Does it mean that those bands have a wider appeal to music fans than KC and if so, why?

It takes zero effort to give Beatles such high praise and credit for influence and stature because they were the kings of pop music so everyone (except me ) listened to them. The polar opposite for KC in that you could not just listen to them, it requires something different and more attention than say Beatles type music to understand KC.....that effort will always keep them from being accessible, although they are quoted as being very influential.

I'm a big CAN fan and they fall into this same KC category.....big influence no hit records.

It's ok

I was at university (Cambridge/Imperial College/St Andrews) from 1967 to 1975. During that time, not ONE of my numerous friends owned a KC album (or a VDGG album) except me. And I went off KC very quickly.

The really popular bands then were Floyd, Genesis, Yes and Tull.

A bit behind were Camel, Strewbs, Uriah Heep, Rush (from 1975), Caravan, Gentle Giant (though it took me 20 more years to get them!), Barclay James Harvest, Manfred Mann's Earthband, ELP and, at St Andrews, Horslips.

KC (and VDGG) seemed to have acquired a reverence amongst the current generation of prog fans which was simply not there during those years - at least in the institutions I was in.

What happened next?  The group suffered a variety of implosions and never recaptured the commercial clout of the debut.  Poseidon was too similar, and where it was different showed how much magic there had really been in the first formation.  Ian McDonald had a huge impact on that first album and Fripp just didn't have the song sense of McDonald, though based on the mediocre McDonald and Giles album, Fripp's weirdness had also rubbed off on McDonald and both suffered as a result of the split.  By the time of Lizard this was a very different group.  They remained influential and at times, I must admit, brilliant, but lost their mass appeal.

Most bands that aren't PINK FLOYD YES or GENESIS,, but are still lucky enough to reach a large audience, have a sort of bell curve of popularity over time.  Or, in the case of KC, an early peak and then downward trajectory from Day 1.  Look at Jethro Tull, Strawbs, Camel, Supertramp, Gentle Giant, Renaissance, and Barclay James Harvest for example.  All peaked in popularity after a number of releases and then declined from there.   Sometimes the deline was merited artistically, sometimes it was just they lost that finger on the pulse, or sometimes the audience just abandoned them mercilessly just because

Having said all that, I don’t think he has done badly out of it.

He married well!

The genius and use of Frippertronics is really under appreciated by so many, thanks to Brian Eno.

That, my friend, is indeed true!

Do you remember that glossy celeb magazine interview when the pair of them were photographed in the bath together?

In a word: Yes. Luck does have something to do with it but also the nature of the music and marketability. King Crimson were more adventurous and risk taking than the others(and that's saying something). 

King Crimson did get off on the right foot though since that first album was quite successful when it first came out(especially in the UK). If it wasn't for that first album KC might have ended up like other UK bands such as Rare Bird, Gracious, Gnidrolog, Jonesy, Gravy Train, Fruupp, Beggar's Opera, Cressida, Atomic Rooster, etc. Not bad company to be in although actually they probably would have been at least as well known as Family or Gentle Giant(even without the debut). 

So why did they not become as big as Yes, Genesis, ELP etc. I would argue that these days they most certainly are. Maybe most non prog fans don't know them but unless you are only counting classic rock or non prog fans I would say they are definitely in the same company as far as being popular goes as anyone. These days they are probably even more respected than Yes or ELP(in general)and with the functionality of the internet they are a pretty easy band to discover once you broaden your horizons beyond just what you hear on the radio.

In the early 70's Yes kind of got lucky imo by having a few songs played on the radio(especially "I've seen all good people" and roundabout"). If it wasn't for those Yes might not have been as big as they were during that time period. Genesis didn't really become that big until prog was starting to decline so I won't talk about them much for the purposes of this discussion. Pink Floyd got "lucky" with Dark Side of the Moon. They were mostly a cult band before that but with some minor success here and there. ELP also got "lucky" with "lucky man" funnily enough. That song pretty much singlehandedly gave them huge success. The singles and hits by themselves only served to introduce these bands to a wider audience. Their over all talents is what sustained their success. King Crimson on the hand just sort of went in the deep end(about three years before Yes's tales from topographic oceans which I mention because that's the album for Yes where they really went in the deep end). Importantly, King Crimson also never really had any successful singles. Catfood was a flop and while ladies of the road could have been a single in my opinion it wasn't released as one probably because it was deemed as being way too weird not to mention to "sexual."

