ON (AND OFF) THE ROAD (1981-1984)

I repeat myself when under stress.

The big King Crimson box sets keep rolling along. Just one year after the ThrakBox comes On (And Off) The Road, a boxset dedicated to the 80s lineup of the crimson king. Unlike the previous five boxsets, this one doesn't just focus on just one album. Instead it spans all three 80s Crimson releases (Discipline, Beat, & Three Of A Perfect Pair). In some ways this makes sense. The 80s lineup of Crim is not as freewheeling as the 70s lineup, nor did they routinely perform explosive improvisations. Given the more ridged structural forms of this era of KC, the songs didn't have large amounts of fluctuation in presentation. During the early part of the 80s formation, the sets they played live consisted of 95% new material, which essentially amounts to the Discipline album in full. Even once Beat was released, the setlists didn't have tremendous variation. However, in other ways this is a losing strategy. Even with the limited setlists, this band was still a force on stage. At their best, they were loud, ferocious, uncompromising, and all enveloping. They were also a tremendous amount of fun, a word that doesn't get used often to describe King Crimson. Every general and King Crimson Collector's Club release that features the 80s lineup is full of joyful and hot moments that show that KC wasn't going to just bend over for the changing musical culture around them. Why this box only gives us four shows (plus the Moles Club pre-KC boot) and doesn't focus on this aspect, will forever be one of life's greatest mysteries.

The main crux of this boxset is the unreleased material, of which there is very little. First up is CD 2, a show from Japan after the release of Discipline. The main attraction here is Manhattan, an early version of Neurotica, which would find its way onto Beat. The rest of the performance is good of course, but IMO they got better as they rolled along (the 82 show from Munich being an excellent example). Next is CD 9, 'Are You Recording, Gary?' This is the typical studio sit-along that features in these sets (like JurassiKc Thrak or 'Keep That One Nick'). There is some fun stuff here, but this disc is certainly in collectors only territory. Finally, there is CD 17, Live In Frejus. Technically, this has been released on DVD, but is now presented in full in CD form. A rousing show, it's nice to finally have the audio of it available in full. (NB: CD 5, Fragmented does contain a new song, Yoli Yoli, and an expanded Adrian And Robert (which was originally released on Rehearsal & Blows KCCC), but otherwise is just the Champaign-Urbana sessions KCCC.) Unfortunately, that's it, which is really strange. There are three other KCCC releases from the 80s, that at the very least should have made it in here. But what is most frustrating to me is the lack of 1984 material. Aside from Absent Lovers, this period is skipped over entirely. The least they could've done is released a CD for the Live In Japan part of the Neal & Jack & Me DVD like they did for the Frejus concert. The 1984 tour also had songs like Larks' Tongues III and Industry (and an improv in Entry Of The Crims), which are undocumented in the vast KC discography (aside from on Absent Lovers, obviously). They clearly toured all over the world during the 80s, and it would have been nice to for them to dig a little deeper for this boxset. The 80s were a great time to be Crim, but this boxset just doesn't show it off. (Consider this sentence the obligatory, everything that is here is pretty damn wonderful, commentary. KC could really blast off during some of these numbers and the guitar tones in particular are always fabulous.)

All in all, this is a disappointing and confusing release. Earlier in this series of megabox sets, they would dedicate 18+ albums for one studio album. Now it's three studio albums resulting in 11 CDs worth of material (which includes the aforementioned studio albums). I'm not sure who the target audience is meant to be. Surely, it's aimed at the longtime, hardcore fans. But these people (which I would include myself as a part of) would assuredly have 8/11th of the CDs presented (and presumably the Neal And Jack And Me DVD as well). I would imagine most casual fans would be satisfied with the individual 40th anniversary releases of the main studio albums, and/or the individually released Munich 82 and Absent Lovers CD sets, if they prefer the live setting. The new material in the box isn't really worth the price of an entire boxset, especially one filled with so much repetitive material. But perhaps I am wrong. The box did sell out so maybe I'm the only one that feels very unfulfilled with this release. The good folks at DGM still plowed ahead with two additional boxsets after this one (with possibly more to come), so they aren't completely tired of this format yet, but I fear they are getting close. On my personal scale, I would rate this as a 1/5. But with the zero-star rating gone on PA, I save one-star ratings for the truly dreadful and inferior. Thus, I will give it a 1.5/5 and round up to two stars.

When it came to giving the 1980s King Crimson the boxed set treatment, it seems like Fripp and company decided to go a little less in-depth than for the boxed sets of the 1970s material. We know from the Collectors' Club that there's much more live recordings out there of the 1980s lineup than is presented here; on the other hand, the 1980s lineup were so precise in many of their live renditions of their material that perhaps multiple gigs with broadly the same setlist would become redundant.

Still, if you want to dive deeper than just the original studio albums the set is decent value for money. You get three studio albums on CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray versions, plus Fragmented, an abbreviated form of which was released as The Champaign-Urbana Sessions on the Collectors' Club, plus at least one live gig from each of the Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair tours, plus a bunch more live sets on the accompanying DVDs, plus the audience bootleg of the legendary Moles Club gig where a hitherto-unknown little band called Discipline dropped an album's worth of hot new material on an unsuspecting audience. On the whole, I'd say that whilst it isn't as exhaustive as previous sets, it's again about as much 1980s King Crimson as most hardcore fans would ever want to own, and I still think it represents good value for money (particularly when you include the live sets from the DVDs).