recurring Dream shuffled four tracks from each of the albums, all of which were actually singles somewhere in the world. Being the ‘90s, three new tracks were included, and unfortunately, none suggested that the band was leaving potential untapped. “Not The Girl You Think You Are” and “Instinct” rumble along, exposing the hole drummer Paul Hester left when he’d quit the band a few years before. “Everything Is Good For You” is a little better, but hardly as exciting as the actual hits.

Those underwhelming new tracks notwithstanding, it’s still an excellent introduction to the band. After all, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” still belongs on any list of classic 20th century pop music, along with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “Yesterday” and so forth. (More exciting to fans overseas was the “Special Edition”, which added an entertaining live disc compiled from several shows. The water was muddied somewhat some 14 years later with the pointedly titled The Very Very Best Of Crowded House, which duplicated all but five tracks from Recurring Dream, replacing those with the execrable “Chocolate Cake”, two more songs from Together Alone, and two others from the current century.)

Right in line with the dwindling interest the American public showed in the band over the years, it should be of little surprise that an outtakes collection (of sorts) was released by the end of the century. Afterglow offers mostly unreleased songs spanning their career, from “Recurring Dream” (which predates the debut, and explains the title of the hits album) to “Help Is Coming”, a gloomy but enticing song from the never-finished fifth album.

They’re not all hidden gems; “My Telly’s Gone Bung” is a jokey Paul Hester song that would have worked best as a B-side. By the same token, “I Love You Dawn” and “Lester”, despite their tunefulness, are too personal (the former about Neil Finn’s wife, the latter about his dog) to have fit within an album sequence. Still, those are just a handful of songs included here that were early contenders for Woodface before that album merged with a Finn Brothers project. A clean mix of “Private Universe” without the percussive effects helps reveal that song’s qualities; two other refugees from the Together Alone era (“I Am In Love” and “You Can Touch”) are nice surprises as well.

Only after ingesting the four individual albums should Afterglow be tackled, but chances are it will be worth it. It too was included as part of the pantheon when the Deluxe Editions came out, rather than its contents being farmed out to the bonus discs for the studio albums. The three new songs from Recurring Dream appear on this bonus disc, along with demos for each. Further songs from the band’s last days appear, signifying a “different” band, even more so from Together Alone, and closer to the jarring sound of Neil’s eventual solo album.

Crowded House Recurring Dream: The Very Best Of Crowded House (1996)—3½
Crowded House Afterglow (2000)—3½
2016 Deluxe Edition: same as 2000, plus 14 extra tracks
Crowded House The Very Very Best Of Crowded House (2010)—3½

Suzanne Vega 4: 99.9 F°

With this album Suzanne took a big leap out of folk into pop. While 99.9 F° has a couple of voice-and-acoustic duets, most of the production spotlights a much louder band than the guys she had before. Unfortunately, Crowded House and Los Lobos cohort Mitchell Froom was that producer. Fortunately, he brought along Richard Thompson, session rat Jerry Marotta on drums and Attractions exile Bruce Thomas all over the bass.

Some of the “new” sounds are refreshing, and nicely complement her lyrics, which vary between straight and vague, as ever. “Rock In This Pocket (Song Of David)” is sung from the point of view of Goliath’s opponent. “Blood Makes Noise” was the first single, heavy on the bass and delivered at a speed that doesn’t suit her, really. “In Liverpool” is a melancholy reverie with an expansive arrangement, but the title track goes back to a noisy loop. There’s finally a quiet one in “Blood Sings” (where she’s backed by some of her old band members), but that’s contrasted with the nightmare circus of “Fat Man And Dancing Girl”.

“(If You Were) In My Movie” is unnecessarily parenthetical and a little underdeveloped. “As A Child” is more appealing, and the same can definitely be said about “Bad Wisdom”. Compared to the first song on her previous album, it’s another song directed at a “mother”, only this time something has definitely gone wrong in the person’s life. With all the talk of blood and doctors on the album, and the climate in which it was created, AIDS was the assumption, but as it turns out, it’s a different kind of child abuse. Other reviewers have made the Bangles comparison for “When Heroes Go Down”, a wonderfully short pop song that proves she’s sound great singing the phone book. “As Girls Go” could easily be a track off the then-recent Crowded House or Richard Thompson albums, but it’s matched well to her. “Song Of Sand” has a string quartet, and then it’s over.