So although King Crimson undoubtedly officially ushered in the progressive rock era and took it from the factory to the showroom they weren't ever really able to recreate the success of that first album. To this day their debut (ITCOTCK) has only been certified gold in the US(500,000 copies)although at this point it must be pretty close to a million(I'd say at least 800,000 by now). Also, I think next to Pink Floyd and Rush they are in my opinion(based on my online observations)the most respected prog band among the younger generation of prog fans(approximately 35 and under). So yes, the other bands have wider appeal to music fans in general but not prog fans. The same thing could be said for Van der Graaf Generator and Gentle Giant for similar reasons.

Luck has nothing to do with it.   Crimson were radical, difficult, cerebral, unpredictable, poetic, internal, and "alternative" before it existed.   It's no wonder they didn't sell as many units as ELP or Yes or Tull.

I was quite surprised to see their debut being ranked at 6 on RateYourMusic's album chart with average score 4.31 (nearly 35 000 ratings). Also an album Red is rated very high - 4.22 (over 18 000 ratings) and Larks' Tongues in Aspic has an average score over 4. 

Red is generally acknowledged as one of the most influential albums of rock history.

That's your opinion. 

"Court" is number three on the prog rock chart. Interestingly, "Close to the Edge" is "only" number six on the  prog chart and number 65 on the regular one.

That to me is success.....do they have Gold and Platinum album sales, no and likely never will 'cept In the Court and that took how long?

Venues are full when they play today, people want to hear what its all about, there still is interest.

Well, today it might be but I don't think it always was. Also, not more than ITCOTCK. However, I do think that after Curt Cobain name checked it a lot of people got on the "Red" bandwagon. 

To add to what others have mentioned, commercial success is about creating a juggernaut.  About making a brand out of the band's music.  A brand means a certain amount of predictability and accessibility.  Fripp was not particularly interested in either.  He was not interested in limiting himself either to an image or to a record label notion of what would sell.  This obviously extracted a price in terms of how successful a particular album could be but on the other hand, he has, over a period of time and with the contributions of his very able fellow musicians, created a catalogue of albums that cater to a wide range of tastes (within prog) and are widely respected and sought after within the prog community even today. 

Fripp would perhaps envy what Rush achieved to some extent (I doubt it, because his only concern was satisfying himself rather than the audience).  They didn't dumb down for mass appeal but walked the fine line between accessibility and complexity and kept selling out stadiums.  Like Pink Floyd, they showed there is a certain approach that CAN be followed to maintain your integrity and still create something that appeals to a lot of people.  But Fripp decided early on that he would go in the direction that compelled him and if the audience wouldn't go along, so be it.  Somewhat like Wilson's solo albums, he has been content with a modest level of success that makes the venture viable without blowing up the band to the big time.

For the same reason as Gentle Giant , they didn't have a 'style'. It was more a project. However I'm sure I remember Fripp saying that when they split they were on the verge of being one of the most successful bands in Europe. I know that people often pick me up on my memory of 'facts' but I'm fairly sure he said something like that. 

ELP and Yes were immensely popular with the teenage crowd in the seventies and that partly accounted for their initial commercial success . Crimson were so very 'dark' and obtuse musically. No compromises so they probably needed a more critical mature audience. ELP and Yes could still come up with a good tune amongst all the instrumental hi-jinks and had wider appeal as did Floyd and Tull.

In Fripp's case, I wonder if he didn't understand why popular audiences seemed to shun him?  His original "Giles, Giles & Fripp" even lampooned that possibility!*

It's not for lack of trying....Fripp's guitar work on Bowie's "Heroes" is lauded as one of the signature sounds of the era, and that song certainly remains very popular.  

The man is truly an enigma.  He pivots from humor, to avant-garde, to punk rock/new wave, & back again!   He's the closest thing we have to a "national treasure" of prog!  

*Giles, Giles and Fripp stand poised to grasp the pinnacle of success - yea, the acme of achievement - to bask in the sunshine of of mass-adulation and thrill to the ecstasy of millions.  Or else to plummet into unplumbed depths of ignominy, unloved, unheeded and poor.  Giles, Giles and Fripp stand poised.  

I would actually say that Genesis inspired the whole neo-prog movement, which is more influential than anything KC spawned.

Interesting that, although being a prog fan for 50 years, I'd never heard of Red until I joined this site.

I later found it in the vast collection of prog rock albums I inherited, listened to it a few times and sold it with all the other albums that I didn't find worthy. I just don't see what the fuss is about.

I don't remember the first time I heard Red, probably in early 90's when I was trying to get KC, like I said it took me years to get them. In the Court was an album I had from the late 70's, I don't recall spinning it much though.

