In which we join King Crimson’s second full lineup on their second date of an American tour which would end with the band splitting from Robert Fripp. Shorn of pretty much everyone who made the first album, save Fripp and the lyricist Peter Sinfield (about whom more in a minute) the band now featured Ian Wallace on drums, Boz Burrell on bass and vocals and Mel Collins on sax and flute. It’s interesting how often former members of Crimson crop up elsewhere: I first heard of Mel Collins on Dire Straits’ Alchemy album in 1984, but he doesn’t play there like he did on this Crimson tour. Another ex-member you may know is Greg Lake, who went on to be the L in ELP and then, with a little help from Sergei Prokofiev[1], wrote and released I Believe in Father Christmas, which I’m sure still pays the bills (in addition to the money all these bastards still make off me buying so many of their live albums).

Pete Sinfield’s has to be the strangest Crimson story, though. He went off to live in Ibiza before returning to write pop songs, and by pop I mean Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz. He’s another of those blokes who won’t be stuck for a bob either, having co-written Canadian skinny chanteuse Celine Dion’s hit Think Twice. That’s walking about with money, there.

Anyhow, back to the Live in Detroit set, a double and (are you counting?) the eighteenth in the Collectors’ Club series. This one’s long and it’s noisy. The first thing I noticed, however, was how Fripp didn’t use the liner notes to moan about anything, this time passing the biro to Wallace. It’s fitting, I suppose, as Wallace’s drum solos are the reason the thing is a double album, but if you think that means you won’t get a dose of Fripp’s trademark petulance, just you wait.

Wallace’s comments are those of a guy for whom this tour was as much a tourist opportunity as a gig. He muses on the historic Massey Hall, then outlines how tight this band had become. But he hints at the impending breakdown of relations within the band and carps about how these versions are better than the records. (By the way, Wallace died in 2007 of oesophageal cancer, a few months after Burrell, also aged 60, died of a heart attack).

They may well be tight as far as interplay goes, but there’s an admirable sense of adventure to the music (recorded pretty well, all things considered, despite a couple of dropouts and a nasty reel change on Groon). This era lies between the experimental jazz of Lizard and the denser Islands, and at first Collins takes the instrumental lead, jamming good with Wallace on an increasingly-unhinged Pictures of a City before blowing the English cobwebs of the stiff Formentera Lady with an extended aul’ blow. All the time the drums are quite martial and the guitar is more rhythm than anything (possibly because of the limitations of Burrell’s bass playing, recently taught to him by Fripp). Fripp begins a teasing little angular solo about eight minutes into Formentera Lady, but as Collins tries to match him one gets the feeling that the guitarist is trying to get rid of rather than play with the sax as they head into Sailor’s Tale and Cirkus, and the mellotron and antique synth (the latter VCS3 played by Sinfield from the balcony) muscle in.

This and the execrable Ladies of the Road[2] follow before Groon spills out all over the floor, all noodles and big drum solo. It’s about seventeen minutes of very male, longhaired banging about (no complaints there), after which you’d think they might play some of the old stuff for the Americans. But no.

They do 21st Century Schizoid Man (you know, the one Kanye does?) as if they couldn’t get the smell of it off their hands quickly enough, then Fripp takes the mike.

Here we go. He introduces the band without offending anyone, then tells Detroit how they’re one of the favourite cities for “the cats in the band”. Before the Detroitians can say “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” he tells them that said cats are very sensitive and that shouting out for the old stuff (by which he specifies Schizoid Man, Epitaph and Crimson King) will make them stop playing at all, the philosophy of this band being to play new material[3]. At the same time this diplomatic pleading is going on several members of the crowd are shouting bits and pieces, as people on large amounts of acid are wont to do, and a member of Crimson[4] is screaming at them to “shut the fuck up”. Lovely. He goes on to tell a story about how the band’s bus was smeared with the message “Learn Epitaph”. Wasn’t that what the crowd were yelling, and isn’t yelling preferable to smearing?

Fripp counts them into a great version of what he called then The Devil’s Triangle but I’m assuming the estate of Gustav Holst insisted he call Mars, then after a delightful sequence of whooshing sounds, curtly bids them goodnight. The whimsical side of the fun loving Crims (see what I did there?) comes through for an encore, though, playing a wacky blues version of Court of the Crimson King, all screaming and dirty riffing[5]. At the end someone—I think it’s Wallace—mocks the audience, asking them whether they’re “baffled” as if that was the intention. The phrase “arrogant wanker” springs to mind, but Wallace calls it “hilarious…. Did they get it? I doubt it”, he adds with less than mature reflection.

So just when you thought you were getting an archive Crimson release on which Fripp withstood the temptation to moan in the sleeve notes, he does it from the annals of history, live on stage.  Top guitarist but a moody bollix, by all accounts.

[1] who, I’m assured, knew nothing of the Prog.

[2] What the hell possessed them with this song? Sample lyric: “Stone-headed Frisco spacer/Ate all the meat I gave her/Said would I like to taste hers/And even craved the flavour”. Charming.

[3] Presumably because the bass player hasn’t learned it yet.

[4] I’m assuming it’s the drummer… assume away.

[5] It’s the one from the Ladies Of The Road compilation and is fun to listen to once.