Elvis Presley: King Creole

ELVIS PRESLEY: KING CREOLE (1958)

1) King Creole; 2) As Long As I Have You; 3) Hard Headed Woman; 4) Trouble; 5) Dixieland Rock; 6) Donʼt Ask Me Why; 7) Lover Doll; 8) Crawfish; 9) Young Dreams; 10) Steadfast, Loyal And True; 11) New Orleans; 12*) Danny.

General verdict: Elvis goes New Orleans on our asses — with somewhat mixed, but generally exciting results.

Perhaps King Creole is not the most consistent LP in Elvisʼ career — it is still a soundtrack, after all — but it would be hard to deny that it marks the peak of that very brief period where Elvis actually had a chance to grow into something significantly bigger than ʽHound Dogʼ and ʽLove Me Tenderʼ. As great as all those songs were, the true potential of rockʼnʼroll still remained largely untapped — and the future looked really bright for the partnership between Elvis, Leiber, and Stoller, as they began writing songs for his next movie, which would go on to become his best, too. King Creole, directed by none other than Casablancaʼs own Michael Curtiz, actually managed to go beyond clichés, give its protagonist a nice, biting social angle, and become that one Elvis movie that you are always recommended if... well, if you actually want to go see Elvis in a good movie. Rather than just go see Elvis. Or go see Elvis and a bunch of hot girls in bikinis. I mean, far be it from me to renounce the power of either, and King Creole ainʼt no Kubrick, either, but as far as general entertainment with soul and brains in 1958 is concerned, you could hardly do any better.

In any case, whatʼs a better choice than ʽKing Creoleʼ to pull Elvis out of his safety zones and make him explode just as credibly in a completely new musical setting? A brand new type of rockʼnʼroll, diligently crossed with elements of New Orleanian music, a song that you can headbang to just as heartily as to ʽTutti Fruttiʼ, but featuring a completely different type of beat, jazzy energy, and a guitar solo that seems more influenced by Django Reinhardt than any of the old jump-blues heroes. Above all, it continues to ooze Elvisʼ sexiness, as each verse seems to rise out of the ground, line by line, gaining in intensity with each second — and the man really gets into it, chomping out the line "he holds his guitar like a Tommy gun" with the toughness of a mafia hitman and then getting all properly tiger-ish on "he starts to growl from way down his throat". The rhythm section is much softer here than on the similarly anthemic ʽJailhouse Rockʼ, but it is hard to shake off the feeling that ʽKing Creoleʼ goes deeper and darker — that somehow we are past comedy here and making our way in much more dangerous territory.

That feel of danger is even more expressly stated in ʽTroubleʼ, Leiber and Stollerʼs second and equally fabulous contribution. It is essentially a Chicago blues number dressed up in a bombastic New Orleanian big band jazz arrangement, and the ruckus generated by the percussion and brass section in the chorus and particularly the sped-up "Iʼm evil, evil, evil as can be" coda is quite intoxicating, but a large part of the song is completely quiet, featuring nothing and no-one but Elvis in his self-aggrandizing big-bad-boy-of-the-blues mode, inspired by Muddy Waters and the like. Of course, this here is nothing like the mystical, voodoo-drenched terror of the big African-American dude, and Elvis is not even trying to emulate the swag of a Muddy or a Howlinʼ Wolf; this is the battle stance of a rough white kid from a tough neighbourhood, but Presleyʼs deep bass rumble somehow communicates well enough both the idea of the man being dangerous and a certain nobility of intent — "Iʼve never looked for trouble, but Iʼve never ran", that sort of thing. When he pulls all the stops with "Iʼm evil, evil, evil", it sounds nothing like the ʽEvilʼ of Howlinʼ Wolf — it just goes to show that the man means business if you got his back to the wall. Itʼs a fun, cocky, menacing, life-asserting, happy-licious song, with all these psychological layers to it and more. I remember being mildly disappointed by it after first hearing it on a compilation in deep childhood — who needs all that Vegasy jazz brass? whereʼs a Scottie Moore guitar solo? — but even back then I already knew this was something special.