Still Red is an album I play often but I too don't see the huge fuss about it, I do enjoy it because it flows so much better than most. I think albums like Poseidon and Lizard is what make people go "WTH, this has nothing, its mish mash music", compared to later releases. Had Red come 3yrs earlier KC might have had larger success than what they did.

I first became aware of Crimson quite early, about 1978 at a friends birthday when he played the compilation The Young Person’s Guide. I fell in love with them,  but fully understand that they are, quite clearly, a wee bit of an acquired taste.

Weston always complained that the band were on the cusp of something big when Fripp pulled that version of the band for his first hiatus.

Rush were selling out stadiums? Really? 

It's hard to locate audience numbers for the early shows, finding a list of venues is easy but not attendance numbers. Most of what I see thru the early 70's is halls and clubs, what I want to see is do the numbers grow as the years go on or are they stagnant, not looking at festivals either. Did they ever have a pattern of playing arenas with say 12-20K attendees, or was it always 3-8K or so.

I still say their music style was not accessible enough to garner huge fame like Tull had in that 70's period and they did not grow in the 80's to compete with say Yes, Rush or Talking Heads. For what we know about KC, it makes sense why they were never going to be huge.

and the Night Watch!

Dellinger wrote: There was also something about Fripp always dissolving, or completely changing the line-up, whenever the band was about to break into commercial success.

Yeah, interesting, like he was intentionally trying to avoid the big-time .

I once read Fripp say that in so many words. He said that the first album was the only one that was threatened by commercial success. I'm not sure why he was afraid of the band becoming commercial except that maybe he felt that it somehow meant he would have play more poppy sounding music or something. Can you imagine if Pink Floyd broke up just before Dark Side of the Moon? They would now be about as well known as King Crimson. 

I'm not that much into their music, but I really like an album like Larks' Tongues in Aspic which I copied to a cassette tape (!) many years ago. It's an amazing piece of music, but probably as far away from the pop formula as you can possibly get within the frame of rock music. So it won't appeal to a bigger audience. I like Red too. I also copied In the Wake of Poseidon to the same cassette tape, but I don't remember listening to it more than once. Perhaps that says something about my enthusiasm about the album, but maybe I should give it another go?

I bought Discipline a couple of years ago I think (knowing some of the songs beforehand). While I do like it and find it an interesting album overall, I think something is somehow missing. Some intensity perhaps. It is sounds rather distanced to my ears and perhaps too "controlled". So it is hard for me to truely connect with it. Unlike f.e. Talking Heads which I can see have been brought up. Their music also has a very intellectual vibe, but it is less "perfect", and has more energy, and perhaps it is also more driven by emotion. But again, that is just my experience.

People say that about Yes also but in both cases it's not true. Rush played arenas but not stadiums. As for selling them out I'm sure they did but I don't have the details on that. 

Here's the Moving Pictures set list.  

http://https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/rush/tourdates.php#MOVINGPICTURES" rel="nofollow - http://https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/rush/tourdates.php#MOVINGPICTURES

Now read the numbers on top for the MP tour.  95 dates and approximately a million tickets sold.  Each venue would on average have seated 9-10k people, so....

I don't HAVE to put up these numbers for you, by the way. Know that in the music biz, no promoter will put a band on stadiums for 40 years if they never sell out. 

Ah, I see the confusion now.  I'd call a 10k seater as a stadium.  But I guess it's something like American definition of small car, which is radically different from what that term means in Europe or Asia.

Sure, no problem, I just didn't know stadium means something like that in the USA.  Only a few of our cricket stadiums can accommodate over 40000 people, forget music venues.  20-30k is considered a decent sized stadium. I should have guessed though...I have been over there and seen the massive parking lots set aside for retail stores.

According to their official tour book Wandering the Face Of The Earth, Chapter 12 describes the MP Tour opening date was Kalamazoo MI on 20/Feb 1981.....They played 79 shows to more than 900,000 fans, or approx 11,400 per show avg. They played several multi night shows, for example Seattle 2 nights of 12,320 per show at Seattle Center Coliseum (now Key Arena). 2 nights at Forum in LA of 14,600 per show, 2 nights in Maryland at Capitol Centre 18,600 each show and Madison Sq Garden 1 night of 17,300.

Along with many smaller venues of 7-9k capacity. Most of the shows were FM and Max Webster as support acts and many as Evening With Rush, especially when Kim Mitchell left Max Webster during the tour.

