LIZARD

Lizard came after two great album that created new standards in rock music (especialy "In the court of the crimson king"). This album, for the first time is solely composed by Robert Fripp. One would expect it hard to achive the same standards of the former two albums but suprisingly it is a better one, being more mature, versatile & focused. The opening is "cirkus" where delicate singing turns to Fripp's dark tuned guitar making the point. Next comes "indoor games" & "happy familly" - two jazzy pieces, cinical and mean. THe first side of the record ends with a beatifull ballad - "Lady of the dancing water". The other side is an epic concept creation with 3 major parts. It begins with "prince Rupert awakes" sang by John Anderson with a whole bunch of blow instruments (oboe, trombone, cornet, etc). The song fades to the second part "bolero - a peacocks tale" which is a very classical instrumental theme using the same blow instruments. Then come the third & longest part - "the battle of glass tears". It starts with a sad cor anglais tune leading to a short song telling us what is the story. THen the singing ends and the battle begins ! You can realy hear the battle through the dialog between the rough guitar and the flute. Then comes the after battle and you can realy hear the killing field via the slow drumming escorted by quiet cornet (I think it's cornet). Truely one of the most touching cuts I ever heard. The end is a small instrumental piece called "big top" which I always felt comes to take me out of the shock of the previous cut. I purchased this one 23 years ago and listened to it many times and I never get tired of it. It is one of the best albums ever made and even in king crimson outstanding creation it is second only to red. A must have !