LADIES OF THE ROAD

If you want to just get one live album from the Islands-era lineup of King Crimson... I'd still recommend the Summit Studios set, tracks from which feature here, since it simply has the best sound quality over its entire running time of any archival live release from the band. However, Ladies of the Road isn't a terrible choice either. Disc 1 offers a "best of" the work of this lineup, selecting songs from performances ranging from the 1971 gigs which led up to the recording of Islands to the ill-fated 1972 US tour which gave us Earthbound.

Disc 2, meanwhile, offers "Schizoid Man" - a bizarre 54 minute version of 21st Century Schizoid Man, stitched together from various performances so you're left with the familiar beginning of the song and then a mass of the best improvisations that the Islands lineup were able to pull out of the jam section in the middle of the song. It's an interesting experiment, reminiscent of Zappa's "xenochrony" idea of bringing together musical performances from different contexts to form a new whole, but it's a bit much. I suspect that disc 2 will see far less play than the first disc in this set.

Either disc 1 of this set or the Summit Studios session will convince you that this Crimson lineup was a far better prospect live than you might think if you'd only heard Earthbound. The usual caveat applies - if you really dig this era of King Crimson, you might want to consider the excellent value for money set which is Sailors' Tales, but if that's too much for you then Ladies of the Road can scratch the same itch, albeit much less extensively.