Hi,

I am not sure that there weren't bigger numbers in the sales ... I think that Robert Fripp did not have control of a lot of the music for a long time, and that means that he would not know (necessarily) any numbers about the sales, and it would be easy for a record company to throw out a number for 10 stores instead of 50 to make it look like things didn't sell, or the album was crap.

In the end, when Robert finally got control of everything, he has been doing just fine, and it shows ... he has the control needed to be more successful, but in those early days, you signed your life away and many bands ended up in their death bed without any financial rewards that they deserved.

The difference now, is that it looks like finances are not an issue, and for the longest time they were ... 

(... haven't found/read any good books on RF/KC. Only Bruford's book, but he does not talk much about it all except ... when things went wrong. He doesn't even talk about the music itself.)

Catcher10 wrote: ... According to their official tour book Wandering the Face Of The Earth, Chapter 12 describes the MP Tour opening date was Kalamazoo MI on 20/Feb 1981.....They played 79 shows to more than 900,000 fans, or approx 11,400 per show avg. They played several multi night shows, for example Seattle 2 nights of 12,320 per show at Seattle Center Coliseum (now Key Arena). 2 nights at Forum in LA of 14,600 per show, 2 nights in Maryland at Capitol Centre 18,600 each show and Madison Sq Garden 1 night of 17,300. ...

 

These are the kind of tours that kill bands ... Nektar and Golden Earring also had a huge tour together with so many dates that you could get a headache, and both bands were not the same after it.

I can appreciate the fact that more people get to see it and appreciate the music, at the expense of the artist ... but honestly, did the bands go home happy and with a couple of dollars in their pocket?

I doubt it!

 

Having been informed of that, do you still think that the KC songs that you posted above are pop songs?

Sid Smith's book - In The Court Of The Crimson King has just been updated and reissued and is definitive.

 

Nicely summed up sir, I have nothing to add.

Yeah, absolutely great post

rogerthat wrote: Fripp would perhaps envy what Rush achieved to some extent (I doubt it, because his only concern was satisfying himself rather than the audience).  They didn't dumb down for mass appeal but walked the fine line between accessibility and complexity and kept selling out stadiums.

They never dumbed-down but they did change with the times like Genesis & Yes did, and in 1984 GUP was some seriously cold water in the face of longtime fans.   Crimson on the other hand didn't change with the times, they changed the times they were with.

I think unless you are AC DC, Motorhead or Iron Maiden, you have to change.  I will agree that Rush never had the vision to refashion the sounds of their times to create something original and distinct out of it the way KC could.  But I won't hold that against them as no band other than KC did anyway.  Nobody other than Fripp would have operated akin to a jazz band leader, rearranging his troops once every few albums.  He recognised that that is the only way to do something totally different for a rock band too.  In the case of Rush, Lifeson (the weakest link of the trio if you ask me) became disgruntled with the keyboard oriented direction of the mid 80s and the other two eventually decided to come around and accommodate him.  These are the typical pressures of a rock band where everybody is not always on board with the changes.  Fripp upended this problem entirely by just changing the lineup altogether.  This may be why KC is seen as elusive even for some prog rock fans because fans of rock bands look for a sound whereas KC is just about an approach to music.  That is the only common denominator between its various formations.

Maybe I don't understand what you are trying to state. I don't hear much changes in KC music during most of their 80s output. Red is nothing like Poseidon or Lizard, most everything else is fairly samey. 

Rush in 80s thru 90s starting with PW gave a different sound and texture to what they had done on previous 6 albums. The rock world identifies (as do critics) pre-PW, post PW eras with Rush and then with Counterparts and Vapor Trails a return to harder guitar driven formula, only the furrow browed deep state prog fan had issues with this change, by then those fans meant nothing to the music world as prog has been dead for years. The Rush faithful rolled with the changes, similar to how Yes changed and fans followed.

I don't think it matters if ur a rock fan or prog rock fan, you either connect with the music or you don't. Rock fans are what made KC have any success as in late 60s early 70s as prog fans were non existent, prog was less than infantile at that time. Acid rock, psychedelic rock and jazz rock is what make up KC, later it was tagged prog rock.

As has been stated already, KC music is hardly accessible but for me that is the only negative to what Fripp did, and like I said ........ It's ok. 

Yeah, Fripp never learned that he had to stand up and play guitar onstage!!  

That is what Lake told him, anyway.  

I've seen some real flashes of stagecraft brilliance with the Crimson King over the years....John Wetton was a brilliant, forceful frontman who had the rare talent of being as adept at playing his bass as singing lead.  

