Neal And Jack And Adrian And Robert And Tony And Bill And Me

I’m not sure what’s a popular opinion and what’s an unpopular opinion when it comes to King Crimson, but in terms of eras of the band my absolute favorite one is the 80s reincarnation with Adrian Belew. Discovering and obsessing over Adrian Belew’s 80s solo albums back in high school was the starting point. Once I’d graduated high school and was working enough to support a pretty nasty music buying habit I began searching for everything Mr. Belew was involved with. Checked out the Zappa stuff, the Bowie stuff, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, and then finally made it to the KC records(I recently found a track Belew played on with Herbie Hancock that was pretty amazing.)

Back in the early 90s we didn’t have the internet or Youtube or music streaming services, so you were pretty much buying blindly. You were purchasing on faith and faith alone if you’d never heard that record before. And to find what albums an artist had made? Well you went to the mall and to Walden Books and found a copy of the Rolling Stone Album Guide. There, you could locate artists and see their discography. Plus you could also read the review of it if you were so inclined. I was not. Those reviews were pretty pretentious. But the book was essential if you wanted to fill out a back catalog.

I quickly bought up the albums Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair on CD. Maybe in town at Video World, or I might have special ordered them through Super Sounds at the Concord Mall in Elkhart. Either way, I snagged them up. The music was nothing like Adrian Belew’s power pop-heavy solo stuff that I found on Mr. Music Head, Young Lions, Inner Revolution, or Here. It was crazy time signatures, oddball lyrics about “dangerous places” and “elephants talking”. If I’m being completely honest I wasn’t sure what the hell I was listening to. There were no “hooks” or Beatles-esque harmonies. The songs sounded like the inner workings of a watch amplified; click-clack percussion courtesy of bassist Tony Levin and drummer Bill Bruford(who played with an earlier iteration of KC). The guitars were these kinetic bleeps and blips; Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp weaving notes together seamlessly with alien-esque results. Adrian Belew’s vocals still sounded like Adrian Belew. He brought a kind of humanity to the steely, angular world of Robert Fripp’s King Crimson.

But as hard as I tried at 19-years old I just couldn’t find my way in.

There were some amazing songs that stuck out for sure. “Elephant Talk”, “Frame By Frame”, “Matte Kudasai”, and “Thela Hun Ginjeet” on Discipline…”Neal And Jack And Me”, “Heartbeat”, “Neurotica” on Beat, and “Three of a Perfect Pair”, “Model Man”, and “Man With An Open Heart” off Three of a Perfect Pair. Pulling the proggy weirdness of late 60s/early 70s King Crimson into the neon glow of the 80s would not have been a small feat, but Adrian Belew helped that happen. Also, guys like Levin and Bruford were pretty hip cats with their finger on the 80s music pulse.

Not many bands that came up in the 60s/70s were able to evolve their sound to both fit in the modern vibes of the 80s, while still stay true to who they were as artists. Rush, Yes, and Genesis were able to, as was King Crimson. I think it was because these prog bands from the 70s were just music nerds that were just hip to technology. They could take a Moog or an ARP synth, figure it out inside and out, and then use it to their advantage when it came to writing modern sounding music, while still being the proggy nerds they always were. 70s metal bands? They didn’t fare nearly as well. 80s Sabbath, with the exception of Ronnie James Dio’s run, wasn’t very good. I know you may find fault in that theory, but we can agree to disagree.

Long live the nerds!

Despite those great songs I ended up trading in those CDs eventually after they sat in the CD tower collecting dust. Fast forward to 20 years later and I was well into the vinyl fever. On a trip to a record shop for some random rummaging I found a copy of Discipline on vinyl for $6. I hadn’t revisited those KC records in years and thought why not? I surprised myself when I put the album on and found myself really digging the whole thing, not just the cuts that stuck out all those years ago. I’d started to really get into Belew’s trio stuff which was more like KC than his pop songs, and I think that primed my brain for some serious proggy art rock.

Not long after that I found a copy of Beat and added it to the collection. Once again I was floored by how much I liked the entire thing. “Neal And Jack And Me”, “Heartbeat”(Belew redid this for his album Young Lions), “Satori In Tangier”, and pretty much the whole of the record absolutely engaged me. I had since started digging into the earlier KC albums, as well as some solo Robert Fripp, and while I didn’t become a super fan or anything I have grown to love the first record as well as Starless and Bible Black and Red.

While I haven’t yet found a vinyl copy of Three of a Perfect Pair I have listened to it quite a bit, with “Three of a Perfect Pair” being one of my favorite opening tracks on any album.

This is the great thing about music. You can listen to a record in your early 20s and it just not vibe at all with you. No connection. But then 20 years later you go back to it and all of a sudden, there it is! Sometimes you have to put some miles on your tires and wear down the tread a bit before something is going to click.

I didn’t get Frank Zappa at all until I was well into my 40s. I’d hear my brother listening to apostrophe in his bedroom and it sounded like a comedy album to me. Or albums like Bitches Brew, Pet Sounds, and the whole of NIN. In my 20s none of that really clicked. In my 40s? Absolutely. NIN was a crazy one, too. That kind of anger and aggression is typically a young man’s game. But I had very little angst in my 20s, just anxiousness. When I was in my 30s with a wife, three kids, and a mortgage? I had so much angst I could’ve rented three or four U-Store-It sheds and it still wouldn’t have been enough space for it.

My point is, music doesn’t need to be ready for us. We need to be ready for it. I don’t think I’m going to suddenly discover a love of outlaw country or Skrillex, but I won’t completely count out some other great discovery in my late 50s or 60s. I’m so glad I decided to bite the bullet on the King Crimson album. It opened a whole new musical world for me. And even got me interested in more guitar experimentation myself.

You know what’s even better? In October I will be seeing Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, and Danny Carey performing songs from the 80s King Crimson albums. They’re touring and calling it the ‘Beat’ tour. They’ll be playing songs from each of those three records, and who knows what else? How could I not see this tour? Plus it’s coming to Indianapolis to the same theater I recently saw Herbie Hancock.

“The Seine alone at four AM, the insane alone at four AM
Neal and Jack and me
Absent lovers, absent lovers“