King Crimson - 1973-04-05 Reggio Emilia, IT (1973)

Six days into the European leg of the LTIA tour Crimson are hitting their stride but on this murky audience recording John Wetton’s sore throat is having an impact and you can hear him straining on Easy Money in particular. He manages to rest it up for a while in the following improvisation, turning in some of his trademark monster bass work.

The improv that comes out of a delightful reading of Book Of Saturdays, still being played with accompanying tambourine at that point, continues the reflective mood with some charming interplay between bass and Fripp’s luscious chords setting up space for a gorgeous violin solo from Cross.

Whether or not Bruford is exercising ‘admirable restraint’ in this section or is simply inaudible due to the sonic limitations is hard to say. However, when he does enter with crashing cymbals in tandem with John’s growling bass they take the piece in mighty and majestic direction. The rhapsodic overture comes to a slow end and is abruptly replaced by some stop-start funk that drives into the riffs and shapes that would eventually form the basis of Guts On My Side, with some gothic Mellotron slicing through the mayhem and horror movie soundtracking that slides into The Talking Drum.

Although Alex Mundy has done his very best to clean this one up the level of distortion is significant. That said hardcore Crimheads will allow for this and be able to discern what is, without doubt, a substantial performance by this magical quartet.