Why I Love King Crimson

King Crimson are one of my favorite bands - up there with The Beatles, Voivod, Carcass, Celtic Frost, Smiths, Bad Brains, Radiohead etc

Do I love everything they do? No, not really although I admire it. Fripp has often referred to Crimson as "a way of doing things" - its the attitude of relentless experimentation and knowing when to stop. Finishing after 3 great albums both with the Wetton/Bruford/Fripp (Cross/Muir) line up and again with Levin/Bruford/Belew/Fripp line up in the 80's. Each album a progression and something new.

I remember getting Red on CD when I was about 18, me and my mate John got the train down to London from Northants and spent the day going round all the record shops - there were loads then - Tower, Virgin, HMV and all the Berwick Street ones. It was awesome, you couldn't get anything like Crimson or Voivod or the Mahavishnu in the early 90's where we lived, pre web. It was impossible, so we used to go down to London to stock up.

Anyway I got Red and loved it - that Bruford/Wetton line up were amazing - the improv stuff on the Great Deceiver box set is very cool (although I thought it was crap when I first heard it). The title track with the whole tone riff is wonderful and the bass sound is genius - incredible really. Starless was the song that really got me, it took me a while to get it but now its my favorite - 14 minutes of it, when the melody comes back in at the end I struggle to hold back the tears (the live version is even better).

After that I got In The Court Of The Crimson King - I didn't really get it. I know its an important record but I never really got it in the same way as the later stuff. It has grown on me though. It must have been amazing in the context of 1969.

The next album I purchased was Thrak when it first came out, this was the first one I heard with Belew on vocals. Its brilliant, one of my favorite Crimson albums and the first time I'd heard the interlocking guitar style they had developed in the 80's. The title track superbly invokes Red but for me the best song is Belew's Dinosaur, a genius pop song - its like the Beatles suddenly developed a love of the whole tone scale. The double trio was also a remarkable idea really innovative and one of the reasons it holds up to much deep listening, over and over again.

My last major Crimson discovery was the 80's stuff with Discipline, Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair. This is now my favorite Crimson era. The way they used multiple time signatures and minamalist tactics without ever becoming boring is inspirational. Frame By Frame off of Discipline includes so many ideas in it, more than most bands have in entire albums. The Abscent Lovers live album from this era is spectacular and a personal favorite of Bruford''s.

The ability to stop and move on and truly progress is vital to all the KC line ups and is truly "progressive rock" - rock music with the ambition and the need to progress. Bloody brilliant!

For more info on Crimson - Sid Smiths book on the subject is wonderful and I believe its being re-issued soon.

While I was writing this I asked a few of my clever Twitter friends for quotes to go with the post - here they are:

"that band changed my life!" @thesidsmith

"intellectual rigour matched with peerless playing AND spiritual questing. And the only band that truly scared my cats" @chrisHDjones

"King Crimson has for many years been a major influence on me; it would be difficult to overstate the effect of the band's sound and approach had on my own compositional style. and their approach to group improvisation was very inspiring. Coming from a jazz & contemporary classical music background I could immediately relate to their musical & harmonic concepts. Even their technological approach was an influence... 80's era Crimson was built around something Fripp called a "Small mobile musical unit" - an esthetic I aspired heavily to when putting together the first version of "Neil Alexander & NAIL" (just called NAIL at that point) and when redesigning my keyboard rig around a single keyboard worn on a strap. After many years of giant multiple keyboard setups & mixers, it was a bit of a revelation, and a system I continue to use for my own performances." - Neil Alexander

NAIL - the 1st incarnation (on Bandcamp):

http://nailmusic.bandcamp.com/album/bent


Neil Alexander & NAIL: video of "(At The) Water's Edge" at Moogffest 2007 demonstrating the "small mobile musical unit" concept in trio format.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qhmfp-NPJc

"I love King Crimson because they remind me to keep moving forward whilst kicking ass no matter what" Sean Hollenhors

"I dare someone to name a more challenging and artistic pop group than 80's era King Crimson. Adrian Belew wrote and sang beautiful, catchy pop melodies over the maelstrom of aggressive, interlocking riffs supplied by Robert Fripp and Tony Levin. Even though they were influenced by The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Balinese gamelan music and the prog-rock that came before them, this incarnation of King Crimson had a completely unique sound."

John Anealio

Sci-Fi Songs Album
Wired Magazine's GeekDad Guitar Teacher

"That band opened my ears to what is possible by doing the seemingly impossible." @noforker

"Discipline is a Vehicle for Joy

The argument often leveled at prog is one of a bloated, overwrought, smug behemoth. And lets face it, in the topographic tales that flow from under the cape of Wakeman or the knife wielding bravado of a Hammond bashing Keith Emerson, it's a convincing and obvious argument.