Discipline era KC certainly attracted more than a few women (after all, you have to appeal to more than the "male prog ghetto") and the THRAK show I saw, with the entire band lined up & singing "People," was stirring. 

Not only Red, Larks Tongue In Aspic and Starless And Bible Black too were nothing like Lizard.  Lizard was nothing like Poseidon/ITCOTCK either.  And even Lizard and Islands aren't particularly  alike.  Reason?  The line up changed even between Lizard and Islands.  And the lineup for LTIA-SABB-Red was a total revamp of the band.  Wetton and Bruford had never played for KC before.  It is difficult to take seriously the claim then that LTIA somehow sounds similar to say Poseidon, Lizard or Court of the Crimson King.  Unless Fripp forced Bruford and Wetton to play the same music as on those albums, that wouldn't happen.  

Then, Discipline-Beat-Three of a Perfect Pair is again a new chapter in KC that simply has nothing in common with everything previously done by the band and has much more in common with what Talking Heads were up to at that time.  It is one thing for Rush to go from a loosely LZ based sound to adding new wave tinges by the time of Permanent Waves/Moving Pictures but Fripp was there in 1969 during the take off of prog and went from Epitaph to Frame by Frame.  Same sounding?  Exactly how?

Hi,

Please stop this ... his ability is tied to all the electronics he uses and pedals ... and what he does, 9 out of 10 hackers in front of the crowd can't even touch or begin to do. And when I saw him he had a keyboard on his side, possibly just a midi keyboard, but still he noodled on it, and I'm guessing it was settings and possibly adding something or other to a sound .... hard to tell from a distance.

There is nothing wrong with someone sitting down ... PERIOD. Only in America and England, where the "audience" is boss, is this a problem. And if it were me, there is money in the USA but if I can not sit down ... no playing in the USA ... would you rather not have KC with RF sitting, then?

I really think that this audience "demand/ego" needs to be let go ... and thinking that a guy trying to prance around like an ugly ballerina will be better than Robert Fripp ... 

"Because you can't play guitar standing up. At least I can't. In the semi-pro bands I played in, I stood up uncomfortably. With King Crimson I did about three or four gigs standing up, and said, "This is hopeless, I just can't play this way." Greg Lake said, "You can't sit down; you'll look like a mushroom." I felt it wasn't my job to stand up and look moody. My job was to play, and I couldn't play standing up. I generally find it very difficult to play on stage, and I detest recording. I suppose playing live gigs is the thing I enjoy doing most. Let's put it another way: It's one of the things I dislike the least."

Lake was right, he does look like a mushroom.

LOL!!  Chill, I know the man.  He has to sit down to play the guitar the way HE needs to play it.  However, popularity in rock music precludes sitting down onstage if you are a guitarist.  Can you name another guitarist who sat (besides Hackett, who eventually learned how to play & stand)?  Except for trad jazz and classical players, I can't.  

And even Holdsworth used to stand and play.  And played way more technical stuff than Fripp.  But I suppose his work is cheap, commercial crass in mosh's telling.  Nevermind that Holdsworth didn't make much money off his recordings.

Bob sits down because he needs his heavy Les Paul to be perfectly stable to accommodate his picking and fretting style, which are more akin to traditional jazz guitar (where he came from originally) than blues-rock guitar.  Holdsworth came from a completely different planet, I swear he could get 10 notes out of a single pick-stroke with his hammer-on, legato style!   I love this picture of Bob, this says it all. 

I think basically Fripp was not comfortable playing standing up and he has acknowledged at other times that performing live was not the most comfortable experience for him, in terms of feeling like he had to live up to audience's expectations or something on those lines (I forget the actual quote).  It should be added here that at the time Fripp started out (with Giles, Giles & Fripp) the concept of a rock guitar God hadn't yet really taken root and, as you mention, traditional jazz guitarists used to sit and play anyway.  This may also be why Hackett used to sit and play for a long time.  He broke out of the habit when he went solo but Fripp didn't feel compelled to. By the time Holdsworth or Al Di Meola (who used to wield a mighty Les Paul and before that a PRS himself)  came along, it had become 'mandatory' for guitar players (outside trad jazz) to stand. 

I feel like they meant that KC's 80s output is fairly samey, whereas Rush's 80s output changed rapidly from one record to the next (MP is really very little like HYF, aside from one possibly reused guitar riff between Limelight and Time Stand Still).

Can't say I know though, I haven't heard any KC post-Red. I totally agree that their 70s stuff just veers wildly from one idea to the next, not only between albums but often between songs. Lizard and Islands are like the same kernel of an idea, except one goes left and the other goes right... to the extremes.

