IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON

King Crimson certainly shattered stuff when they released their debut album. People's views on the boundaries of music, assumptions that band's should play tightly and more were all but gone when they heard In the Court of the Crimson King. So what could possibly be next? Actually, it's a rather relaxed album comparitively. Not only that, it's surprisingly less adventurous and we have to wonder if the band is already on their way out or Robert Fripp is starting to realize that when he has a wacky idea he should develop it a little more before the band records it. Since I'm writing this from the future, I can tell you that neither is true. OK, so King Crimson matures and gets tighter over the years, but I'll be darned if I don't hear a few spots each album where I hear something desultory or sloppy. Such things apparently didn't matter to the band. What mattered was what the band was playing, not how it was being played. Robert Fripp continuously wanted to find ways to make non-conventional ideas work, and he did. Of course, the original inventors don't make the perfect form of the invention, so it's only natural that over time bands took these kinds of ideas and expanded upon/perfected them.

The album starts strong and quickly descends into an utter bore for the majority of the disc. That's about all I have to say about it. The writing and innovation would spike with the following release, Lizard. While I still don't feel the band hit all the marks on that one, it is definitely one of their most interesting and important works. And so, in the wake of that album especially, In the Wake of Poseidon can be forgotten.