Perhaps the perfect antidote are King Crimson. Naturally the name resounds with a satanic grandeur and all too often the aloof air of Fripp's philosophical musings cloud peoples judgement. However Fripp's mindset has always been a refreshing, almost puritanical response to the crass, egocentric rock gods of the late 60's and 70's. His vision, while often bloody minded and stubborn, is borne of a need to let the purity of the music speak and shine through and to make every attempt to prevent this from being tainted by the ego of the artist.

This is indirectly illustrated most eloquently in two examples by the Crimson percussionist Jamie Muir. His quote instructing the 'bullish young formidable player' Bill Bruford that "You are there to serve the music, the music is not there to serve you". shows that Fripp - not withstanding his own prolific skill as a guitarist - was/is also an architectural band leader, cherry picking the finest musicians and cerebral thinkers. Muir came from a background in improvisational free jazz, playing alongside stalwarts of the field such as Derek Bailey. Adding this to the rock world is a stroke of genius cross pollination.

When Fripp asked him what he thought their latest recording sounded like, he took a moment to poise and then succinctly replied "It sounds like - Lark's Tongues in Aspic" at once preserving genius along with the Lark's tongues.

A definite lineage can be traced through a myriad of eclectic musical collaborators, from McDonald and Giles (their own album of the same era, well worth investigation) and Sinfled (likewise). To Keith Tippet, the aforementioned Bill Bruford, John Wetton, - Fripp specifically, with Eno, Hammill, Bowie, Gabriel and Sylvian outside of Crimson - to Tony Levin and Adrian Belew in the 80's.

The 80's found a 'Prog Dinosaur' taking on Talking Heads to make 'Progressive-Post Punk'. Played in a 'double trio' featuring the use of two...that's TWO Stick players! - This was certainly radical compared with the synth-lite pop/rock that most of their contemporaries turned to. Yes, Belew brought some pop tendencies to the songwriting, but Crimson were savvy enough to be able to filter this via their angular persona and pulsing rhythmic Frippertronics to great effect.

It is a testament to the band that the range of genres spawned directly or indirectly 'In the Wake of Poseidon' touch so many different areas. Red (one of my personal favourites) is frequently quoted as being a favourite of Kurt Cobain. The complex 90's Post-Prog is angular and mathematical, surely WARP could have been a contender as a suitable home for this output ? Touring in the Noughties with Tool! Even current hip darlings of the Rough Trade stable, Warpaint, had a song on their debut EP called 'Krimson' as a homage (most of their atmospheric, dreamy songs weighing in around 5/6 minutes allowing space for development - a definite prog, if not purely Crimson, inflection).

Naturally, there are some musical blind alleys that are to be expected with any vast body of recorded work, but on the whole, when it comes to a Gurdjieff inspired guitarist, literally sat in the driving seat, stage left, then discipline is a vehicle for joy."

© 2011 James McKeown

--
James McKeown
www.myspace.com/hifictionscience

"I once attended a masterclass with Tony Levin - that man feels the bottom like no other." @mountaindan

and @valmor_pedretti asked me to include this brilliant clip form the BBC prog doc:


THANKS SO MUCH EVERYONE :)




Matt Stevens
www.mattstevensguitar.com

(a proud stealer/user of the Small Mobile Unit Concept) - one pedal/one guitar

Sorry if I missed anyone out - please add your thoughts on KC below in the comments. Thank you.

The end of a year long project and doing music for a living.

Its always weird when you finish a project that lasted a long time - this Sunday was the end of my Sunday Free Noodle project, when I started I was a musician who also worked full time and by the end I was a "musician", as in something i do for a living. I never thought that this would happen and I'm extremely grateful to everyone who has supported me by buying my downloads and CDs. And they said it couldn't be done :)

In that year I've recorded 2 albums, a solo one and a Fierce and The Dead one, a Yonks EP and received national press attention, been on album of the year lists and lots of podcasts and blogs and made some amazing friends online. A great year really, totally never expected that and all down to the generous support of listeners online - talk about the kindness of strangers. Also I've lost a good friend and been through various personal difficulties in the transition to musician, including really injuring myself, this stopped me playing/gigging for a lot of this time.

This is us in the studio making the Fierce And The Dead album, as usual funded by your support (those aren't can of lager in the background, honest). Thank you so much.



