An Addendum to Starless.

When the best wife on the planet bought two tickets to see King Crimson celebrating their 50th anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall, I was a little worried that said best wife would have a miserable evening. The best wife on the planet has never been a great lover of King Crimson and if she happened upon me listening to Mr. Fripp and co. would politely request that we listen to something else. It has to be said that King Crimson have never been purveyors of easy-listening (Just Easy Money - ha ha!) and so I have always complied with the best wife's wishes, turned off the music and slammed every door in the house (paradoxically, the best wife on the planet is married to the worst husband on the planet).

As I stated in the previous post, In The Court of the Crimson King was released in October 1969. I was introduced to King Crimson by a late schoolfriend, George Russell (still sorely missed) and I bought my copy of their first album on 19th August 1974. So, as you can see I came late to the party. By the time I had made my purchase, they had already released Larks' Tongue in Aspic and in October 1974 would release Red, their last studio album, or so I thought. With a somewhat heavy heart, my last King Crimson album was U.S.A. and it actually had R.I.P. on the sleeve.

To cut a long story short a new King Crimson arose in the early eighties and I hadn't heard any of these new recordings. Prior to the Albert Hall gig of 20th June 2019, I thought that I had better listen to some of this new-fangled music and picked out a few unfamiliar pieces from the previous two nights' set lists. I liked what I heard.

The best wife on the planet sat side by side with her as-excited-as-a-teenager-again husband and waited for the evening's performance to begin. Performance. It was fan-bloody-tastic. An exhibition of joyful musicianship exploded from the stage. That's right, joyful. Even the best wife on the planet was caught up in the whole evening and even downloaded a particular song that she had enjoyed. All three evenings at the Albert Hall ended with 21st Century Schizoid Man as an encore. During our evening's performance the saxophonist, Mel Collins, slipped in a sly little reference to Take the A-Train and the drummer (one of three!), Gavin Harrison slipped in a nod to Colonel Bogey.

It was a brilliant, magical evening and I cannot thank the best wife on the planet enough.