No Subject

played up through the Beat tour, with Larks' Tongues surviving all
tours.  According to an interview with Fripp, the band rehearsed
Schizoid Man for 3-Pair, but he didn't like the way it sounded so they
didn't play it live.

The only pre-Discipline song played in the videos is Larks' Tongues
II, and the 3-Pair video has horrible sound quality, giving the Noise
video the virtue of having a much better version of that song.

The Noise is short - 55 mins, and contains: Waiting Man, Matte
Kudasai, The Sheltering Sky, Neal and Jack and Me, a drum thingy by
Bill, segueing into Indiscipline, Heartbeat, and Lark's Tongues II.
It's from the Beat tour.

Three of a Perfect Pair is much longer - 90-odd mins, and contains
(not in order): Elephant Talk, Frame by Frame, Matte Kudasai,
Indiscipline, Thela Hun Ginjeet, Heartbeat, Satori in Tangier, Three
of a Perfect Pair, Sleepless, Man with an Open Heart, Industry, Dig
Me, a close approximation to No Warning, Larks' Tongues III, and
Larks' Tongues II.  It says the first song is No Warning, but I think
it's a keyword like the mid-70's titling a song by the place it was
played at, meaning "Improvisation".  It starts with Frippertronics,
Levin's Bass Synth-Keyboard and normal Bass after a couple of mins,
and then degenerates with Belew's "noises" and Bruford's percussives,
into Larks' Tongues III.  Fripp's solo in Larks' Tongues III is great,
Bruford's "performance" in Indiscipline is great, and a couple of
other moments are great, but I'd say a good 70 mins of this sucks real
bad.  The Noise is much more exciting to watch and hear, and they
don't make stupid mistakes in The Noise.  Besides, their greatest live
song is The Sheltering Sky which is on The Noise.

Adrian Belew's solo band in '83 played Heartbeat, and I've been told
that The Bears played Heartbeat and Elephant Talk live when they last
toured.  Bootlegs of Crimso tend to have Red and untitled/improvised
music on them, especially ones from the Discipline and KC-Discipline
tours, which makes them far more interesting than the videos.

To recap, The Noise was recorded in Frejus, France in '82, and Three
of a Perfect Pair Live was recorded in Tokyo, Japan in '84. The Noise
is short but sweet, while 3-Pair is long, has lousy sound quality and
is basically a lousy performance.  Both were as of late '86 ordered at
$29.95 each via Passport Video forms stuck in the sleeves of Fripp
re-releases, and at $79.95 through outrageous Video mail-order
catalogs.  I bought them on Beta HiFi, and had them recorded in stereo
onto a single VHS HiFi tape.  A bootleg I believe called
"Indiscipline" is a lousy recording of parts of the 3-Pair video,
itself a lousy recording, so avoid it.

- Brian

PS: Let's not talk too much about KC on this message-list, or else IED
could start having conniptions.

	[ Talk about them all you want.  IED will just have to take
	  some Valium.  -- |>oug ]