IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING

It took me a long time to get used to King Crimson. I always thought...to jazzy, too messy and way too experimental. And in a certain way I still think that...Listen to Thrakatak and I think you know what I mean. Incredible skilled musicians but so....so...so much much inprovisation. However after a certain time I decide to give it a try...2 of my friends threw my dead with their admiration for KC so I thought that if we like so much the same stuff.....I must like KC as we'll, sooner or later. And after a while that indeed did happen......this all begin with Frame By Frame, the 4 cd KC box that has all its greatest tunes collected. The first disc of this has the first KC album almost presented in its entirety.....So at first it wereonly ths songs that I got aquinted with....But not much later (I think in a timespan of 2 months) I brought the entire, then available collection on CD and more) so for a while the only thing I was actually listening too was KC. Amongst all this amazing albums this first (one of the most incredible debuts in the history of music and certainly in Prog.) KC album and it always kept a special place in my heart....Songs as Epitaph, In The Court, Moon child, I Talk To The Wind are simply extremely beautifull and for Prog lovers a true mellotron paradise.

I think that apart from the music...special attention must be given to Greg Lake's voice that evetually I think became one of the best singers KC ever had.....and ELP really benefits from that as we'll.....Here once again its so often Greg's beautifull singing that stands out.....

The only song that I never really could apreciate was 21 Century Schidzoid Man...perhaps because of the fact its to jazzy.....perhaps because of Greg vocals that are distrurbed......But I never listen to this song and usually then to skip it right to the much more sensitive and touching I Talk To The Wind, that builds up perfectly (in my opinion) to the highlight of the album and one of the highlights on KC carrear and Prog music in general) Epitaph....I must have listened to that song a thousand times and still am not tired of it....The Mellotron.......is really really amazing on this one...not suddle like in so many KC songs as The Sailor's Song, or Starless but fully blown in your face, not abble to avoid....One reviewer here remarks the utterly depressing lyrics of this album, but I think because of the Mellotron the song gets much more sad and melancholic. Something that is repeated again with ITCOTCK, which has the same spectaculair use of Mellotron.....

The Mellotron that was used for this is in the hands of Tony Banks...or although thats what he said in Chapter & Verse...but then he adds that Fripp said that of every Mellotron he owned.....I think Hackett once remarked that this particulair Mellotron was called The Black Bitch....KC eventually became a major inspiration to Genesis...and I think you can hear that....

This album eventually became one of the most important Prog albums in history, the one that was a major inspiration to everything that came after that....and cleared the path for that what was yet to come....from them (unfortunatly only already soon in another formation) and all that other bands that are the reason why we as fans are vistiting this website in the first place.