BEAT - Model Man
Well, I have a vitreous floater and can't really see worth two sticky shits, but that doesn't stop me from delivering the goods. There may be typos, though, so be warned well in advance.
Today's magic music berfday isn't a person or a concert anniversary. It is, however, about a band, and a favorite at that of not only music aficionados, but of just about anyone in our epoch who ever picked up an instrument and tried to get serious about the fun within such items.
For it was 56 years ago today, in the basement of a London cafe, that one of history's most beloved, imitated and never equaled groups took their first rehearsal steps.
There have been more people in this band since that day than most Tabernacle Choirs feature at the holiday season, but endure they have, in one metastasized form or another.
Of course the constant has always been Robert Fripp, a guitar player and theoretician who might dress like a high-end real estate broker (I think his dad was one, actually, but I'm too blind to look it up so you will hafta trust me), yet with a guitar in his hands resembles something like Sonny Sharrock, Jimi Hendrix, Pat Martino and Béla Bartók rolled into one, Gurdjieff-inspired diminutive English dude.
But let's not get ahead of our Prog Rock selves, because Robert Fripp isn't in this iteration, and this band isn't even King Crimson. Although the living spirit of some of the most beloved Crimso music dwells mightily within it. And no, that's not a typo, it's a nickname they've had since 1969.
Apparently KC alumnus and guitar strangler of renown Adrian Belew -- someday, I will write a dramatic screenplay all about the 1977 Berlin night David Bowie stole him from Frank Zappa's band, and it will be called Fuck You, Captain Tom in honor of FZ's repeated admonishment to Bowie at the dinner table where it all went down -- initiated this project 5 years ago, but COVID-19 delayed it happening until last year.
Well, it finally happened: a superdupergroup with two lettered Crimsoids and two megastars who grew up with the music, but were never technically Crimson Kings... at least not up to this point.
They took this out on tour across the US last fall, and my oh my! did it make a stir. "Tour of the Year" was one phrase I saw uttered more than once in print, and by folks whose extravagant opinions I often respect.
None of these concerts made the radio, and the tickets were a pretty penny. Although my hubby wanted us to go when it made Eugene here, it was just too prohibitive costwise. However, someone somehow got a few dubs of a few of them, originating from Adrian's in-ear monitor mix. Which featured the requisite deafening kickdrum -- you need that pulse to know where the f you are in music this complicated -- and his guitar one and one third as loud as the other guy's, which in music that depends on intertwining guitars such as this kind of blew the listening experience a bit.
There was a pro-shot livestream they broadcast at the end of the tour, but that was of the third performance of the run, and they weren't quite there in terms of nailing the material quite yet. This is why bands always make the live LP and the DVD Blu Ray from the last show of the tour, but it was what it was and there must have been some logistical issues preventing that from happening, as can so often be the case when mounting immense undertakings like 65-date, national concert treks.
So there weren't really any usable, satisfying ROIOs of the Tour of the Year, bummer. Or were there? Could an emerging, modern technology that's just making its (possibly revolutionary for this bootleg stuff) presence felt across the spectrum of idiots like me -- that work on this shit so that you don't have to listen to shoddy, poorly represented crap that insults the reputations of the musicians and hurts your ears thinking about what coulda been -- to somehow pull the missing guitars and the drifty vocals from the murky depths, and make it all shine like the doorknob on a whorehouse?
Could Joshy use an AI stem separator tool in Audacity to unravel the cake from Adrian's IEMs and bake it back up all in balance, despite the foolishness inherent in trying to do such a thing with music that, like I said, is based around not just meshing Gamelan guitars -- which this AI junk is years, if not lifetimes, away from being able to untangle -- but also integrates a Chapman Stick into the equation... which splits itself, when separated, into two distinct halves?
Well, I may be half blind, but I ain't deaf yet. Watch out! Cuz here comes some good trouble...
BEAT
Performing the Music of 1980s King Crimson
Kodak Center
Rochester, NY
10.19.2024
01 introduction
02 Neurotica
03 Neal and Jack and Me
04 Heartbeat
05 Sartori In Tangier
06 Dig Me
07 Model Man
08 Man with an Open Heart
09 Industry
10 Larks' Tongues In Aspic, part III
11 Waiting Man
12 The Sheltering Sky
13 Sleepless
14 Frame By Frame
15 Matte Kudasai
16 Elephant Talk
17 Three of a Perfect Pair
18 Indiscipline
19 Red
20 Thela Hun Ginjeet
Total time: 2:00:30
disc break goes after Track 10
Adrian Belew - guitar, percussion & vocals
Steve Vai - guitar
Tony Levin - bass, Chapman Stick & vocals
Danny Carey - drums & percussion
24/48k matrix of Adrian Belew's In Ear Monitor mix and an audience capture
converted to 16/44 CD Audio and stem-separated with Audacity OpenVINO
stems overdubbed to strengthen Steve Vai's guitar, the vocals and a little of the bass
Track 01 is pastiched from Keller Auditorium, Portland OR 11.22.2024
all remuxed, remixed, retracked, denoised and remastered by EN, December 2024-January 2025
744 MB FLAC/direct link
744 MB FLAC/direct link
Because I am insane and obsessed, and try to use these usually undesirable attributes for the common good, I placed both the Super 2160p livestream of that other show I mentioned from date #3 in (please God in whom I don't believe, don't let it burn to the ground!) Los Angeles, as well as the audio from that, for all you completist freeks out there who need to see/hear these guys clam it up as they find their footing in this frothy, frenetic fare.
I'm pretty fucked up right now, but I worked for three solid weeks on this thing to get it just how I wanted it and I think I did OK. Certainly the best capture of this tour we have heard yet, although there's bound to be a live album somewhere down the road. Until then, I invite you to eat to the BEAT and celebrate the 56th birthday of the indelible King Crimson with me today! Now someone pass me my sunglasses and cane, so I can tap along in 14/8 time with the masters, will you?--J.