Again, much of the production gets in the way of 99.9 F°, but it was nice to know she couldn’t be so easily pigeonholed. It’s a short but varied album, and still a pleasant diversion.

Suzanne Vega 99.9 F° (1992)—3

Robert Fripp 4: The League Of Crafty Guitarists

The years following the end of the ‘80s incarnation of King Crimson found Robert Fripp immersed in a music instruction-cum-philosophy retreat called Guitar Craft, the most notable public result of which being the implementation of an alternate tuning he’d devised. As more students joined the course over time, it was almost inevitable that new music would arise out of the quorum, and soon The League of Crafty Guitarists was formed.

The first release from the conglomerate was mostly recorded at a series of college gigs, and shows how seventeen similarly tuned acoustic guitars can combine while Fripp directs and/or solos on top. The three main “Guitar Craft Theme[s]” appear out of order but recall some of the experiments of Michael Hedges and his ilk, while most of the given piece titles aren’t as leading as “Tight Muscle Party At Love Beach”—one of three tracks not credited solely to Fripp—overall the music is mesmerizing and occasionally soothing. The closing “Crafty March” is particularly interesting, as we hear the musicians enter and exit the hall while playing. (Not that the album needed filling out, but “The New World” is a separately recorded Frippertronics piece with a nice solo atop it, and one of the better examples of that genre.)

Five years went by before another incarnation of Crafties came together for an album. Show Of Hands boasted more individual Crafty compositions of varying success but further intricacy. However, just over a half-hour of music is split up by, frankly, disruptive solo vocal selections from one Patricia Leavitt. Still, “Eye Of The Needle”, “Scaling The Whales”, “Asturias”, and “A Connecticut Yankee In The Court Of King Arthur” recall the better parts of Live!, and “The Moving Force” is a lovely trilling piece with added viola that sounds like it uses fewer players than the seventeen listed.

A better representation of this League’s potential came four years later when Intergalactic Boogie Express, an official bootleg of the subsequent tour, appeared as one of the first releases on Fripp’s new Discipline Global Mobile label. Highlights include some Bach pieces, a new Fripp composition called “Larks’ Thrak”, and a wonderful arrangement of the traditional chestnut “Wabash Cannonball”, while seven pages of liner notes in small print document the financial hassles with his old label that loomed large over the tour and nearly bankrupted him. (Even before that, The Bridge Between was the only release by the pompously dubbed Robert Fripp String Quintet, which consisted of the auteur with key collaborator Trey Gunn and three Crafties who’d formed the California Guitar Trio. Once again original compositions are peppered with Bach pieces, but with more electronic touches via the Chapman stick and E-bows and whatnot that vary between complementary and distracting. While something of a tangent, the album still nicely fills in the years between Crimson incarnations.)

Robert Fripp and the League Of Crafty Guitarists Live! (1986)—3
Robert Fripp & The League Of Crafty Guitarists Show Of Hands (1991)—2½
The Robert Fripp String Quintet The Bridge Between (1993)—3
Robert Fripp & The League Of Crafty Guitarists Intergalactic Boogie Express — Live In Europe 1991 (1995)—3

Cowboy Junkies: The Trinity Session

One of the more surprising hits of the late ‘80s was an album supposedly recorded live to a single microphone in a church. That would explain the title of The Trinity Session, and while Cowboy Junkies got their name randomly, it’s an apt description for their sleepy brand of country and folk. They were made for VH-1, and provided twentysomethings not interested in rap or hair metal with someplace else to go.

The album alternates between originals and covers, and the differences are seamless. The opening a cappella “Mining For Gold” shows off Margo Timmins’ oft-labeled angelic voice, going right into “Misguided Angel”, a sweet love song. “I Don’t Get It” isn’t as successful vocally, but an extra-slow version of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and the sad but pretty “To Love Is To Bury” redeem the side. We don’t even mind the accordion.

