Don't give me that bro. I know

One of the very few bands on the site where there wouldn't be many quibbles about their belonging firmly in 'Eclectic Prog'. Depending on where you dip into their output will probably temper your experience henceforth e.g. I know a few Metalheads who enjoy the Power to Believe and Red while many Math Rock fans like the Discipline/Three of a Perfect Pair/Beat trilogy. Ambient/Space Rock aficionados tend to gravitate towards the Projeckts output and ditto the Symph Prog brigade who seem to be mad for In the Court, Islands and Lizard etc. Starless & Bible Black and Larks Tongues in Aspic are for me oriented in Avant-RIO territory. I can even imagine fans of Radiohead and Post Punk enjoying albums like Thrak and the Construction of Light. Given the sheer variety on offer, and despite the inevitable overlap at play, it's hardly surprising that parts of their output will inevitably leave some of us a little cold. It also probably needs restating that some individual Crimson albums have begotten several sub genres on PA and bequeathed entire musical careers to those musicians who continue to follow in their wake. Similarly, it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to enjoy every one of Frank Zappa's 113 (or thereabouts) studio albums

 

That isn't really true for Van der Graaf Generator. Most of their albums have a uniformity throughout, with the main variation occurring between different periods of their career.

 

 

 

 

Don't worry - you're not the only person here who doesn't like Gentle Giant.

I've only ever listened to the first two King Crimson albums all the way through, but if I'm feeling in a masochistic mood, I might try giving their third album "Lizard" another listen.

not to mention that the acoustic guitar quota kept dropping from album to album, and Fripp never played acoustic guitar on a studio album after the song "Fallen Angel" on Red.  I love (his) acoustic guitar

And God said "Let there be prog." And King Crimson was created from the void and all that followed owed homage to them. From the ancient 3rd century Book Of Prog.

What's a little heresy between prog fans?

Well, that's maybe because eclectic fits them the best. It isn't really a perfect term. Let's face it though VDGG don't really sound like other bands and they also don't really fit into a neat category. Some of their stuff is close to symph or canterbury but both of those aren't quite right either. I would say the bands most similar to VDGG imo would be King Crimson, Gentle Giant and Happy the Man.

They are now a regular spin for me.....but I have to say I did not try to get into them, it kinda just happened.

There are many many bands I can't get into, and many I will never even try, I have enough music to keep me happy for the rest of my life, plus there is excellent new music to experience.

King Crimson are the archetypical intellectual band. Their anti-dance attitude says it all. Some of their stuff is intentionally cold and unfriendly, some is exploration and mapping rather than expression of feelings or connecting with the listener.

I'm a big King Crimson fan but then I have this analytic intellectual side in me that wants to be fed. I also like "controlled aggression" of which they have a lot. Power to the point, with Discipline. I can totally understand why they leave some people cold, makes absolute sense. That said they have some very emotional stuff that they play when they think that you're not paying attention...

I don't dislike any of their albums I'm just not nuts for any if that makes any sense. 

Exactly, I don't know how you can even generalise KC into one thing.  It's not.  

And I don't know, if a rock/prog fan doesn't get One More Red Nightmare, you're just not trying hard enough (or maybe approaching it with too many preconceived notions).  Just Bruford's work at the kit is worth the price of admission and that's without the beautiful saxophone solos.

I am not sure I would call their whole approach during the Wetton era analytical at all.  The way they play on those albums is so much looser, so much more improvised than most other prog rock bands of their time, especially the big names.  I think what they 'lack' is something big, bright and goofy (even silly) that many of their contemporaries had.   Yes, ELP, GG all had a certain goofiness that came through in different degrees (the most for GG).  This was less the case with Genesis/JT but they could also frequently explore silliness in the search for a funny moment.  What KC really is is morose and dark.  And unlike VDGG (or Fish Marillion for that matter), the vocals rarely have a strong character about them.  Yes, I am saying that even the vocals Lake rendered on ITCOTCK are basically fit for purpose and don't transcend the music.  Which is fine, in this case, because the music works so well.  KC is a supposedly vocal oriented band where you have to shut off the vocals completely from your mind and focus on the music. This is no longer a problem for me but this may have been back when I too didn't really get them. 

I must be a 'metal head' because Red and Power To Believe are my favourite KC albums! I do agree with your groupings though. Very interesting dissection.

Gully Foyle wrote: Art is subjective?

 

I don't believe though that all great music is Art as such. Badly played music is just bad music. Well played music can be dull and have no artistic qualities. I would rather music is just thought of as music. Sometimes an Abba tune will hit the spot that 20 minutes of spectacularly written and played music just can't reach.

