I've mentioned this before briefly, but you'll have to excuse me since King Crimson is far and away my favorite progressive rock band.  Anyway, as many of you might know, the recent spate of KC reissues (30th Anniversary, with liner notes) went out of print.  I asked a friend of mine and apparently he told me this happened because the label put some of the songs on iTunes, which angered Fripp and he took them all off the market.

Now apparently, they're going to get re-released slowly, beginning with the debut IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING.  What I heard from my friend is that they discovered the original masters (I assume the recent remaster wasn't culled from the best sources, although admittingly it sounds fine to me), and so they're releasing this one...  Amazon.com has this coming out at February 22, 2005, which as of this writing is just around the corner.  The tracklist appears to be the same, and the label given is "Discipline US."

That's not all, for the second King Crimson album, IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON also has a release date on Amazon.com, although this one will hold more interest to fans.  The label is the same, but the description says that this one comes with a few extras... "2004 reissue of the progressive rock act's 1970 album adds two bonus tracks, 'Cat Food' (single version) & 'Groon' (Cat Food B-side).  Discipline label."  The release date given for this release is March 15, 2005.

I find this of interest particularly because of the bonus tracks... I wonder if Fripp will add some more goodies for the next batch of re-releases, if they get issued as planned, which as I understand is a few at a time.  It's frustrating because I haven't seen first hand any concrete release schedule (there's no sign of a LIZARD reissue... yet), but there you have it.