“200 More Miles” builds slowly and effectively, leading nicely to a cover of “Dreaming My Dreams With You”. But it was their intriguing take on “Sweet Jane”, modeled on the lesser-known slower version from the Velvet Underground 1969, that brought them all the attention (in the States, anyway). “Postcard Blues” mostly sits there, but their version of “Walkin’ After Midnight” does a nice job of showcasing several musicians and ending the program, complete with ambient post-gig audio-verité. (Typically for the time, those of us who bought it on vinyl were cheated out of two extra tracks: the rambling, rumbling “Working On A Building”, and a clever arrangement of “Blue Moon” that adds some original verses.)

They’d turn up the volume on future releases, but nothing they’ve done since has seemed to resonate with the public as much as The Trinity Session did, and still does. It’s a great one for late-night listening, not so much for driving on a sunny day.

Cowboy Junkies The Trinity Session (1988)—4

Jimi Hendrix 5: The Cry Of Love

Jimi suffered from the disease known as “recording-itis”, whereby the afflicted individual simply can’t finish anything in the studio, endlessly tinkering, trying to replicate the sound in his head on tape. And to compound that pressure, he was constantly rearranging potential track sequences for his next album, which he figured might as well be another double-LP set, considering the piles of songs he’d been amassing. One of these proposed albums might have been called First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, and since his death it has become something of a legendary lost album (see Lifehouse, Get Back, Smile, etc.) that people would eternally argue over as to what it would have, or could have been.

But back then, Reprise needed to put out an album, so Mitch Mitchell and Eddie Kramer compiled The Cry Of Love, consisting of ten tracks on a single disc. For the most part their choices are sound, alternating funky jams and slower stuff.

“Freedom” is a strong opener, with vocals that may or may not have been influenced by Richie Havens’ impromptu improvisation at Woodstock, as displayed in the film of the same name. The ending has a nice up-ending in the tempo and a great jazzy flourish. “Drifting” continues the “underwater” sound from side three of Electric Ladyland to complement the seafaring lyrics. (The vibes may have been someone else’s afterthought, but they don’t get in the way.) “Ezy Ryder” references another counterculture cinematic touchstone, but outside of the phased and panned guitars, it doesn’t really excite. Maybe it’s the congas mixed at the same level as the rest of the track. “Night Bird Flying” is just a hair slower than the other uptempo tracks thus far, and uses way too much cowbell. The only real clunker on the album is “My Friend”, an in-joke of a song disguised as a club jam, already done better in the form of “Voodoo Chile”. Moreover, it was recorded in 1968, and could easily have been elbowed in favor of other candidates.

“Straight Ahead”, sounds very similar, again, to the toe-tappers on side one, leading one to think that some of them could have been combined into one or two really strong tracks. Maybe that was the plan all along. Experts say that “Astro Man” was part of another project entirely, about a comic book superhero. Whatever the truth, it’s little more than a sketch, with too many overdubbed guitars fighting for space. All is forgiven by “Angel”, one of his most beautiful songs, and one that deserves to be called a classic. “In From The Storm” is another strong one, with a familiar yet comfortable riff and several changes in tempo, though we detect a quote from Jeff Beck’s “Rice Pudding” at the end. Fittingly, the last track is supposedly the last thing Jimi recorded, the moderately charming “Belly Button Window”, a blues sung from the point of view of a fetus.

While The Cry Of Love has moments of excellence, it wasn’t about to challenge any of his previous studio albums as the ultimate masterpiece. It’s mostly of interest to those who have thoroughly digested those earlier albums, and will likely pique curiosity as to what else was left behind. That would be addressed soon enough, and that goes for this forum as well.

When the first Hendrix CDs were issued in the mid-‘80s, The Cry Of Love was one of the posthumous few to be included. When the catalog changed hands in 1993, it went out of print, but a few years later the songs became available in a different sequence on another reassessment of the legacy. That was that for another couple of decades, until, in time for the 44th anniversary of his death, the original album was rereleased by the estate, using the original 1971 mixes, further gumming up a catalog they’d done so much to streamline.

Jimi Hendrix The Cry Of Love (1971)—3

Van Morrison 8: It’s Too Late To Stop Now

This is one of those albums that gets mentioned as one of the best live albums of all time. It was certainly lavish; two records in a triptych cover loaded with photos, offering nearly 90 minutes of music from three club-sized shows in L.A. and London. For a guy who’s gained a reputation as a reclusive grump, it takes the listener back to a time when Van Morrison was an exciting, engaging performer.

