21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID BAND (KING CRIMSON ALUMNI GROUP) - LIVE IN JAPAN (DVD)

The original and best!

The 21st Century Schizoid Band is a King Crimson "alumni group" consisting of Ian McDonald, Michael Giles, Peter Giles, Mel Collins and Jakko Jakszyk. Ian McDonald and Michael Giles were of course founding members of King Crimson contributing to the ground breaking 1969 debut In The Court Of The Crimson King and Mel Collins and Peter Giles both have histories with that pioneering progressive Rock group that go all the way back to the recording of the second album In The Wake Of Poseidon. Jakko Jakszyk was the only one here that at the time of this live recording had not previously been a member of King Crimson, but Jakszyk too has now recently joined the ranks of King Crimson. Here we have these five men performing an excellent concert in front of an ecstatic audience in Japan in November 2002.

With only two exceptions, the set list consists entirely of material that was written or co-written by someone on the stage. The show opens with a brief ambient instrumental credited to Jakszyk which sets the mood for the show and leads into A Man, A City. The latter is a song that was originally performed live by King Crimson after the release of In The Court Of The Crimson King and later became Pictures Of A City which first appeared in studio form on the follow up album In The Wake Of Poseidon. Next up is Cat Food which is another song from that second Crimson album. It bears a writing credit of Ian McDonald even though he didn't play on the original album version of the song since he and Michael Giles decided to leave the group around this time. After Cat Food comes a song of a much more recent origin, taken from Ian McDonald's 1999 solo album Driver's Eyes (which also featured Michael Giles as well as John Wetton and Steve Hackett and many others) Let There Be Light is a good song that sounds better live than in the studio and fits very nicely into the 21st Century Schizoid Band repertoire. The same must be said of Progress which is the only song in the set that I had not heard before. It is taken from Michael Giles solo album of the same name which was recorded around 1978 but was not released until 2002.

No less than four out of the five tracks from In The Court Of The Crimson King are here, every one of them excellently performed. Not only is this by far King Crimson's best album, it is also an eternal milestone of the whole genre of progressive Rock. Having these brilliant songs recreated in 2002 by some of the people who originally wrote and performed them back in the days utilizing modern recording technology is amazing. This is especially significant in virtue of the fact that Robert Fripp and co have entirely turned their backs on material from the band's early days. Hearing these great performances, I don't miss Fripp for a second.

The title track from In The Court Of The Crimson King as well as I Talk To The Wind were both written by Ian McDonald (with lyrics by Peter Sinfield) while Epitaph and 21st Century Schizoid Man were group compositions credited to Fripp, Greg Lake, McDonald, Giles and Sinfield. Moonchild is the sole song from that classic debut album album that is not included in this live set. Even though I certainly would not have minded hearing the first, harmonic, melodic part of this song, it is a blessing not to have to hear that aimless second part of the song. In a way, what we have here is the best of early King Crimson without any of the dross that made it onto some of their albums.

While the band's third album Lizard is not represented in this set list, we get two songs from the fourth album Islands. These are Formentera Lady and Ladies Of The Road, both credited to Fripp and Sinfield. Both of these live versions are in my opinion improvements over the original albums versions that had a very weak sound. The same can be said of Tomorrow's People and Birdman which both come from the 1971 McDonald & Giles album. The first of these features Michael Giles on lead vocals and the second is (in the present version) a great symphonic instrumental. The only song in the whole show that doesn't really fit in is If I Was, another one from McDonald's Driver's Eyes. It is a conventional Pop song on which McDonald himself takes the lead. While in general McDonald is an underrated and brilliant song writer, this is hardly his finest moment and his voice is too weak to carry the song.

Overall, this is a great live concert recording. The 21st Century Schizoid Band is much truer to King Crimson's original sound and spirit and they carry on the flame and preserve the great legacy of that band better than anyone else.

Impressive Show by King Crimson Alumnus PLUS

Anything about King Crimson has always attracted my attention as the band is truly a progressive band: it evolves in many forms and styles of music. 21st Century Schizoid Band were a King Crimson alumnus plus one musician formed sometime in 2002. Everyone who claims as prog head must have known that "21st Century Schizoid Man" is a legendary name that refers to a brilliant song by King Crimson from their debut album, sung by Greg Lake (originally). I love the early years of King Crimson where they had Mel Collins on saxophones, flute and keyboards, Michael Giles on drums, Peter Giles on bass, Ian McDonald on saxophones, flute and keyboards which span across four albums - all of them are excellent ones. Those alumni plus Jakko Jakszyk on guitar and vocals formed the new band. The band played live and filmed in this DVD, recorded in November 6, 2002 at Shinjuku Kouseinenkin Hall, Tokyo, Japan.