The sunday free noodle lasted for 52 weeks this is the final, 52nd free download - I'd like to thank the following amazing musicians for playing on the songs:

Dan Wilson (we miss you mate)
Stephen Goodman
Lextrical
Catstalker
Ernesto Schnack
Phil Wain
Gaetano Fontanazza
Rainer Straschill
Tadas Petrikas
Rob Grundel
Furniture
Ernesto Schnack
Ambienteer
Alun Vaughan
Nick Cottam
Nils Eyre
Andrew Brooker
Lizzi Wood
Simon Taylor
Kevin Feazey
Stuart Marshall
Dementio 13
Nick Tann
Sonny

and everyone who listened to the songs - literally 1000's every month, incredible!!!

These songs will be available to download for a few more weeks, or maybe longer - not sure what I'll do with the podcast feed yet (as usual I'm looking to save money if I can). In a 2011 I'm moving to......youtube :)

Thank you for all your support.

Matt


The final Sunday Free Noodle is:

The Fierce And The Dead - Flint - Matt Stevens(guitar/delays) Kevin Feazey (Guitars/Bass/Programming/percussion/synths) Stuart Marshall (Drums/percussion) (Feazey/Stevens)

Grab it here - http://www.mattstevensguitar.com/page9.htm

Produced by Kevin Feazey

The album will be out soon......

Finally a new Fierce And The Dead song - more info about the band at:

www.fierceandthedead.com

Subscribe to my podcast feed here:

And then it was January - US Radio,Classic Rock Prog etc

And all of a sudden it was January.

Beardrock reviewed The Fierce And The Dead - http://www.beardrock.co.uk/unsigned/fierce-and-dead

Incredibly Echoes Radio played my album across 130 radio stations in the US - http://www.echoes.org/ie.intro2echoes.html - proper radio play ( I wish i could do that in the UK)

Had my photo taken and did an interview for the March edition of classic rock Prog magazine. Really nice people.

A couple of really supportive blog posts about my music:

http://mog.com/DashboardDJ856/blog/2668868
http://hangingsounds.blogspot.com/2010/12/recommendation-mat-stevens-acoustic.html?spref=tw

I was interviewed on Radio 5 about the death of Myspace http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/outriders/

Confirmed as support for Fish in rushden in April - a homecoming gig - really exciting - http://www.wegottickets.com/event/105242 and confirmed for the Electric Garden Festival in Blackpool in May http://progrockmetal.blogspot.com/2011/01/electric-garden-news-update-10-extra.html

I did an interview with the excellent Nanolog blog http://nanolog.blogspot.com/2011/01/seven-questions-with-matt-stevens.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

The Yonks EP I played on with Lextrical came out http://yonks.bandcamp.com/album/yonks-alpha (and sold surprisingly well - thanks much)

As a group the people on my Facebook music page designed an add for Classic Rock Prog by giving me feedback on the design - the ad is now in the current issue of the mag, thank you :)



Konk studios Crouch End, London


Stephen Goodman did an amazing ambient version of my track Ghost on http://mattstevens.podbean.com/

We made some 13/8 T-shirts - http://www.checkmineout.co.uk/index.php?page=tshirt&section=detail&design_id=1587&mem_id=88888999

I visited the Guardian offices near Kings Cross - amazing building:



And did lots of recording for album number 3 - 6 songs done - sounding surprisingly heavy!! Kev was brilliant, really creative. He even did some BV's for my guitar "lead vocal".

Did a Ustream and it went OK (until I ran out of rehearsed songs!).

And the Fierce and the Dead returned with a new song.

And that was January.

 

December and January

What was all that about? Well its seems I have failed to blog much - I don't really know why - talking to people via Twitter and my facebook music page just seems to have taken that place in my life and what I do - anyone found that? Anyway - I thought I should at least document what happened for my own sanity and to get myself back into it all again.

I've been writing the posts for my friends site Live Unsigned, If your an indie musician that wants info there is LOADS of stuff there - i think this is mainly why I have stopped writing here - that space has been taken by the LU blog - I've really enjoyed that - its all stuff I've done in the real word. So much stuff written to help musicians is done by people who have never done it themselves and this makes me quite annoyed, so I'm really proud of the stuff on the blog.

So this will be 2 posts one for Dec and I'll do one for January tomorrow.

December then brrr, cold. Indeed.

After the BJH support gig in November I did a gig with the mighty avant jazz funk Trio Furniture, which was lots of fun. I think they're brilliant. I met up with some online friends and made some new ones - result. There is some music from this gig on http://mattstevens.podbean.com/

Furniture:



I won the Acoustic Artist of the year at the Somojo Awards http://www.somojo.net/index.php?t=polls - thank so much for everyone who voted for me, didn't see that coming.



