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

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).