What does it sound like?:
When an album has already had 30th and 40th anniversary reissues, as well as its own box set, The Road To Red, one wonders what’s left for the undoubted landmark of fifty years. Well quite a lot as it turns out, as this 2 cd plus 2 bluray set amply demonstrates. The main selling point for me is the new 2024 Atmos and 5.1 mixes once again produced by the estimable Steven Wilson, plus the elemental mixes created by David Singleton. The latter, featured on the second cd, have been prepared to create an alternative version of the album, with the emphasis on parts that were perhaps somewhat overlooked before, while also incorporating things that were ultimately never used in the final mix. In fact, all the surviving session material has been used, and these in depth examinations really shed new light on the music, providing a breath of fresh air to the familiar pieces. For good measure, the first cd, along with a new stereo mix, also has an instrumental version of the entire album. The Atmos mix, found on the second bluray with the other surround mixes, is breathtaking in its clarity, and at times places the musical emphasis in places where you don’t anticipate it from repeated listens to the original album over the last half century. The first bluray is devoted to live material, with three different mixes of the rather patchy USA album, together with a further five bootleg recordings of shows from the same tour, then adding the band’s final outing in Central Park recorded on 1 July 1974, this being the pick of the bunch for me. The sound quality of these performances is a bit mixed and as you’d expect the set lists are similar, but they are interesting as historical documents of where the band was at in that era before embarking on a lengthy seven year hiatus – as Fripp once said, when there’s nothing to be done, nothing is done: Crimson disappears. When there is music to be played, Crimson reappears.
What does it all *mean*?
The band’s best line up, their best album and their best track in Starless – what more can you want!
Goes well with…
Exploring the minutiae.
Release Date:
Out now
Might suit people who like…
This groundbreaking album redrew the prog landscape on its release, and it still sounds current today, and it’s one that has had a lasting influence on so many bands in the five decades since it first appeared
Red is my favourite Crimson. I think I’m in!
I would argue that King Crimson redrew the prog landscape at least twice in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Before “prog” was even a term that was in use. In those days it was all “underground music”.
Firstly with “In The Court Of The Crimson King” in ’69.
Then again with “Lark’s Tongues In Aspic” in ’73, solidifying it with “Red” a year later.
“USA” was released later against Fripp and his management’s wishes, at the insistence of Atlantic – their US label. Fripp thought the recording quality was not good enough.
The Central Park live version of “Starless” is just wonderful.
Panegyric and DGM do an outstanding job with these releases- what a time to be a fan!
Maybe putting the normal retail price in these deluxe boxset reviews might be helpful.
The deluxe cd&br set is about £40. You get a lot of music in there.
Thank you
What I need to know is whether, having stumped for all of the 40th sets, this set adds enough material – that I will want to listen to repeatedly – to justify splurging forty quid.
Personally I think if you already have those and don’t have an Atmos set up then I’d be tempted to pass.
I am indeed tempted to do so. Much as I love this album, I can’t meaningfully listen to all of the copies I already own (vinyl, CD, 2CD 30th and CD/BR 40th), so this is as far as I go!
A digression but a pertinent one:
The owners of the big media companies would like it if their ownership of all their copyrights could be extended until the end of time, but sadly for them the legal system will not grant them that.
Happily, they’ve found a way to get around that problem by issuing remastered versions of their material from time to time, thus renewing the copyrights on it.
At the same time, the older out-of-copyright versions get replaced on all of the streaming services with the remastered versions, so that in time these are the only versions publicly obtainable, thus ensuring an unbroken revenue stream.
Think ‘1974’. Got it? ‘Diamond Dogs’, ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll”. Truly awful, huh.
Surely the most remarkable thing about this album is how unlike ‘1974’ the front cover looks.
Guy Peelaert was busy doing the covers for the aforementioned Diamond Dogs and It’s Only Rock and Roll, and Fripp probably couldn’t have afforded him anyway
That “Diamond Dogs” cover has not aged particularly well IMO. Not sure I ever particularly liked it. “It’s Only Rock & Roll” was better.
Does anybody still have his “Rock Dreams” book?
My copy vanished a long, long time ago.
Yes. I still have my copy.
As a document of a time it would struggle to be published nowadays. But that in it its way probably reveals a certain truth of behaviour and attitudes it represented.
It’s odd how you suddenly see the work of certain illustrators like GP in every magazine and bookshop for a while before they vanish as quickly as they rose.
Paul Semple who drew all the covers for Tom Sharpe’s books in the late 70s and Gray Joliffe who created Wicked Willie were two other examples.
Paul Sample drew the Ogri cartoon in Bike magazine too, documenting the exploits of an old school rocker. Much loved, the collections of the strips are still available on Amazon. I have a small collection carefully removed from the magazine in the 70s (I was 16 and as likely to get a motorbike as I was to learn to fly).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogri
Proud home of the Didmarton Bluegrass Festival, the Ogri Motor Cycle Club still keep the real biking flag flying in fantastic style, with the mighty Ogri himself as the club’s mascot.
https://www.ogrimcc.org/
If your wheels take you anywhere near Cirencester, I heartily recommend you visit them.
Marvelous!