IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING

The time was 1993 and I was 17 years old. I had never really bothered to listen to King Crimson or much progressive rock and we were over at a friend's house on a nightmarish "vacation." Their son, Victor, had this album and we listened to it together. It was one of those rare moments of an album that changed my life, but my life was changed even more so when I got a copy a year later at a garage sale, which remains and will always remain in my collection. To be blunt, progressive rock would not have happened without this album to the extent that it took over in the 1969-1974 period, and this along with Lizard is a monumental work. A group effort from start to finish, things start of heavily with "21st Century Schizoid Man-" Crimson's most psychedelic offering and along with Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, The Jeff Beck Group, and Deep Purple perhaps the birth of heavy metal. The savage, violent, menacing lyrics and Greg Lake's awesome distorted voice are unsettling enough, but then it goes into the manic solo section that is more of controlled mania than a jam. You can't see the song coming back down to earth after Fripp, Giles, Macdonald and Lake take it into the stratosphere in the solo, but it goes back to the song and blasts out of the speakers. Amazing! "I Talk To The Wind" has always been one of my all time favourite tracks off any album, a total change of mood to the pastoral, serene, haunting soft melodic art rock that Crimson could play with emotion and grace. Still, there is something unsettling about the track and about every track on this album. "Epitaph" closes side one with waves and waves of lush mellotron, disturbed and disturbing lyrics, melodramatic percussion, and some of Fripp's best guitar and best writing. The lyrics are about Armaggeddon and the downfall and death of the human race, a subject that was much written about at the time, particularly in England. However, while most bands tried to bash the point (mainly the anti-war point) in, King Crimson are almost elegant, almost beautiful, almost Moody Blues like. In 1969 this music was revolutionary. It was breaking every rule that had been made up to that point, and this revolution had been a threat since The Beatles recorded SGT. Pepper and psychedelia took on a new form around 1968. With IN THE COURT OF THE CRIMSON KING the threat became a promise, a reality. Music would never be the same again, it was taking a turn towards something otherworldly and the line between "rock" and "art" was crossed. "Moonchild," truth be told, may have sounded great at the time, but now it is an interesting experiment that doesn't quite work. Another one of the softer tracks on the album, the beginning of the track with Greg Lake's vocal is beautiful and captivating, but the song turns into mindless avant garde sillyness, perhaps foreshadowing the 80s King Crimson, but not that awful yet. Still, I have to give full marks to this track, here jazz and modern classical become part of the rock idiom. "In The Court Of The Crimson King," title track and the most brilliant progressive track before Genesis, one of the most stunning songs ever created, rock as art and art as rock. Soaring mellotrons, dreamlike haunting vocals, sinister lyric imagery, dazzling time changes, it's all in this track and as I said with the release of this song and this album rock was changed forevermore. Could Queen have happened? Could Genesis have happened? Could ELP or Yes have happened and all the obscurer bands too? No. King Crimson were an epiphany, and the epiphany took solid form on this record. The epiphany was "Progressive Rock-" created here by Fripp and cohorts. The title track is amazing, a song that is both chilling and enigmatic- words to some up this whole record. An album that belongs in every collection and no rating under 5 stars is sufficient. Essential.