On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 14:01:53 -0500 Sean Westergaard <seawes(a)allmusic.com>
wrote:
> >By the way, has anyone picked up this EP--is
> it worth it?
>
> i'd say
> you should be a pretty serious
> fan before considering it.
I like the haikus a little more than Sean does, apparently. The version of
"LTiA4," remastered from the 'Live in Nashville' Collector's Club release, is
a scorcher. Overall, the EP sounds more promising and less infuriatingly
self-referential than 'The ConstruKction of Light,' and makes me cautiously
optimistic about 'The Power to Believe.'
For me, the cost of admission is best justified by "Eyes Wide Open," one of
Belew's loveliest ballads, played in a mostly acoustic arrangement that the
band won't be smart enough to leave alone when it's released on 'Power.' If
you're a fan and it's cheap enough, I'd advise buying this EP - if you hate
it, you'll save money when 'Power' is released.
> there's also a new collection from the 71-72
> band called Ladies of the Road.
> the first disc is culled for the most part from
> the 3 collector's club
> releases of this band. the second disc is a
> sort 21st century schizoid man
> megamix, featuring fripp and mel collins' solos
> all edited together in a 50
> min. track. overkill, yes. great, yes.
The more I think about it, the more this set pisses me off... not because it's
no good, but because of the many missteps and squandered opportunities.
First, we know, we know, we KNOW that Fripp didn't really care much for this
particular band. But when it comes to a commercial CD release, honestly his
opinion isn't as important as ours, and it's disappointing that he continues
to shortchange this frequently infuriating but often brilliant lineup.
Honestly, the '69 band got four copiously annotated discs in the 'Epitaph'
set and the '74 band got four discs in the 'Great Deceiver' set PLUS 'USA' and
'The Night Watch.' Even the '84 band, which hardly improvised at all, got two
discs in 'Absent Lovers.'
This band, on the other hand, gets only one disc and one quasi-remix disc, and
we're not even told where each track hails from - it took a bunch of geeks
(like me) sitting around doing A-B comparisons with this band's four
Collector's Club releases to figure out what came from where. And since this
disc does have at least SOME previously unreleased and historically important
material from the band's earliest performances at the Zoom Club in '71, at the
VERY least that material (likely just one track, but still) should have been
identified.
Adding further insult, the first disc features truncated tracks almost
entirely - "Formentera Lady" is actually listed as being abridged, but there's
an entire verse missing from "Cirkus" and bits chopped out of "Groon" and
"21st Century Schizoid Man," too. "The Sailor's Tale" is some kind of weird
Frankenstein graft of the intro and outro from one show's version and the guts
of a version from another show. And it's just a slap in the face to folks who
haven't ponied up for the Collector's Club to get only 49 seconds of the
brilliantly twisted 12-bar blues version of "The Court of the Crimson King"
(originally issued on 'Live in Detroit 1971').
We could have used a bit more imagination and common sense in the programming
department, too. It would have been nice to get an authorized live release of
the title track from "Islands" (otherwise available only on boots) - and I'd
have happily sacrified either this particularly lugubrious version of "Cirkus"
or the always unspeakably awful "The Letters" to have it. And it's really odd
that a set called 'Ladies of the Road' doesn't include the title track, even
if that's the one track by this lineup that most people will have already
heard.
The "Schizoid Men" disc is great fun, but even here, Fripp manages to be his
usual fussy, inscrutable self. Following the opening of "21st Century Schizoid
Man," we get 40-plus minutes of screaming improv. Then all of a sudden the
track just ENDS, without resolving into the conclusion of the song. We get a
full minute of silence, and then another ten minutes of improvs crash in as a
"bonus track"... and still doesn't resolve into the end of the song.
I''m still a fanboy and a fanatical admirer of Fripp's playing, but sometimes
I just want to SMACK him, you know? Instead of genuine excitement at the
prospect of a new release, increasingly I feel like I'm settling for being
"happy with what you have to be happy with"...
Steve Smith
ssmith36(a)sprynet.com
NP - Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 - WDRSO / Barshai (Brilliant)
P.S. Speaking of boots, if anyone knows how I can track down a copy of the new
2-CD boot 'In the Live of the Crimson King' by 21st Century Schizoid Band on
the Highlands label, I'd be *very* appreciative.
