Beat
Kodak Center, Rochester NY
October 19, 2024
I saw King Crimson in 1981 on the Discipline tour and, to this day, it ranks as the best concert I have ever seen. (Followed by a close second place of Crimson in 2021.) So I was eager to see this version of that tour and snatched up tickets as fast as I could, when they became available.
If you’re not familiar, Beat consists of Adrian Belew (guitar and lead vocals) and Tony Levin (bass) — both of whom were in the original 1980s King Crimson, plus Steve Vai (guitar) and Danny Carey (drums). Their set consists entirely of Eighties Crimson material.
First off, it was a great concert; a hard-rocking, intense display of virtuosity and musical teamwork. It also didn’t hold back on the experimentation that has been a Crimson hallmark for over fifty years. In fact, the show opened with “Neurotica” — in which the band imitates an aural urban landscape. The first set included a number of adventurous songs, including “Dig Me” and “Satori in Tangier,” as well as “Heartbeat, “Man With an Open Heart” and “Model Man;” songs which, in the Crimson catalogue, approach pop. They closed the first set with “Lark’s Tongues in Aspic” — one of their better known songs which, although it comes from an earlier incarnation, they regularly played in the Eighties.
The band’s second set opened with two numbers that almost seemed designed to test the new guys, “Waiting Man” and “Sheltering Sky.” The reason I say that is because both involved intricate drum patterns unlike the hard rock drumming Carey is known for, and “Sheltering Sky” was based on the interplay of two guitarists. They acquitted themselves quite well. Carey proved himself capable of the subtle drumming that both songs required. On “Sheltering Sky,” Vai performed the Fripp parts which build the song to its’ elevated plateau, and then turned it into a showcase for his own guitar work without disrupting the feel of the original. In this way, he gave us the best of both worlds; the original song, and then a fresh interpretation of it.
Much of the second set consisted of pieces from Discipline, which was ignored in the first half. This made it a more straightforward set, less improv and experimentation, more sticking to the basic songs. Not that those songs are at all basic. Much of the material on Discipline, wildly innovative for its time, still sounds fresh and challenging. Beat executed all of them brilliantly.
And yet…
My mind couldn’t help going back to that 1981 show, and how it moved me so much more than this one did. This one was a standard, if great, rock show. The earlier one was magical.
Obviously, the different line-up of musicians was a key factor. As I said, when Vai needed to replicate Fripp’s playing, when the two guitarists played in unison, on songs like “Neal, Jack, and Me” and “Elephant Talk,” he performed excellently. When he was free to do his own thing, as on “Sheltering Sky,” he added a new dimension. Yet somehow, he didn’t seem as in sync with Belew as Fripp had.
Bruford is, essentially, a jazz drummer, while Carey is hard rock. That made the Crimson show much more fluid. One place it really made a difference was in “Satori in Tangier.” In 1981, that song was transcendental; it elevated me out of the normal concert experience and put me on a plane where the only thing which existed was the music. Here, it was just another song; granted, a great song, but it wasn’t magical.
The other difference was the element of surprise. The early concert was before Discipline was even released, so everything I heard, except “Lark’s Tongues,” was completely new to my ears. Imagine, if you can, hearing “Elephant Talk” or “Thela Hun Ginjeet” for the first time. What are these songs? What is going on? Or imagine “Indiscipline.” What is he talking about? (Which is still a question when I hear that song.) That element is also part of what made “Satori” such a pleasure. The very freshness of it was ecstatic.
On one hand, it feels unfair to judge this concert based on a previous one. On its own, objectively, it was an amazing concert. On the other, that is how we experience music, or art, or anything we experience. We cannot help placing it in the context of everything we have already gone through. [Murray Thomas]
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