The Dark Elf wrote: There is a fundamental lack of feeling, a mathematical sterility, that encompassed their music, and became more pronounced after their first few albums. It is a music of numbers and calculation, with very little warmth.

So for you, Robert Fripp failed the Turing test?

dougmcauliffe wrote: For me the only albums of theirs I really revisit are Court, red and larks and the rest I can mostly leave behind. Every album atleast has a track I really like, and court and red in particular are some of my favorite albums ever. but their discography just doesn’t hold a light to some of the other top bands like genesis and VDGG imo. After belew became frontman they just never released another Starless or epitaph. Some good songs and some laughable ones but the fans eat it up either way.

 

that was the eighties though when no prog bands (inc those you mention) were releasing anything as good as their seventies stuff. I don't like eighties KC at all and not being a fan of Belew didn't help but at least they tried to carry on innovating. I don't have to like it and I don't!

Generally I think their discography stands up against all the other top prog bands extremely well and the fact they don't have a We Can't Dance or Big Generator in their back catalogue is a massive plus imo.

Please don't re-introduce the CAPTCHA's again . They are too much to bear in combination with those rancid straight-in-the-face ads that appear on almost every forum page and I can't stand Turing.

Back to topic: I have different opinions about King Crimson. Back in the day when I was a teenager, King Crimson, as the only one of the Big Six, was no more than a distant name for me. Even now, I don't like every one of their albums equally, in my book they vary from two (SaBB) to five (Islands) stars.

I stand by what I said. It's not a matter of "getting" KC, as I've listened to them since the early 70s. I own their catalog up to Red. I get them. The OP asked the question, "Why do I like King Crimson much less?" and from my standpoint it is their methodical nature. Fripp is either a mathematician who happens to play guitar or he is a high-functioning autistic. Neither is a deterrent to listening to them. I just happen to like them less the further one goes into their discography, as there seems to me an increasing sterility and lack of "warmth" for lack of a better term. 

Another poster brought up the fact Fripp has foregone using the acoustic guitar, so it would seem Fripp has made a conscious decision to disengage from what I liked most about their earliest albums. He also seems to have lost his funny bone altogether as well. 

You know what, that last point is very good. I like discipline, thrak and power to believe all well while still thinking they all have some flaws, but they certainly have never released a true stinker.

I have to disagree with you there.

I used to hate 'Supper's ready' (and Genesis) but I listened to it again and again, and finally it clicked.

I'm glad I did, because I love the song now and would be ashamed of myself if I didn't at least try to understand why everyone was going on about how great it was. Now I get it.

I guess when people are really hammering in how brilliant a song/band is, I get curious and annoyed at myself for not hearing what everyone else is hearing. It may seem like lunacy to a lot of people, but hey, I've discovered a lot of great songs this way.

but you are naming the most accessible and perhaps warmest songs from those post ITCOCK albums.  They stuck one or two of them on Lizard and Islands and then at best one each on LTIA,SABB and Red.  so you are corroborating what the Dark Elf is saying by naming the exceptions which prove the rule

ps I'd throw "The Night Watch" into that list as well, but that's about it

Starless isn't really an exception as far as Red album goes.  Fallen Angel is even more emotional.  One More Red Nightmare isn't emotional in a straight up melancholic way but it's incredibly trippy.  I don't even know how it would possibly come across as calculating compared to say Yes or Genesis playing strictly by the metronome with no surprises in placement or accent. 

hmm I don't really agree on Fallen Angel.  Sure the subject matter is emotionally wrenching but the song doesn't really make me care.  It's only notable for being the last KC song with acoustic guitar...45 years ago

I think there's a danger of confusing two distinct compositional approaches here. Although the following are traditionally only used to describe classical 'art music', the demarcation is also applicable for popular music that strays well beyond the song structures, metric conventions and cadential harmonies of Tin Pan Alley tradition.

Programme Music - designed to convey an extra-musical narrative to invoke a particular type of emotion or idea in the listener e.g. Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, In the Court of the Crimson King, One More Red Nightmare, Neurotica, People etc. Most of Crimson's song based output which presents some type of story (notwithstanding its complexity, sophistication or unconventionality) would fall broadly into this category

Abstract/Absolute Music - i.e. 'just the notes themselves', not intended to elicit any particular emotional state or idea but simply a presentation of musical information that the composer/performer thinks aesthetically appealing e.g. Bartok's 6 String Quartets, the serialism of the 2nd Viennese School, Fracture, Providence, Requiem, Vrooom Vrooom, We'll Let You Know, most of the Projeckts output etc. None of us would probably agree what Crimson material is even a 'best fit' for either category but it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of Crimson's more esoteric instrumental output might qualify for a place in the second basket

It strikes me as specious to conflate abstract/absolute music with sterility, lack of warmth or emotion. Some of the interlocking 'gamelan guitar' pieces from Discipline onward I do find rather dry, academic and cerebral yes, but even those elements of Crimson I don't care for are for reasons of my aesthetic taste rather than any lack of inferred feeling.

