Ladies of the Road

Artist: King Crimson
Label: Discipline Us
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 633367020321
EAN: 0633367020321
ASIN: B00006RHQW

Release Date: 2002-11-12

Ladies of the Road

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Tracks:

Pictures of a City
The Letters
Formentera Lady (abridged)
The Sailors Tale
Cirkus
Groon
Get Thy Bearings
2Ist Century Schizoid Man
In the Court of the Crimson King

Tracks:

21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)
21st Century Schizoid Man (Solos)

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Amazon.com

Never so much a band as a halfway house for guitar-prodigy Robert Fripp and an ever-shifting lineup of sympathetic musicians and fellow travelers, King Crimson has become one of prog rock's most enduring, if unlikely, purveyors. Culled from the band's decades-deep vaults, this live recording documents Crimson's relatively stable 1971-72 roster of Fripp, bassist-vocalist Boz Burrell, drummer Ian Wallace, and Mel Wallace on flutes, sax, and mellotron. Taking Crimson's repertoire as a starting point, the band uses its previous avant-baroque flourishes to leaven its edgy, manic flights of improvisation. What these performances lack in commercial accessibility is overwhelmed by their ferocious execution and free-form ambitions--and even some occasional musical humor, such as turning the stately "In the Court of the Crimson King" into a brief blues romp. And if fans wondered just how far afield Fripp and company could venture in their showcase solos for their signature "21st Century Schizoid Man," the second disc here serves up 11 frantic examples, edited together into one massive, live disc-length megamix. <I>--Jerry McCulley</I>

Album Description

Double CD, special edition of live performances during 1971-72 drawn from the archives of the King Crimson Collectors' Club. The first CD is a series of performances beginning with the play-in shows at the Zoom Club, Hamburg through to the final Earthbound tour of America. The second CD is a compilation of sax and guitar solos played during performances of 21st Century Schizoid Man throughout its life. DGM records. 2002.

Customer Reviews:

First album = jazzy, good; second album = just plain obnoxious........2005-12-04

The title says it all. The first of the two albums would unquestionably be worth getting on its own--great live music from an under-represented period of the band's history, although personally the jazzier, more saxophone-heavy Crimson isn't to my liking as much as the later, proggier bits. When you stick the second album into the mix, it's a crap shoot. If you really like early 70's King Crimson improvisations with lots of saxophone, you might like that second album. Personally, I've listened to it two or three times, generally wishing halfway through that I hadn't stuck it in the cd player and only listening the whole way through because of some combination of laziness and determination.

If you liked early crimson....you'll love this...it's just.....WOW!!!!!!!!.......2005-07-30

Look....I am not gonna waste your time by reviewing each song....if you are considering this album....you are already familiar with the studio versions....

What I will tell you is.....forget the EARTHBOUND live album...probably the worst sounding official album I ever heard..and to think...they said it was HDCD.....what a joke...I feel totally ripped off for buying that Earthbound piece of crap...but THIS album.....WOW!!!! It has everything you'd expect from a KING CRIMSON performance.....very transparent...and well balanced....tight drums and bass....and the musicianship...well.....that's what a KC performance or studio album is really all about......it's all here....and you have a front row seat......to experience over and over and over....

Just go order the CD...you wont be disappointed...I promise.

An extremely odd compilation.......2005-05-27

It seems recently Robert Fripp has decided to make every bit of recorded material King Crimson has made over the last 35 year available to the public. While a good portion of this unreleased material is only available through the King Crimson Collectors Club (like the wonderful Live At Summit Studios, 1972 album), Fripp has decided to compile some of the highlights of these limited releases for the general public. The disc "Ladies of the Road" is one such compilation. This album is compiled from the 1971-mid 1972 line up of Crimso which featured Boz Burrell, Mel Collins, Ian Wallace, Peter Sinfield and of course Robert Fripp. Originally this line up was only heard on the 1971 album "Islands" and the UK only live release "Earthbound." Neither one of these albums were an accurate portrayal of what this line-up is capable of, and therefore this is probably one of the most underrated, if not ignored line-ups of Crimso. That said, this is in no way the perfect Crimso line-up, in fact they are far from it.

One of the biggest problems with this line-up is they had the tendency to incorporate almost blues based riffs into their already established "symphonic" progressive rock sound. While the marrage of progressive rock and blues jams can often produce wonderful results, that is definitely not the case here. Crimso simply stumbles through and each jam, while trying to remain a tight unit. Probably the most absurd example of this would be the blues interlude in "Get Thy Bearings" or the blues version of "In The Court Of The Crimson King," although you only get about 40 seconds of the latter title before the abrupt end of the disc (you have to get one of the Crimso collectors edition discs to get the whole song).