He mentioned both about their 80s output and also the 70s.  He mentions "Red is nothing like Poseidon or Lizard, mostly everything else is fairly samey." I must be missing something here because none of those three albums are from the 80s and everything else in that context means everything else KC made.  And as you agree, they do not sound the same.  At all.  And for a Rush fan to accuse KC of being samey is pretty hilarious.  Not that Rush didn't change up things but their changes were really modest compared to KC's dramatic reinventions between lineups.

I took it that by referencing those three 70s albums being different he was implying the 70s stuff varies a lot and the post-70s stuff doesn't by contrast. But I suppose it's not my place to speak for someone else, lol.

Being modest compared to KC isn't exactly unusual, lol. I'd say Rush have had a more dramatic chain of evolutions than most bands, at least most bands at their level of commercial and critical success.

I'm primarily a modern prog metal guy, but I recently started listening through the KC discography in sequence as part of a "musical discovery" on another forum. Being very familiar with the band's name, the cover of "In the Court...", and the main theme of 21st Century Schizoid Man, I realized that this must be an extremely limited view of a highly influential band that should be corrected.

I'm halfway through Starless… now, and so far I'm surprised. The more I hear, the more it changes from what I thought the band's style was. The longer, free-form / ambientish sections with low volume sound unusual to my ears accustomed to pre-structured / rigidly GuitarPro-composed, heavily compressed and fixed-to-click newer music. Most resonant to me was the second part of Larks'...

Regarding the original question, I agree with some earlier posts that from what I heard to now, the vocals are not the strong point, which is secondary to an instrumental-focused guy like me, but probably key for commercial success. Also, the shorter attention span of (more) mainstream listeners probably doesn't care much for the extended ambient sections.

That I agree with.  Key being bands of their level of commercial success.  For their level, they changed a lot.  But these changes were always within a framework where the essential Rush sound could be recognised.  They have never gone into full fledged metal or the prog jazz space of Scarcity of Miracles nor symphonic prog.  They have also played within an accessible hard rock space and adding what they could to that base to keep things interesting.

 

And that's absolutely FINE, there is no obligation for a band to have insane amounts of variety in their catalog.  But that also underlines the difference between a band like Rush and KC.  There is no KC sound, the sound keeps changing depending primarily on what Fripp is interested in and also on the musicians he chooses to assemble for his next project.  

There's next to no heavy guitar at all on Discipline. It's a VERY guitar oriented album and yet has no heavy guitar, bang in the middle of the heavy guitar era.  So one can say occupying a contrarian position compared to where rock is at is Fripp's speciality (Wetton KC offered a very abrasive sound at the peak of keyboard drenched symph prog excess).  But that position by itself leads to very different results when going from one line up to another. With the benefit of hindsight, it's possible to say now that Scarcity of Miracles was ahead of the curve in embracing a lush, dynamic production and a 'live' sound in a move away from compression and quantization.

There may be something underlying that connects them, that is possible, but as a heavy metal aficionado, I don't hear anything I would call heavy rock or heavy guitar on the songs you named other than Indisciplined. It's barely as 'heavy' as anything on Juju and that's still nowhere near heavy territory for 1981.  Rush's own Witch Hunt is easily heavier than anything on Discipline.  And again, that's still nowhere near Mob Rules/Killers territory.  Van Halen were plenty heavy too at around this time as were Scorpions (who would start to go vapid with Savage Amusement).  Indiscipline is the only track that I would characterise as heavy and most of the heaviness in turn on that track comes from Bruford's fills rather than the guitarwork.  My contention is that metal in the 80s had moved onto a kind of chugging, machine gun riff pattern while Fripp at this point was harking back to 70s Sabbath patterns or what he himself used to do from the first album coming up to Red.  So what sounded heavy in 1974 no longer sounds that heavy in 1981. 

On Indiscipline, I do hear something that connects it with the trademark Schizoid Man riff which Fripp has reused several times over in many disguises.  To that extent, I agree with your point.  There is always something on a KC album following that sort of progression, as if to establish the link with what came before.  But that is also because that liberates Fripp to pursue totally different directions on the other tracks.  So Frame By Frame...no, the closest it resembles is Talking Heads' work on both Fear of Music and Remain In Light rather than anything KC ever did.  In fact, I have never heard anything so happy sounding from KC as Frame by Frame or Elephant Talk.  The undercurrent of menace or a sense of foreboding used to link other albums with each other but it is absent on both tracks (as also on Thela Hun Ginjeet/Matte Kudasai).  It's as if he has given permission to the band to play gleefully with abandon.   