Miles Of Trane blog named me Artists of the Year - http://milesoftrane.blogspot.com/2010/12/artist-of-year-matt-stevens.html

I did an interview with the excellent Guitar Jar - http://www.guitarjar.co.uk/features/matt-stevens-interview/ and homenucleonics
http://homenucleonics.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/interview-with-matt-stevens/

And my album Ghost was in the best albums of the year list of:

http://baldmansfringe.blogspot.com/2011/01/matt-stevens-ghost.html?spref=tw
http://zacharynathanson.blogspot.com/2011/01/top-20-reissues-and-new-music-of-2010.html
http://popeyedoyle.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/some-goodies/
http://web.me.com/kawphy/Headspace/Blog/Entries/2010/12/8_Twothousandandten.html
Dom Lawson in Classic Rock Presents Prog
Anil Prasad (Innerviews, Guitar Player, All About Jazz)
http://philwbass.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/favourite-albums-of-2010/
http://www.theeuropeanperspective.com
http://nanolog.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-top-10-albums-of-2010.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
http://pensamientoaleatorio.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-favourite-albums-of-2010.html?spref=tw
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/48436

I didn't expect any of this. I had no idea when we made Ghost - thanks SO much everyone.

And Fierce And The Dead EP1 was on the Progopolis album of the year list.

My song Lakeman was on the CD that comes with Classic Rock Prog



I did a gig with Welsh Proggers Godsticks - was fun and made some more friends (but I defo need to tighten up my set).


We did a couple of streaming web gigs - which is always fun :)

And I considered putting a live band together.

And that was December - thanks loads to everyone who supported me - surprising and amazing - thank you :)

Another online friend wrote this very cool poem around my song 8.19 - this really meant a lot to me - its great when we inspire each other:

http://baldmansfringe.blogspot.com/2010/12/time-for-something-creative.html

December was a really bizzare! Had great Christmas - upwards and onwards :)

Thanks everyone.

MS

John Barry

I'm really sad to hear of the passing of John Barry, he was a big inspiration to me as a composer. This a my favorite of mine by him. By all accounts a decent bloke as well, straight down the line Yorkshire:


This is a song I wrote a few years back, this is a fairly blatant John Barry tribute track I recorded last year - Blue Filter http://t.co/ycVQXwl - he was a massive influence on me through the composition lessons I got in that style from my friend & teacher Richard Beaumont. His harmonic invention was so far ahead of his... time, great chord progressions and from all the interviews I saw a decent,no messing around bloke.

RIP

Gigs and recording

HI!

Hope you're good?

Is all go here - recording of my 3rd album is going well (surprisingly electric) and the album by my band project The Fierce And Dead is nearly finished mixing.

This is the last weekend to get my first 2 albums for £10 on CD plus postage and packing - I try really hard to keep costs down but this is out of my control. You can order them here:

http://mattstevens.bandcamp.com/album/ghost

Thanks so much - your support allows me to keep making music and do it for a living, which is incredible (and they said it couldn't be done!!).

I've just been confirmed for the Electric Garden Festival in May in Blackpool - TIckets are £31 for the weekend (thursday to sunday) but day tickets are also available info is here:

http://www.electricgardenfestival.com/

Thanks loads, speak soon




Matt
www.mattstevensguitar.com

January already?

Hi

Hope you're good. Having a good 2011?

Thanks so much for all your support in 2010 - it was an amazing year for me and it was all down to the support of the people who read this :)

I just wanted to tell you about a few things:

I'm doing a gig in April supporting Fish of Marillion fame - this is really important to me because its the first time I've played my home town of Rushden in Northants for about 3 years. Even thou I don't live there anymore it still means a lot to me and its great to play with Fish, tickets are selling REALLY fast, this will likely sell out. You can order tickets from here:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/105242

Thanks loads to everyone who has paid for downloads and CD's this month, its down to you I can keep doing this music - you can order them here, unfortunately we're going to have to put the prices up at the end of the month due to the suppliers doing the same. For the moment you can still get both albums for £10. I expected the last batch to last 6 months not 1 so thats fantastic.

The Yonks EP with my friend Lextrical is out now from here -  its a free/pay what you want download of improvised/remixed stuff - if you enjoyed the Esoteric album of weird stuff from last year its along the lines of that :) - let me know what you think. If you like it we may do some more :)

And I'm doing another free webcast gig on the 23rd Jan with my friend Nick Tann and Leibowitz. Full details are here - http://cafenoodle.ning.com/

Please feel free to share the music on my site and burn a CD for a friend - sharing is good :)

Speak soon

 

 

Matt