While the quote marks and ellipses vary from cover to spine to the labels, “…It’s Too Late To Stop Now…” does offer up the hits, so to speak, with songs from each of his solo albums to date. There’s even a throwback to his days with the R&B group Them, demonstrated by the energetic performances of “Here Comes The Night” and “Gloria” on side four.

Van has always considered his role as a performer to be his job, so his shows have stayed in the tradition of the jazz and soul revues that he fell in love with as a boy. For him, it was never about promoting your latest record; a show was always about the music and the moment. That’s what makes his choices to cover Ray Charles, Bobby Blue Bland, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke and Sonny Boy Williamson some of the better moments on the album. In the hands of the Caledonia Soul Orchestra—the usual guitar, bass, piano and drums augmented by both horns and a string section—songs like “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do”, “I Believe To My Soul” and “Help Me” emerge as part of his own fabric.

Of his own catalog selections, it’s the longer numbers that do stand out. Already epic tracks like “Saint Dominic’s Preview”, “Listen To The Lion” and “Cyprus Avenue”, as well as a “Caravan” that goes over nine minutes, demonstrate the tightness of the band, able to stop and start at the drop of a hand, while following his scat of the moment. “Cyprus Avenue” closes the album, and it’s a particularly engrossing display of interplay between Van, band, and even the audience. At one moment of silence between burst of music, an audience member shouts “Turn it on!” (perhaps a reference to “Caravan”, which precedes it) to which Van slyly replies, “It’s turned on already.” That gets a whoop from the audience, followed by another battering of the chords and a shout of “It’s too late to stop now!” (first heard, of course, at the end of “Into The Mystic”) that brings the final chord.

So while It’s Too Late To Stop Now is a perfectly enjoyable album, is it essential? The greatest live album ever made? That’s a matter of personal taste. His shows were always unpredictable, and still are, so this is merely a snapshot of one of his phases. A single album of the highlights would certainly get it more plays around our house, but still no more than any of the studio albums.

Not only because of the cover design, for years it was rumored that the album was cut down from a triple, and whether or not that’s true is now moot. Not too long after his first three Warner albums were expanded (supposedly against Van’s will), the original 1974 release was subtitled Volume I, coinciding with the unveiling of …It’s Too Late To Stop Now…Volumes II, III, IV & DVD. This deluxe package devotes a disc each to shows from each of the original venues, with the video portion coming from London. Along with further choices from his albums, covers include “Hey Good Lookin”, “Since I Fell For You” and “Buona Sera”, plus the then-unreleased “There There Child”, “I Paid The Price” and “No Way” (written by pianist Jeff Labes). With 3½ hours of new music, it’s essential for anyone who loves the original album.

Van Morrison “…It’s Too Late To Stop Now…” (1974)—3½
2008 CD reissue: same as 1974, plus 1 extra track
Van Morrison …It’s Too Late To Stop Now…Volumes II, III, IV & DVD (2016)—3½

Andy Summers and Robert Fripp: I Advance Masked and Bewitched

At first it sounded like an odd match—the guitarist for a popular mainstream band facing off against the same for one of rock’s most challenging—but taken down to the basic details, it makes sense that Andy Summers and Robert Fripp would be so compatible. There were enough precedents in both the Police and King Crimson to show their similarities, and tendencies to create textures and spit out staccato solos. (They’re about the same age, too, Andy the older by three years. He’d also played in a whole slew of prog outfits before the Police got him.)

I Advance Masked is a true duet, each track compositionally credited to both, playing alternately dizzying runs up and down necks and exploring the capabilities of the guitar synthesizer. Being entirely instrumental, the titles suggest various moods, sometimes beautifully, as with “Girl On A Swing”, where a gentle piano dances around an acoustic guitar while a birdlike melody soars back and forth. “Painting And Dance” presents a nice little chamber piece, and tracks like “Under Bridges Of Silence”, “The Truth Of Skies” and “In The Cloud Forest” contain enough Frippertronics to create moods. There are enough uptempo pieces to keep it from being entirely impressionistic; the title track (which builds on “The Zero Of The Signified” from Under Heavy Manners and shares some constructive elements with “Neurotica” from Beat) is particularly edgy, a tension that continues on the percussive “New Marimba”. “Hardy Country” also provides a change in dynamic, just as “Stultified” ends the album with a set of precisely played dissonant figures.

