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For the life of me I don't know why I put the King Crimson deja VROOOM DVD on the home entertainment system this week. Was it the economy and the looming massive layoffs from all those soon-to-be-shuttered dealers and manufacturing plants? Was it the latest series of articles on how crappy our health care system works for both business and families? Was depression to light a word for a superpower's economic collapse? Maybe it was the latest Keith Olbermann rant of insanity in pursuit of an insane Bill-O that forced me into taking the desperate measure of retrieving from the vault a band that seemed to foretell today’s dissonant chaos. 

King Crimson was/is a band that all artists aspire to be like, and yet reject if they get a whiff of some big money near their snouts. King Crimson always disbanded whenever the Big Time was on their doorstep. They are disbanded now.

This in no way means that various members who have made up King Crimson over the years were all down for art alone. "Art for art's sake, money for God's sake" was how 10cc described this conundrum. Original members of King Crimson would surface in really huge bands and earn tons of money. Greg Lake, the Lake to fit with Emerson and Palmer, was one who bolted early on for greener dollar/pound-sterling pastures. Ian McDonald left and a few years later was found as a Foreigner member earning sizable chunks of change as a convert disciple of Mick Jones.

For all intents King Crimson was/is really simply a manifestation of Robert Fripp, who has remained the consummate artiste of our time. Fripp and his band expressed In The Court Of The Crimson King -an observation by King Crimson, their first release, all the anger, beauty, sweeping, jarring, repetitive and haunting terms of life we are confounded with in our modern world. Although the Beatles and the Moody Blues employed the mellotron extensively and with great imagination, Fripp’s and Ian McDonald’s usage of this powerful instrument to build tension was a tremendous achievement for the time, and was completely new. The other primary aspect of King Crimson music was the shock of going from one moment of harmonic bliss to a discordant atonal blare segment of diverse time signatures to rival a Cecil Taylor or John Coltrane exercise in free form jazz. It was jazz on steroids beating on a progressive rock pattern filled with granules of folk inspired melodies.

It was unique for the time zone it first appeared. After several records and line-up changes that saw the original band dissolve to only Robert Fripp by 1974’s Red, the first observation period came to a close. There were a few seminal songs of true art from this period like 21^st Century Schizoid Man, which saw a reprise of the form on the second King Crimson album, In the Wake of Poseidon, with the song Pictures of a City. These long form songs express turmoil, pain and determined outrage at the day’s situation. These two musical adventures have today written all over them from hammering rhythms to staggering fills of time changes and percussion amid heavy distortion. These pieces were often the counter points to the bleak and dying majesty of Epitaph and In The Court of The Crimson King on the first record and In The Wake of Poseidon on the second album.

The final vision from this period, now 35 years gone, came on one of the great albums of all time, Red. The songs Starless, Red, Fallen Angel and One More Red Nightmare reverberate with a beauty confronting hostility and depression to witness a fall from grace to rival John Milton’s immortal angst more than three centuries prior. This album was a mad mixture of modern classical and jazz experimentation that summed up an end of an era and beckoned a new one.

Three albums (Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair) and small touring marked the 1980s for King Crimson with pronounced emphasis on guitar effects and repetitive interlocking rhythms blending, bending and howling under the vocals of Adrian Belew. Three and out for the1980s version of the band when commercialism seemed at the door.

The DVD, deja VROOOM, showcases the last incarnation of King Crimson live in Japan with rich effects of interaction speaks to our dissonant world breaking apart in a very real way.  This was not a band but notes kept on record that detailed musically the meeting of past and present from a band that recognized dissonance was everywhere.

Given the angst over our companies and overall business climate I thought this e-mail I received from a good friend deserved a post here. A little humor with a lot of truth to our current economic dilemma.