THE 21ST CENTURY GUIDE TO KING CRIMSON - VOLUME TWO (1981-2003)

There is one serious problem with this CD set: It is not by King Crimson. Robert Fripp's pretensions to the contrary, King Crimson has not existed since 1974. If, as Fripp claims, there is a special sort of spirit, a kind of "musical watermark" that makes a band "King Crimson", then it seems to me that taking a band called "Discipline" in 1981 and changing its name to "King Crimson", quite likely because of record company pressure, does not a "King Crimson" make. What happened, I wonder, what mystical revelation suddenly enlightened Fripp that "Discipline" was actually King Crimson? One would think that that should have been obvious from the beginning. Yet, that band was not called King Crimson. Fripp got it right the first time: It never should have been so called.

II would add that, for anyone who has truly experienced, felt, and understood the intensity of the real and only King Crimson, that of 1969-1974, it is almost axiomatic that no band that contains Adrian Belew could possibly be King Crimson.