Listen to: In the Court of the Crimson King

Do you know the artwork? Probably some of you do. Barry Godber's watercolour is one of the elements of art that make up rock history, almost like a prism on the cover of the Dark side of the Moon. So let's play King Crimson's first album and listen to it. We have a good moment because it's 50th birthday of the band this year.

We can' t say that when King Crimson entered the studio, they were amateurs. They all had previous musical experiences, including music schools and university. Among the parts of a bomb called psychedelic or hippie culture, at the end of the 1960s, there were many critics of this trend. For them, in this trend, there was too little finesse, decent workshop, solid arrangement, and too much copying of schemes and, above all, drugs and parties.

Progress in rock

Among the mass of long-haired imitators of woodstock stars, there were, of course, other artists from jazz, avant-rock and early electronic genres, such as Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground and Can. They went further, over and above the rock music, which had already been accepted into the establishment. It was also the time when a new trend was born, less rebellious, more organized and tasteful. Progressive rock.

This genre is still doing well today, although for many years it has been closed in its glass bubble and it is difficult to look for a fresh breeze of the 1970s. Long, several-minute suites, lush songs and pretty ballads, drowned in the world of fairy tales, myths and Arthurian legends. Everything is like at the court of King Crimson from half a century ago.

It begins hard

The first song on this album immediately pulls you out of the comfort zone. Strong guitars, harsh saxophone and distorted voice from hard rock flow into a virtuoso jazz cacophone. Playing with rhythm and tempo begins. Suddenly all the instruments stop playing.

Death seed blind man's greed
Poets' starving children bleed
Nothing he's got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man

The second track takes us into a completely different universe. I talk to the Wind is a beautiful ballad with a nostalgic solo on the flute. There are more of these *non-rock instruments on the album. I mentioned the saxophone and the flute in 21st Century Schizoid Man. The musicians also play on the melotron, the prototype of later digital samplers. Thanks to this, we can listen to beautiful strings.

The next song on the album is one of the rock classics and is still performed during King Crimson's concerts. The three-part Epitaph set the trend for progressive rock - a long and sad song by Greg Lake, pulling the heart of every sensitive music lover. A multi-layered composition which, despite its catchy melody, is not without the artistry of arrangement and performance.

Confusion will be my epitaph
As I crawl a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back
And laugh
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying

Moonlight child

The second side of the album begins with Moonchild, another sweet ballad that turns into a over 10 minute improvisation. After the excitement of the previous song, it's a good moment to rest and calm down. The finale looks like a shot, but the listener doesn't know about it yet....

The first riffs of The Court of the Crimson King, the last song, announce something great! These are just a few chords, but they remain in memory for a long time. A kind of banal arrangement - stanza, chorus, stanza.... but then the tempo changes and the second part begins. The conversation of the guitar with the flute, and another interesting improvisation. After a while, Greg Lake returns to the last verse....

On soft gray mornings widows cry
The wise men share a joke;
I run to grasp divining signs
To satisfy the hoax
The yellow jester does not play
But gentle pulls the strings
And smiles as the puppets dance
In the court of the crimson king

The dancing dolls will have their own solo, just before the final part, which ends this classic album in a rather chaotic way.

Only five long songs - the shortest one is more than 6 minutes. After listening, I wanted to play this album again. Listen again once again to those compositions that are ambitious and multi-layered, but full of lightness and good style.

Peace and love @the-veggie-sloth