When the Epitaph set was first issued in 1997, I think it was available as four CDs in a boxed set, with a 1990s price to match. Several of the songs appear in three different versions, a couple in four, and there are no less than five performances of 21st Century Schizoid Man — which I happen to be quite partial to, but all the same… You'd have to be pretty hardcore to buy that, I thought.
I can't remember what it was that, eleven years later, decided me that actually, of all the CDs out there in the world, I needed to own a slice of this set, after all. It wasn't Sid Smith's Book, because I read that 18 months before. It might have been something on the DGM website. It might equally have been some idle Amazon-browsing, postponing the dreadful moment in the morning when I actually have to stop faffing through RSS feeds and start some proper work.
It is frightening, though, the high percentage of the relatively few CDs I still buy that are trainspotter collectables by the faintly embarrassing acts I liked when I was 16. It doesn't help that these acts are churning out new old material like there was no tomorrow. I mentioned Tangerine Dream official bootlegs yesterday, but check out this page, showing over 90 King Crimson live albums released in the last decade! The several expanded deluxe reissues of the studio albums are not included in that number. I haven't got any of those as well, have I? Well…, errr… errr… wait and see.
We all have our weak moments, and you won't find me in the shopping centre during mine, but it's just too easy to be tempted into a quick digital download before you've even clocked what's happening: this 1972 show found its way into my iTunes just three weeks ago (prompted by a feature in The Wire, of all things). One thing that adds to the temptation is the confidence that these are not quick-and-dirty knock-offs. Every one reconstructed by expert engineers and ultimately overseen by the man Pete Sinfield refers to in the sleeve notes as Captain Jean Luc Frippard. I wish I had more time to expand on fascinatingly independent cottage industry, propped up by easily-tempted middle-aged men — but illness, the unsettled sleep of The Boy, and the pressing need to prepare, from scratch, a presentation by Monday morning preclude it for now.
However, these two CDs have enabled me to check out the evidence of the oft-repeated argument that the 1969 incarnation of King Crimson had a degree of muscle not evident on their sole studio album (answer: … probably; the people making the argument know more than me, so I defer to them). Also to hear the band's improvisation around Holst's Mars from the Planet Suite, a prog conceit if ever there was one. Since I first read about this, decades ago, I was curious about how that would have sounded. I no longer am.
Yep, it's interesting to listen to once or twice, but will I be getting Volumes 3 & 4? No. Definitely not. No need. Not for a few years yet, anyway.
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