Red King Crimson

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, King Crimson are releasing 50 rare or unusual tracks from the archives. Starting on 13th January, the date the band was formed in the Fulham Palace Café in 1969, these tracks will be released one a week for the remaining 50 weeks of 2019. Each track will be introduced by a commentary from David Singleton, King Crimson manager and producer.

This is the long awaited independent critical review of the music of King Crimson when the Wetton/Bruford/ Fripp triumvirate were at the heart of the band. The extraordinary music created by Crimson at this time spanned three great studio albums; Larks Tongues In Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red as well as the posthumous live album USA. For many fans this was the ultimate incarnation of King Crimson. Featuring Larks Tongues In Aspic Part 1, Easy Money, Improvisations, Book Of Saturday, Red and Starless. BONUS TRACKS New versions of Starless and Red by John Wetton. Features rare footage of King Crimson in concert.
~ amazon.com

King Crimson is a decidedly unwieldy band. Spanning more than 35 years (as of this writing) and at least seven distinct lineups, and complicated by the studio vs. live dichotomy (not to mention no hits to speak of), this is a band that almost refuses to be anthologized. Anything less than a box set doesn't really do the band justice, but anything more than two discs may seem like a grand investment to someone who just wants to get acquainted with them. Since King Crimson completely ceased to exist in the mid- to late '70s and early '80s, that seems a logical dividing point in examining the band's output. And that's exactly how Robert Fripp approached it when he assembled the 21st Century Guide to King Crimson in two volumes.

With its varying short-lived phases, King Crimson is well suited to the box set treatment, and overall, Frame by Frame: The Essential King Crimson doesn't disappoint. At four discs, it's perhaps a little hefty to serve as a comprehensive introduction for newcomers, even though it could work very well in that context; in the end, the box is more of a close-to-definitive package for fans who fall somewhere in between the realms of casual and devoted. The first three discs do an excellent job of summarizing King Crimson's extremely distinct prime-period lineups: the first disc concentrates on the often jazzy symphonic rock of 1969-1971 (including almost the entirety of In the Court of the Crimson King), the second covers the heavy, experimental soundscapes of 1973-1974, and the third features the off-kilter, new wave-influenced prog pop of 1981-1984. The fourth disc is a career-spanning sampler of live Crimson, and although the varying sound quality and musical styles make it a less cohesive listen than the other discs, it does give an excellent idea of the various lineups' extraordinary performing range.

This three-disc set gathers two King Crimson D.G.M. Collectors' Club releases: Live at Cap D'Agde, 1982 and On Broadway: Live in NYC, 1995, respectively. Oddly, the contents within this boxed set are reversed, with the latter title featured on disc one and two and the former on disc three. On Broadway: Live in NYC, 1995 contains a composite of five shows from the double-trio version of King Crimson at the off-Broadway Longacre Theater in New York City. Enthusiasts will find a whole lot to like about this two-hour-plus performance compilation, thanks in part to the flawless sound quality, which devours the endless stream of bootlegs that quickly flooded the underground market shortly after these shows were played…