King Crimson – In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) [From Favorites]
21st Century Schizoid Man-The heavy brass, the screeching guitars, the way the song changes speeds and effortlessly brings in and drops instruments collates into a piece that knocked my socks of and just made a lot of what I listened to before I heard this feel lazy. This song might actually be a bit too showy, but I can’t help but smile with the audacity it packs into seven and a half minutes.
After this bombastic opening, the album transition’s into the contemplative song I Talk to the Wind. The song opens and closes with flutes, which sets this as the antithesis of what you’ve just heard. It’s soothing, calm and pensive. The lyrics are also a bit more fluid than the much more jagged and raw lyrics of the previous track. Speaking of the lyrics, this is probably one of my favorite turn of words in any song:
You don't possess me
Don't impress me
Just upset my mind
Can't instruct me or conduct me
Just use up my time
Epitaph-I always find this song a powerhouse of emotion. Musically it’s caught between the world-weary tone of I Talk to the Wind and the urgency of 21st Century Schizoid Man. It’s a chilling lament on death and what we lose when people are no longer with us. As the song aptly puts, in the wake of death, there is confusion. There’s a glimmer of hope, but the expectation that this weight will continue tomorrow, that the fear and horror of death will loom over us until it finally reaches us.
Moonchild-Once again, the album subdues itself even more. Moonchild is probably not a song you can just listen to in your car or in a room with other people because of how soft it is. You need some quiet, or a good pair of headphones. The first couple of minutes are a beautiful little song that evolves into this playful extended instrumental piece. When it goes out to space for 10 minutes, I know some people find it overlong. But with the right sound setup, I find it soothing to float away with the notes. I know some versions cut down how long this section is, because it probably is too long.
The Court of the Crimson King-Probably the weakest piece on the album, but still a fantastic one. In contrast to the other tracks, this one tries to convey more of a place and a story and also meld all the various sounds of the album together into a finale. I think it’s fantastic, but the lyrics with the narrative slant just don’t have the resonance of the other songs for me.
This album was a game-changer for me when I listened to it, the gateway drug into the pretentious, overblown world of progressive rock. More than anything else, this album makes me appreciate the sheer ambition of the genre. While other genres seem to fully form and just hang around until they fragmented every which way as the decades rolled by, here were people legitimately trying to evolve what rock is and what it could do. It doesn’t always work, I think a lot of people who aren’t me see it as a failure, but I’ll still push for the greatness of this album regardless of what you think of the genre.