Sic Semper Tyrannis

King Crimson

I’ve only got two HUGE perspective-shifting musical influences left to discuss in my musical biography. If I remember correctly, last week I was up to Frank Zappa and his guiding me through my senior year of high school.

After high school, I went to the University of Oklahoma for a couple of years, and in between disappointing trumpet teachers, dodging frat boys and trying not to notice sorority girls my sophomore year, I made a pretty clean break with academic, classical music. Only rock n’ roll could affect my soul at that particular point. However, I fell under the influence of a very academic, technique-minded band: King Crimson.

Few, I mean few, people probably draw much pleasure from listening to a “weird” band like King Crimson. But at most points, they furthered the lessons I learned from Zappa and the prog-rockers. There’s the same emphasis on “unnaturalness” and difficulty of musical execution as far as technique is concerned. Crimson has had several line-ups over its 30-plus year history, the only constant member over that whole span of time being Robert Fripp. And all of those line-ups have played pretty “out-there” music. “So, what do they sound like? Get to the point, Mike.”

Briefly, there are three main streams to their output. The first period of the late 60s was the closest they ever were to “prog-rock” a la Genesis, or Yes, or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, etc. Just like all of those bands, they liked epic statements of electronic oceans of mellotron sound and they had mysterious lyrics, similar to Yes, but a lot more easily comprehensible. They also had a propensity for gritty, medium-tempo, horn-led funk at the same time, which kind of set them apart from their pasty-white English brothers.

The second period, and probably my favorite that was represented on the album The Concise King Crimson, was the line-up from the early 80s. This was music that, to me, had no reference points, something totally distinct. I learned later that they made three classic albums with this group: Discipline, (which I consider to be the ultra-rare “perfect album”), Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. This was some of the most difficult “rock” music I ever heard. There were two guitarists who often played in an “interlocking” style with ultra-clean guitar sounds. It’s hard to describe in non-technical terms, but just imagine one guy playing a repeating figure of fast notes while the other guy plays the same figure but starting at a different point. The resulting sound is once again, “controlled chaos,” an idea I was fond of with Zappa. And add catchy vocal melodies on top of that? Man! I was totally sold. Unlike Zappa, though, this music was humorless and academic. This was serious art music. (Which is probably why it never really gained much popularity apart from geeky music-guys like me.)

And there were other things that I loved about this sound. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew, the two guitarists, were very much experimental with the new technology of the time--namely, the guitar synthesizer, which allowed them to play otherworldly weedlies and skronking squeeches never before coaxed from a guitar and an amp. And then there was Adrian Belew’s distinctive, pleasantly nasal voice. Sometimes he sounded kind of like David Byrne from the Talking Heads, (with whom he played, as well as David Bowie and Zappa, the man himself.) But Belew had a way of committing to a beautiful, long melody in ways you rarely heard Byrne do.

Anyway, the 80s music was pretty far removed from “prog-rock.” This was “art-rock.” I see it as a matter of difference in structural inspiration. The prog-rock from the 60s and 70s was influenced by orchestral music of the Romantic period, (and sometimes, the Classical period.) But this music’s structural inspiration was from the 60s and 70s avant-garde minimalist movement, (which I plan to dive into soon, my friends.) Of course, I didn’t really know all of that at the time. I just thought that this was music unlike any I had ever heard.

The third stream of their music is similar to that of the 80s and, I think, stretches into the current line-up. They had a brief stint as a double-trio (2 drummers, 2 basses, 2 guitarists) in the 90s and still have the insanely complicated “interlocking” guitars and odd meters, but with more power and distorted guitars, a la Tool.

Since they are such phenomenal musicians, King Crimson’s members have played on a lot of other people’s projects and would be great for playing a musical Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. For instance, just off the top of my head, Belew has been a session musician for the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Paul Simon, Tori Amos and produced the Jars of Clay song “Flood.” Robert Fripp played with David Bowie and Brian Eno. Bass player Tony Levin has played consistently with Peter Gabriel and I just found out he played some on the great Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms. And drummer Bill Bruford was the original drummer for Yes.

All of this to say that King Crimson looms very large in the music appreciation class in my head. They are one of my top two or three favorite bands.

posted by Mike @ 1:17 PM