But those songs themselves draw from widely different eras of the band, so therein the point.  Their 'signature' to the extent there is one is much wider than any of the big prog rock bands.  The main reason being that (a) the big prog rock bands usually had a stable line up for at least 4-5 albums at a stretch while no KC formation lasted beyond three at the most (and only the two best line ups lasted that long - Wetton-KC and Belew-KC) and (b) most of the big prog rock bands, with the exception of VDGG, either willingly pursued a commercial direction or were pushed into one by their labels, with only Floyd and Rush finding a middle ground where they could remain accessible without descending into silliness.  

Interestingly, the THRAK lineup only supplemented the Discipline formation rather than replacing it because Fripp was seemingly loath to let go of the stellar Belew and Levin (as also long time collaborator Bruford) and the newness came more from the long hiatus between Three of A Perfect Pair and THRAK.  Even so, THRAK-Power to Believe is one of their least impressive phases and certainly less impressive than Wetton-KC and 80s Belew-KC and did not in my estimation live up to Bruford's lofty boast that you can hear the future of music on a KC album.  Fripp, instead, was not immune to the general confusion faced by those rock musicians who refused to embrace more keyboard or electronic led trends found in both EDM (duh) and alt rock/Brit pop.  This suggests that Fripp's previous artistic success did rely on not letting a line up continue to the point where it had nothing new left to say.  

Proof positive that Bob could, in fact, stand AND play guitar!  (The lass is his sister, Patricia).

Ah, but if you apply the same riff/progression test to the other big names of prog, in the same spirit as you now propose to for KC, you will find that they repeat a lot, lot more compared to KC.  I don't have access to my keyboard for now and until the lockdown is lifted otherwise I could play motifs from different Genesis albums side by side and record clips of the same to show how similar they are.  I could do the same for Rush, Yes, ELP etc.  To say nothing of Pink Floyd or Tull who were even more repetitive.  

As opposed to all of this, you will not find the Frame by Frame riff (the fast interlocking one played by Fripp, not the Belew figure) in any of the previous KC albums.  Not only that, there is no similar riff in any rock album of reasonable repute.  There MAY be something in the deep trenches of the underground that I am not aware of, but the only riff that is somewhat like the Frame by Frame is the one on Talking Heads' I Zimbra.  Which featured Fripp on guitar so I guess he had something (or maybe a lot) to do with that riff?

I am not saying this because I am a KC fan.  Because I am a fan of all those other prog rock bands I mentioned above as well.  But I haven't heard where they radically reinvented themselves in the way KC did on Discipline.  Likewise, the change from ITCOTCK to Larks-Red is drastic.  To take only Schizoid Man and compare is the wrong way to go about it.  ITCOTCK also had lush symphonic prog by way of I Talk To The Wind, Epitaph and In The Court of the Crimson King.  Fripp completely moved away from it on these albums with only Starless having nods to symphonic prog.  

Again, ITCOTCK, in totality, has nothing like the slow guitar-bass progression of Starless or even the dramatic guitar-saxophone breakdown that follows.  Even the middle section of Schizoid Man is very structure and almost tame compared to the instrumental section of Starless.  From the other bands, the only one that at least undertook a comparable journey as ITCOCK to Red is Yes from TFTO to Relayer.  

I would go so far as to say I don't even think Genesis had the capability to reinvent themselves so dramatically (which is probably why three man Genesis chose to go the pop way given they were always capable of writing catchy pop-rock songs).  Maybe Collins by himself could adjust to any kind of music but Banks and Rutherford were relatively limited while eminently suitable for the music they generally chose to play.  In Rush, similarly, the weak link was Lifeson while Geddy and Peart seemed to be capable of getting to wherever they wanted to. This was another reason Fripp kept shaking up the line up (and then got stuck with the Belew-Levin-Bruford formation); he only wanted flexible and adaptable musicians in his line up which was fair enough seeing as he himself was prepared to unlearn and re-learn so much and keep moving. 

