King Crimson: The Night Watch

KING CRIMSON: THE NIGHT WATCH (1997 /rec. 1973/)

1) Easy Money; 2) Lament; 3) Book Of Saturday; 4) Fracture; 5) The Night Watch; 6) Improv: Starless And Bible Black; 7) Improv: Trio; 8) Exiles; 9) Improv: The Fright Watch; 10) The Talking Drum; 11) Larksʼ Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 2; 12) 21st Century Schizoid Man.

General verdict: A historically important high quality recording — great if it serves as your default sample of live King Crimson in 1973, superfluous otherwise.

For those who find Great Deceiver to be overkill (not even mentioning all the gargantuan recent boxsets), The Night Watch instead might be a perfectly well-rounded dose of classic Larks-era live King Crimson. With a fantastically apt title — the performance was recorded at the Concert­gebouw in Amsterdam, a stoneʼs throw from the actual Night Watch — the album gives you a near-complete concert (for some reason, only the opening number, ʽLarksʼ Tongues In Aspic, Pt. 1ʼ was lost and never found) with a nice balance between fully polished compositions and raw improvisations and crystal clear sound quality.

Other than that, though, it is hard to say anything new about this release, since the majority of its improvisations had originally served as the basis for Starless And Bible Black: this here is the original source for ʽTrioʼ, ʽStarless And Bible Blackʼ, and ʽFractureʼ, without the extra edits and overdubs, but the latter were minimal anyway, and bothering about which of the two variants works better is a job for an experienced Crimsonhead, not yours truly. The only other improvised piece which did not make it anywhere, entitled ʽThe Fright Watchʼ, is really a six-minute atonal introduction to ʽThe Talking Drumʼ, with a nice mellotron buildup but hardly worth valuing as a standalone piece.

Let me, therefore, concentrate on one thing and one thing only: unless you rummage through all the archives on those enormous boxsets, out of all the 1973–74 live albums I have heard, The Night Watch arguably features the very, very best version of ʽ21st Century Schizoid Manʼ. Without any sax players in the lineup, Fripp has to take care of almost the entire instrumental section himself, leaving just a little space for Wetton to show his bass prowess and then coming back in with a vengeance. This time around, the guitar tone is thick and growly, and the licks that Robert delivers are all over the place — one moment he is Hendrix, the next one he is Cream-era Clapton, and then, for brief moments, he even forgets himself to the extent of transforming into Woodstock-era Alvin Lee (but only for very brief moments). In comparison, the one version on Great Deceiver is shorter and somewhat «wimpier», whereas the older available version on USA suffers in the sound quality department. (Ironically, I trashed Frippʼs guitar solo in my original negative review of the album — where the heck were my ears back then?).

Other than that, I am really not sure what else to say that has not already been said in the Great Deceiver review. Allegedly, the show at the Concertgebouw was one of the most heavily boot­legged KC recordings of all time, which is an additional (if not primary) reason for the albumʼs official release — but it is also true that the remastered sound is ultimately more colorful and juicy than anything on Great Deceiver, and the record screams to be played loud and proud; it is somehow even easier for me to gain a good feel for ʽFractureʼ on here than in the strange context of all the other songs on Starless And Bible Black. All of this certainly justifies its existence.