King Crimson "Red"

rogerthat wrote: LTIA is bolder but Red has more emotional resonance.  For that reason, I lean towards Red.  All the experimentation on LTIA/SABB crystallised into the finest set of SONGS on a KC album since ITCOTCK.

I'm not sure I would agree that Red has more emotional resonance. It has Starless, of course, but all the other songs don't seem quiet as emotional. LTIA has Exiles, which I find very emotional as well... perhaps even more than starless... and the rest of the album isn't very emotional either... so I guess I would consider them rather similar in the emotion department.

HackettFan wrote: Just read the article. I agree with Fripp. Fripp considered a moment of genius when he came up with the LTIA line up. Perhaps he felt a sense of loss when that line up began evaporating with the loss of Muir and then Cross? Anyway, I always felt first a loss of intricacy and texture after LTIA. Then it seems like there is a loss of improvisation and quirkiness in Red (except for Providence, great piece there). Cross had complained about trying to compete with the wall of sound from Wetton and Bruford. Maybe Fripp felt sympathetic. I don't know, just throwing all that out there. Since when does a Prog fan give a hoot about what Kurt Cobain thought.

dr prog wrote: Posiedon all the way. Red and Larks are a bit hit and miss for me. Wetton bores me a bit

HackettFan wrote: Indeed. 'Dinosaurs' he referred to them as. He certainly followed the small independent mobile intelligent unit approach. In his solo and collaborative work to follow. I remember an interview in which Fripp criticized the business model of trying to hit it big. He pointed out that an independent self-produced album selling a modest 100,000 copies could amount to a small fortune. Of course he was a little premature in his prediction. There were plenty of arena acts throughout the 80s, including the reformed Crimson.

Edited by cstack3 - November 15 2015 at 20:27

Red is their best for me by far. And it's not because it just has 'Starless'. I find LTIA Pt. I to be on the same level as it. Larks always seemed inconsistent to me (I just do not see the appeal in 'Exiles') and ITCOTCK has been overplayed by me so much that I've lost interest. 

Dellinger wrote: rogerthat wrote: Fallen Angel is very emotional too.  IMO more so than Exiles because the former is more focused.  Of course it's just my opinion and it's very difficult to have a discussion about emotional resonance, lol.  Once again, I may need to listen to it again, but my impression is that Fallen Angel may be more emotional on the lyrics department... yet the music is rather mechanical (on this one and on One More Red Nightmare). On Exiles it is the music that does the trick for me. Still, no song like Epitaph for the emotion department within the King Crimson discography... actually also within prog, and even rock in general.

rogerthat wrote: Dellinger wrote: rogerthat wrote: Fallen Angel is very emotional too.  IMO more so than Exiles because the former is more focused.  Of course it's just my opinion and it's very difficult to have a discussion about emotional resonance, lol.  Once again, I may need to listen to it again, but my impression is that Fallen Angel may be more emotional on the lyrics department... yet the music is rather mechanical (on this one and on One More Red Nightmare). On Exiles it is the music that does the trick for me. Still, no song like Epitaph for the emotion department within the King Crimson discography... actually also within prog, and even rock in general. Wow, guess you react badly to heavy music!  Fallen Angel has amazing textures all throughout and a short but aching Fripp solo.  Nightmare gets even better with McDonald's saxophone solo as well as outro.  They both have a rawness that Epitaph doesn't even come close to, being so mannered and symmetrical.  Wetton's singing is pretty mechanical compared to Lake, that I give, which is one of the reasons why I've never understood the Wetton hype (vocals wise, fantastic bassist).

On the contrary, I rather like Heavy music (and Heavy Metal) a lot... well, up to a certain point, it's got to have melodies I like, and grunting will put me off most of the times). And I'm not saying I don't like Fallen Angel and One more Red Nightmare, it's just that I don't feel they are very emotional in the music department (and, indeed, they were the songs that took me the most time to apreciate on the album - apart from Providence which I still don't like -, but I do like them).

And about Wetton, indeed I have never really liked his singing, and in King Crimson (and UK) it's taken me a lot of time to get used to his voice, and I still like the music despite his singing (I do love his bass playing, though). On Asia, somehow his singing doesn't bother me, except live, where he seems to have some trouble singing as pleasantly. And still, somehow when he has sung Lake's stuff, I find I enjoy his singing very much (as well as when he sings Genesis stuff with Hackett). So, I don't know, I guess it depends on the songs and on the period of his life the recordings were done... and perhaps on whether he had some studio help or not.

poeghost wrote: It's interesting that Red was one of Kurt Cobain's favorites, as I thought Red had a 90s alternative grunge sound.

That was one of my first thoughts too, when I listened to it. One could easily imagine "Red" (the first track) on a Soundgarden album, for example.

Dellinger wrote:   On the contrary, I rather like Heavy music (and Heavy Metal) a lot... well, up to a certain point, it's got to have melodies I like, and grunting will put me off most of the times). And I'm not saying I don't like Fallen Angel and One more Red Nightmare, it's just that I don't feel they are very emotional in the music department (and, indeed, they were the songs that took me the most time to apreciate on the album - apart from Providence which I still don't like -, but I do like them). And about Wetton, indeed I have never really liked his singing, and in King Crimson (and UK) it's taken me a lot of time to get used to his voice, and I still like the music despite his singing (I do love his bass playing, though). On Asia, somehow his singing doesn't bother me, except live, where he seems to have some trouble singing as pleasantly. And still, somehow when he has sung Lake's stuff, I find I enjoy his singing very much (as well as when he sings Genesis stuff with Hackett). So, I don't know, I guess it depends on the songs and on the period of his life the recordings were done... and perhaps on whether he had some studio help or not.

I like Red - A LOT! Sure, LTIA was a brilliantly artistic album, but Red brought it back a notch without losing a crisp realization of how powerful the LTIA-era players were as a whole. Good thread, Maynard.

Edited by Rednight - November 17 2015 at 11:39