Thanks, exactly the difference I was trying to articulate too.  Makes no sense to me that a One More Red Nightmare lacks warmth or is, of all things, too sterile.  None of the other major prog rock bands had guitar textures even halfway as interesting (or indeed far reaching).  

Besides, by embracing this distinction and categorising only programme music as emotional, we would in effect be disqualifying a lot of prog as lacking emotion because a lot of it does not signify emotion in a very straightforward way.  I am thinking of tracks like Supersister's Higher.  It doesn't fit into simplistic happy/sad/romantic categories but not emotional at all?  OK, I can accept that subjectively one does not find that music emotional but how much prog does such a person actually enjoy in that case would be my next question.

^ I agree but that said, if I experience a piece of music initially as being completely devoid of any emotional impact whatsoever it's highly unlikely I'm ever going to develop an appetite to give it repeated listens irrespective of its Programme or Abstract source. I think that's why I eventually admitted defeat with free jazz, ambient, and a lot of RIO/Avant/Noise music (Just to flip the reverse side of the Programme coin: I want to like it (Abstract) but can't, simply because I don't understand what it is that is being communicated and yes, this says more about my limitations as a listener than the stimulus to hand itself)

No-one is trying to 'get around human emotions' or use a Programme/Abstract distinction to validate why some posters have opined that they find much of Crimson's output to be sterile, calculated and cold. It seems clear that what appeals aesthetically has to manifest itself by way of some sort of an emotional response. My argument was that perhaps those posters are looking for a lot of the ingredients that are habitually not present in Abstract/Absolute music and their appreciation of the art suffers as a result.

(As I explained previously, this is my experience with free jazz, where as a popular music fan, I am routinely ingrained to looking for repeating patterns and harmonic tensions to be resolved and when these don't arrive, I get bored and just 'switch off' and yes, I accept that's my loss but this is not because the music lacks feeling)

However, like yourself, I don't necessarily need to be steered by a narrative/story or lyrics to be able to enjoy say, Fracture (which I think is one of Crimson's finest ever pieces) I don't envisage anything other than four musicians interacting via their instruments to create magnificent art. Again, the absence of a plot outline or descriptive title does not mean the music lacks feeling. Even with something that has both lyrics and pictorial representations of what the music is purportedly attempting to depict e.g. Tarkus and Pictures at an Exhibition, I don't imagine armed metal armadillos doing battle with mythical beasts or witches who live in huts built on chicken legs. The music is not augmented (and maybe slightly diminished) for me by the extra-musical narrative offered in this regard.

Agreed, my initial impression is purely subconscious without categorising it as programmatic or abstract.  There is some RIO I like (albeit mostly the 80s developments in the genre when it simply began to resemble late 19th/early 20th century classical music rather than the pure experimentation of the 70s) but free jazz usually doesn't work for me either.  And yes, it's just me; there are people who do like it after all (likewise in the case of Ambient). 

Said another way, you could generalise that listeners PREDOMINANTLY attracted to melodic symph prog may not dig much KC beyond the first couple of albums, especially beyond ITCOTCK itself.

Who doesn't make sense??

I tend to agree with you, Svettie

I prefer the Sinfield era, than the Wetton era (but I still love almost as much), then the 90's/00's/10's (sometimes patchy, especially the ProjeKcts) , than the 80's (too much Talking Heads - though I love the band)

True enough....

I am not a big fan of ELP all that much myself but even they have Trilogy which is a 5 star album in my opinion

tdfloyd wrote: Absolutely loved ITCOTCK.  Same can be said for Red.  Didn't like Beat and really didn't listen to them until Thrak was released, which I liked a lot.  Hated ThrakAttak so again I put them away for over a decade.  I have Frame by Frame so I know the stronger songs.  But this year I heard Radical Action to Release the Hold of Monkey Mind  and then got the CD/BluRay combo and I can't put it down.  Listening to it now actually .  Its been months.  I have been listening to the various other live albums (Chicago, Meltdown) and its really some of the best music I have ever heard.  I have to go back to the originals to see why I didn't care anywhere as much for say Lizard, In the Wake of the Poseidon as I do these live albums.   New arrangements, Jakko singing instead of Belew, more drums from the 3 headed monster, more Mel Collins? I don't know but it will be fun going back to some albums I haven't listened to in decades.

 

That doesn't mean that the music played on it is cold and clinical, quite the opposite. Perhaps you're confusing these two aspects, the aural characteristics of the reproduced mellotron sound and the actual music that has been played on it.