While not a smash hit, and little promotion considering their commitments to their main bands, a follow-up still materialized. Bewitched isn’t simply more of the same, mostly because it’s more of a Summers album than a collaboration with Fripp, as the song credits make plain. While we haven’t found any official proof, the album was split between a “dance” side, which adds a real rhythm section, and a “dream” side, which is much more contemplative. Once again the titles try to be descriptive (“Begin The Day”, “Parade”, “Forgotten Steps”, “Train”), and while “What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy” is upbeat, reminiscent of Fripp’s “discotronics” period, at ten minutes it tends to drag. When the album works best, the notion of Eno mixing an ECM album isn’t so alien.

While musically satisfying, the presentation on Bewitched isn’t as successful as I Advance Masked. Having limited themselves to two albums, a 90-minute Maxell contains both nicely. If Police fans found their way here, they could well have graduated to King Crimson via a back door. More directly, it gives the listener a chance to hear Fripp’s current style unadorned by the Levin/Bruford rhythm section, nor particularly Adrian Belew. It also raises Andy’s profile a bit, giving him a chance to step out of Sting’s shadow.

Andy Summers/Robert Fripp I Advance Masked (1982)—4
Andy Summers/Robert Fripp Bewitched (1984)—3

King Crimson 13: Three Of A Perfect Pair

The ‘80s version of King Crimson knew their audience. Guys raised on prog probably spent their non-musical attention reading sci-fi and fantasy novels, usually presented by the authors as trilogies. Three Of A Perfect Pair closes the book, so to speak, on this version of the group, which disbanded once the tour was over. Even the title seems to provide something of a conclusion.

Musically, the band was very much an anachronism; Yes, Genesis and the Moody Blues had retooled their approaches to cover more pop and grasp at success on the Top 40 chart. The title track, despite its wacky meter, almost comes off as a pop song, with a willfully perverse synth guitar solo that sounds like someone trying to figure out his effects pedals while playing it. “Model Man” and “Man With An Open Heart” have enough elements to keep them contemporary as well, but both are just too unsettling to be effective. Built around Tony Levin’s tapped bass, “Sleepless” is an improvement and the best song on the album, if not this version of the band. Because Adrian Belew’s vocal dominates the songs with lyrics, it can be said that this doesn’t really sound like a Crimson (read: Fripp) album until “Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)” and its layered guitars.

On the CD, without the separation of side one (the “Left Side”) and side two (the “Right Side”), it’s a seamless transition to “Industry”, with even more synth guitar exploration. In the mode of similar tracks on the “trilogy”, it escalates into tense chaos without ever losing track of the rigid beat. “Dig Me” is very jagged and challenging, stopping twice for a simple exhilarating “chorus” over major chords. “No Warning” is another ominous instrumental along the lines of “Industry” and again, unsettling. Daringly, the album ends with “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part III”, which provides not only a suggested bridge to the mid-‘70s version of the band (two prior to this) but provides a finale for this lineup. As others have noted, the track fades before its resolution is revealed, an oddity in the catalog.

It’s probably a matter of taste, but considering Bill Bruford’s skill on acoustic percussion, his reliance on electronic drums here diminishes his contribution somewhat. Of the three albums by this lineup, Three Of A Perfect Pair places just below Discipline but above Beat. They should probably all be heard together as a set, but as they weren’t composed that way, that would explain why they remain separate entities. While we’re still more partial to the first album and Red, these have their moments and are certainly not wastes of plastic.

The first expansion of the album included a section called “The Other Side”, beginning with the wonderful all-Tony a cappella piece “The King Crimson Barber Shop”, which must be heard to be believed, along with two jams and three different remixes of “Sleepless” that scream mid-‘80s. (These extras are also part of the streaming version.) The next version relegated the remixes to the DVD, but added another jam and two more outtakes.

King Crimson Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984)—3
2001 30th Anniversary Edition: same as 1984, plus 6 extra tracks
2016 40th Anniversary Edition: same as 1984, plus 6 extra tracks (plus DVD)