The second disc in this set features the beginning and all of the solos of "21st Century Scizoid Man" edited together to make one enormous 53 minute long song. Why anyone would find this disc nescessary is beyond me. While the sound quality of the first disc was pretty good, the second disc brings back memories of the poor sound quality of the "Earthbound" album. The solos, while they start pretty seemlessly edited together (although the sound quality changes from solo to solo are pretty noticeable), you are later greeted with a huge gap towards the end. Where one would have expected Fripp to have just edited the end of the song on to the mass of solos, he just simply awkwardly ends the disc after the last solo. So essentially the song is incomplete, making this listening endeavor a complete waste of time, unless you find the "21st Century" solos that fascinating, that you have to hear them over and over again.

I would only recommend this album to the most diehard Crimso fan, especially a fan of the Boz Burrell line up. More than likely the Crimso devotee already has these recordings on the individual King Crimson collectors club releases, thus making "Ladies of the Road" rather redundant.

disc two is worth it in itself.......2005-03-13

OK, I halready hade the collector's club editions, so I had all the material on disc one. THat said, this is terrific stuff, providing a glimpse of the live capabilities of this all-too-underrated incarnation of the mighty Crim (since Earthbound just does not do justice). If you don't have the various collector's club releases, then this provides a superb overview of this period of live Crim.

Now, the real treat is disc 2 - the reason I bought this. Just for this alone, the disc would be worth more! I have always loved the wild improvisational passages that sprang forth from live versions of "21st Century Schizoid Man". This is the Uber-version - a pulsing, churning, soaring amalgamation of numerous performances of the song's central instrumental explorations - It is sick, sick, sick - gloriously crazed jamming at a sustained fevered pitch. I just got this today and have played disc two about four times in a row - man, I think I am growing tentacles - this stuff is so intense! If you love the intensity of the early Crimson, then you owe it to yourself to ingest this one - it is extreme brain food to be taken in healthy doses through the ears. MMMMMMMMMMMMMM

One of their very best, believe it or not!.......2004-05-14

Now this.....THIS is jazz-rock improv! Talk about astonishing music! Being a fan of all pre-1981 Crimson studio albums, I heard for years about how incredible they were onstage, how elating and often frightening a rock unit they could be. The Night Shift came close a couple of times, but didn't do it for me. It's like the Starless album without the cool overdubs.

Bill Bruford is highly overrated, in my opinon -- the drums on Ladies of the Road are much more thrilling, and they shift between tempos (well, meters, actually) much more often than Bruford ever did. The drums propel this incredible excursion into funk/jazz/rock with an intensity unheard on all other live KC recordings in my experience.

Who'd have thought I'd only find a recorded example of KC's onstage excitement and brilliance on a CD set featuring the 1971-72 band? Earthbound and Islands are so generally detested that they happen to be the only two pre-1981 releases I've avoided buying. I came across Ladies of the Road and was intrigued by the promise of an entire disc of improv on the fast section of "Schizoid Man." I wasn't let down! Beautiful, brilliant, hyper, speedy jazz that could be called "thrash jazz" blurts out of the speakers in "remastered good bootleg" quality for 50 minutes. It even cuts off like a clandestine recording or something. Fantastic! I listened to disc 2 four times the first night I had this double set. It must be heard to be believed.

Mel Collins is a brilliant sax player. His duos with Fripp are manic, imaginative and uplifting, and this pair-up provides some of the most incredible music in the group's whole catalogue (along with, again, the maniacal drums and Boz's growling voice, which is better than Gordon's but not as good, obviously, as Greg's). "Cirkus" is slower but heavier than the studio version (you can almost see the crowd's shirts being blown off when that mellotron storms in!), "Pictures of a City" will make you hear the song differently (I love that fast middle section, and it's incredible here!), and the snippet of "In the Court..." at the end is a hilarious, Muddy Waters-style parody of itself. Who says Fripp doesn't have a sense of humor? The cover of the Donovan song is surprisingly good. "Schizoid" is mind-blowing and stunning.

And then there's the second disc, which I know I keep going on about, but it's the most stimulating live Crimson music available on disc (except for the live material on the Starless album, of course), and gives the listener a perfect example of what people are talking about when they say that this band was a monster on the live stage. It's hyper and unbelievable. This has seriously become my 2nd or 3rd-favorite KC album of all time. Great release! Thanks, Robert!

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