King Crimson Exiles...Your Favourite Version?

Exiles is my favourite King Crimson song...shoot, it's actually my favourite song of all time...and it's always fascinated me how different the live vs studio versions are.  I'm something of a live Crimson collector and between the Great Deceiver box, my 9 King Crimson Collectors Club '73 to '74 releases, and the 4 vinyl bootlegs I bought in the 70's, I must have about 18 recordings of  Exiles...and no two are the same!  I don't believe I've ever heard Fripp play the same Exiles solo twice and it's also common for Bruford to consistently take a different approach as well.  Wetton sticks to the same vocal melody but usually throws some different bass lines in.  As for David Cross, well, it's his violin that helps make the song so mournful.  As I await the delivery of my "Road to Red" box set - which includes no less than 16 versions that will be completely new to my ears! - I wanted to celebrate with this poll and find out what the PA community thinks.

Edited by The.Crimson.King - October 22 2013 at 15:58

Bremen, 1972. A bit sloppy, but much better than the studio version. Seems so awkward and badly done.

I know the studio one, the ones on "The Great Deceiver", and the one on "Collectable King Crimson Vol 1", on Ausbury Park, which is the same concert from the USA album, but without overdus and edits. I don't actually know the USA album, but my favourite version is the one from Ausbury Park, it just sounds kind of heavier and cooler... though I don't know if it's similar enough the one on USA in order to vote for it.

By the way, something similar to what you say happened to me with "Starless". The first version I heard was on the same "Collectable King Crimson Vol 1" album, but on the other disc, which has another concert, and that one is the version that I came to love and the one I always want to hear... and for me, Starless was made to be played with violin on the intro, not guitar, so the studio version sounds a bit underwhelming.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: smartpatrol wrote: Bremen, 1972. A bit sloppy, but much better than the studio version. Seems so awkward and badly done. This one, followed by the studio version. I have about 7 version of this, not quite as bad as Easy Money with 9.

Edited by The.Crimson.King - October 23 2013 at 13:01

The.Crimson.King wrote: ^ so I just finished watching the above Bremen video and it is bizarre.  The first half is this amazing improv where the band are firing on all cylinders.  Then they go into a very early version of Exiles.  Bruford plays with mallets, Cross's violin melody is different, the middle section has no piano/electric piano accompaniment, Fripp plays no guitar solo, and Jaime Muir plays with everything he can find!  Then they play the first 3/4 of Larks Tongues Part 1...an announcer comes on for a minute, then they finish with Larks Tongues Part 1 all over again. If you're at all a fan of the mid 70's Crimso or are just curious to see what Jaime Muir actually did in the band, you'll want to check this video out

Great video....I think I've seen part of that before. What an awesome group. Would have loved to have  seen them at that time but I never was in the right place at the right time. They toured several cities in the US on the 'Great Deceiver' tour but not anywhere near to me.

voted for the kids, just because it's awesome to see young kids performing a King Crimson song so faithfully and reverently. Sure I like KC's studio version and USA/Collector's Vol. 1 better -- but my god look at how young these kids are! I'm proud of them just for discovering and loving this music!