LOL!  He was a bit of a chubbie it would appear!  In an email, Patricia told me "That photo is the day after Brother received his first guitar when he was 11 or 12"

Rush rant:

****I think that's the second time I've seen Lifeson mentioned as the weak link in Rush on this forum. If your definition of "weak link" is least technically skilled player, I guess he might qualify, at least in the shadows on Peart and Geddy (in most other bands he'd be a leading talent). If it has more to do with versatility and variety, I reckon he's in the upper echelon. There's little resemblance between his playing on Working Man and his playing on Red Sector A. Even the jump between his solos on La Villa Strangiato vs. his solo on Kid Gloves is astounding. Alex's playing evolved to fit what the music called for. If he'd been unable to adapt, then the band never would've evolved or they would've fired him. And if it comes down to writing, Lifeson is responsible for coming up with probably half of all the music in Rush's discography, maybe more. Geddy wrote too, especially in the synth years, but for a lot of the more guitar oriented stuff I have a feeling he mostly followed Alex's lead and wrote a melody to go on top. Take Lifeson out of Rush and it isn't Rush at all, it's just one of the best rhythm sections in rock and roll.*****

But back to the topic. Even if KC is one of the least repetitive bands out there, which in many senses they probably are, I still hear commonalities in the music spanning their whole run of 70s releases. The slinking jazzy riffs on Pictures Of A City seem to me an obvious influence on the moody bass driven improv of the Wetton lineup, and certainly on the slow build up jam in Starless. That's not to claim it's the only relevant or important influence, just one of them. I think I hear similar melodic instincts at play between Epitaph and Fallen Angel for another example. If nothing else, Fripp's menacing guitar tones may have evolved from album to album in the 70s, but it's a very directional evolution, as though with every album he gets a little closer to the sound of Red and a little further from the sound of 21CSM. Sailor's Tale is certainly a precursor to his work on the next few albums. I'm not arguing that KC didn't drastically change between most every album (the first two being an exception), but that for all the drastic changes to their sound and style, certain components of the ever elusive KC sound were always present in some form or another. I really think to find any band that shifts so drastically between albums that their earlier work has nothing remotely in common with their later work is a practically impossible task. Musicians are always going to sound at least a little bit like themselves.

I do mean in terms of technicality because, yes, he falls short of the level of Peart or Geddy.  I do not know if he would necessarily be a leading talent in most bands.  It depends how we define most bands.  Most bands in the absolute sense, yes, because Rush is one of the very best bands in the world.  But among other such 'best' bands, particularly guitar oriented ones in the field of prog, not sure he ranks that high.  Would he be able to achieve more for Yes than Steve Howe, for instance?  Have my doubts and I say this as someone who only likes Howe when he goes classical/acoustic.

I don't think the question of firing him would have ever arisen because they were best buddies.  But I will allow that it wasn't just his own limitations but also the generally conservative tastes of the trio as a whole which meant he didn't necessarily have to get pulled into directions he didn't like anyway.  He complained when they went into a keyboard drenched direction in the mid 80s and they duly pulled back to accommodate him.

Sacro_Porgo wrote:  I'm not arguing that KC didn't drastically change between most every album (the first two being an exception), but that for all the drastic changes to their sound and style, certain components of the ever elusive KC sound were always present in some form or another. I really think to find any band that shifts so drastically between albums that their earlier work has nothing remotely in common with their later work is a practically impossible task. Musicians are always going to sound at least a little bit like themselves.

I give Lifeson more credit than that for the 80s stuff. He generally liked most of the material they played, he just got tired of it after almost a whole decade (and did have his quibbles the couple times a synth solo replaced his guitar solo). But I can see the argument that he isn't the greatest among the likes of Howe or Fripp or some of the other prog rock juggernauts. I disagree in my personal taste, but I can see it.

But yeah totally agree with what you're saying about KC here. And that Radiohead anecdote is a great point. There was a time when I didn't really like Iron Maiden, despite loving a lot of other classic metal, and one of my main reasons was that they just sounded to samey from song to song. I dug in deeper, heard a song or two that surprised me, and eventually fell in love. Now I still think they're kind of the AC/DC of metal (it's either them or Slayer), but I hear through all that sameness and find the key differences between songs that makes them each unique. So I definitely think that people who don't like a particular band (or at least don't "get" them) are prone to thinking all their music sounds the same. I wonder if that holds water with critics of Queen, lol.

richardh wrote: Its not really about complexity. Red is not complex but Larks Tongues In Aspic is. I prefer the former as I like music to be 'centred' but there are plenty that prefer it be more 'un-shackled'. I realise I'm being vague but not being a musician it's not that easy to explain my feelings about certain things.

 

Music is a personnel taste option like you my take on the two albums you`ve mentioned I am total emotional state of mind when listening to them Red is my number one Crimson album, it may just be people didn`t like the constant line-up changes.  

Good question, because I consider both bands to have peaked when Bill Bruford was involved! I'm a Yes fan boi to the end, but LTIA just might have a bit more complexity than anything Yes every put out with Bruford.