When the concert starts off with "A Man, A City" I was so stunned by the excellent performance they play especially on the ability to provide energy and harmony of this wonderfully crafted track from Lizard album. One that really impresses me is Michael Giles who still can play drums wonderfully as it was in the late sixties or early seventies with his varied shots plus raw drum sounds. It's really wonderful especially looking at the fact that he is no longer young by the time the concert was recorded. The other is Mel Collins who has been very consistent in prog music since then until now. My favorite "Cat Food" was performed in slower tempo that at first listen did not impress me at all ...but later I like it because it's different than the studio version. Jakko is really good in vocal as well as guitar work.

To me it's something like a trip to the past where most of legendary tracks performed again live in 2002 with much better audio technology so I can feel the vintage "In The Court of Crimson King" performed with better sound quality but maintaining the raw drums sound. I think Michael Giles creates the character of the music here as his work makes the overall music rich in nuances. Flute work also nice and it's performed sometimes by Collins and sometimes by Ian McDonald (like in I Talk To The Wind where he gave long flute solo). "Formentera Lady" from Islands album is another great performance, in some way it's better than the studio version. I think the most interesting part is "Ladies of The Road" as the song was performed differently with excellent delivery of complex arrangement at the end.

The performance was peaked at Epitaph where at the end of the song the band members closed the performance. It's quite a joy having "Epitaph" performed by maintaining its vintage nuances. Jakko's voice can produce great voice even though quite different from the original studio version. The mellotron-drenched composition still make the song enjoyed as if it was the seventies performance. The band gave two songs as encore: one from McDonald's instrumental song "Birdman" and the really last one is the wonderfully-crafted song "21st Century of Schizoid Man". WOW!!! This last song really make my day! It's really great performance and almost flawless from the beginning until the end part. I do enjoy the sax improvisations as well as stunning guitar solo by Jakko. Oh by the way ... Peter Giles also played wonderful bass guitar throughout the show. The sax solo is played initially by Collins and then followed wonderfully by McDonald ...Oh man ......! You will be amazed with this performance!!! I always replay this last song as it's really top notch! In fact the distorted sound of vocal by Jakko is also great.

Overall , this is an excellent performance by King Crimson alumnus plus Jakko as lead vocals and guitar. I envy on Japanese who had the opportunity to watch this excellent performance. Long live King Crimson! Keep on proggin' ...!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW

A very good concert DVD recorded by this band which was formed by former members of KING CRIMSON plus a new lead singer and guitarist (Jakko Jakszyk). They played for some years, and in fact they came to my country once in 2004 to play at the "Gran Forum" auditorium of the Musicians Union, a concert that I could not attend, and in fact there was very few publicity about their concert there. That time they came with Ian Wallace on drums instead of Michael Giles, who it seems he was tired of touring.

This band played some songs from some late sixties and early seventies KING CRIMSON`s albums from the time when Peter Sinfield was the lyricist of the band ("In the Court of the Crimson King", "In the Wake of Poseidon" and "Islands", with not songs being played from "Lizard"), two songs from the "McDonald and Giles" album, one soloist song from Michael Giles, and two soloist songs from Ian McDonald. But every member of the band has the chance to show their individual talents. Even Michael Giles and McDonald sang one song each, but the main lead singer is Jakko Jakszyk, who also plays very good guitar parts. This was a very good band which apparently don`t play together anymore.

I expected to see them playing the full "Birdman" suite from the McDonald and Giles" album, but they only played the final part. From the same album they played Michael Giles `s "Tomorrow`s People". The band really sounded and played very well, showing that all these musicians are very good, and that in fact they sounded very much like the late sixties-seventies version of KING CRIMSON wih Peter Sinfield as lyricist. Even the soloist songs from Michael Giles and Ian McDonald sound very related in style to the very good old KING CRIMSON from that period. Robert Fripp is not really missed while this band is playing those old songs. The same could be said about Greg Lake, Boz Burrell and other former members of KING CRIMSON from that period.

I never liked Adrian Belew`s KING CRIMSON, which for me it was not related to the old KING CRIMSON from the seventies in musical style, looks and sound. So, I prefer to watch and to listen to this 21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID BAND a lot more to than any video from KING CRIMSON with Belew in the line-up. Maybe they deserved to use the KING CRIMSON`s name more than the Belew line-ups... even without Fripp.