It is a bit disappointing, of course, that Leiber and Stoller only contributed those two numbers to the soundtrack (the third one, ʽSteadfast, Loyal And Trueʼ, is a rather silly acappella school anthem that can only be appreciated by those who are not alergic to any sort of school anthems in principle), because none of the other numbers come close to the inspirational punch of ʽKing Creoleʼ and ʽTroubleʼ. Well, for those who donʼt mind some good old misogyny in their soup, there is always ʽHard Headed Womanʼ, another little Claude DeMetrius classic delivered by the King at such a breakneck tempo that you will find it quite a challenge to sing along — and here you do get a Scottie Moore guitar solo, although it is still eventually overtaken by a wild brass onslaught. But Schroederʼs ʽDixieland Rockʼ is a disappointment, a transparent attempt to remake ʽJailhouse Rockʼ New Orleans-style that takes most of the bite and anger out of the original and replaces it with even more brass soloing — not good at all.

In general, the weak spot of King Creole is that too much of the album is subjugated to one simple formula: let us take the average Elvis Presley record and cross it with New Orleans jazz. It does result in an album that is almost conceptual in nature, but if you just throw your big band arrangements on top of everything, well, be prepared that sometimes it will work and sometimes it wonʼt. Not surprisingly, perhaps, one of the albumʼs true hidden delights is ʽCrawfishʼ, a short and almost minimalistic «exotic» shuffle about... well, the lyrics speak for themselves, donʼt they? "See I got him, see the size, stripped and cleaned before your eyes" — howʼs that for a from-the-waist-up Ed Sullivan show? Never mind, even if you read past all the innuendos (and I myself thought for quite a long time it was just a song about fishing down on the bayou), the Kingʼs drawn-out howl of "craaaawfish!", lustfully echoed back by Kitty White, is still enough to ignite something. Too bad the whole thing is over much too quickly and there is nothing else even remotely like it on the record.

Still, even if ʽDixieland Rockʼ does not work, and even if several of the ballads are second-hand shadows of earlier successes, individual flaws do not spoil the general feel. Discounting the couple of compilation LPs released while Elvis was in the army, King Creole is the very last blast of a young, cocky, and still relatively free true King of rockʼnʼroll — who may have been on the verge of something even greater, if not for the combined counteraction of the Armed Forces and «Colonel» Tom Parker; and while we are all aware that one of the «Colonel»ʼs worst deeds was confining Elvis to the movie set, an even worse one may have been his isolation from Leiber and Stoller — who allegedly did not wish to sell themselves into Parkerʼs servitude and were consequently banned from access to Elvis by the Memphis Mafia. A sad story, alas, in no way predictable based on the lively exuberance of King Creole. 

Interpol: Antics

INTERPOL: ANTICS (2004)

1) Next Exit; 2) Evil; 3) NARC; 4) Take You On A Cruise; 5) Slow Hands; 6) Not Even Jail; 7) Public Pervert; 8) Cʼmere; 9) Length Of Love; 10) A Time To Be So Small.

General verdict: Slightly more diverse and just a tad more challenging than its predecessor, but still mired down in self-gratifying existentialism and self-torturing formula.

There are two reasons why I think that, if we really really really want to play this game here and now, Antics is a better Interpol record than Turn On The Bright Lights. First, I might be mistaken and wouldnʼt want to repeat this statement under oath without a metronome, but I think that the songs roll in with a larger variety of tempos (essentially, this means that there are more slow tunes here, but still not as many as to ruin the experience completely). Second, some of the new songs actually have guitar riffs which — dare I even suppose it? — go beyond the typical paradigm of «hey man, just hold down this chord while the engineer goes to the bathroom» that almost literally kept nailing my head to the wall all through the duration of Bright Lights.

Thatʼs about it, though. Because even if that opening punk-pop riff in ʽNARCʼ does employ more than one chord, this does not automatically imply that it is a quality riff; again, it just sounds like a slightly simpler, deconstructed little brother of your average Television riff — and even so, it still tends to melt down into a single-chord jangle every time the chorus comes along. Actually, I find myself more partial to the monotonous, but genuinely aggressive two-chord jangle of ʽLength Of Loveʼ, where Banks finds just the right tone to go along with Dengler and Fogarinoʼs neo-disco rhythm section. That song, for what itʼs worth, is one of their most believable clones of the Joy Division sound, though no matter how low Banks goes with his vocals, he still does not reach the doom-prophet heights of Curtis.

Ironically, I do believe that Interpol were seriously dead set on making Antics surpass the effect of Bright Lights — make it a bigger, more anthemic, more sprawling experience that would cement their torch-bearing status. At the very least, this idea is very explicitly suggested by the opening track. ʽNext Exitʼ is notably slow, stately, and declares its creatorsʼ intentions right from the get-go: "We ainʼt going to the town / Weʼre going to the city / Gonna trek this shit around / And make this place a heart to be a part of". This way, you get to know that before the coming of Interpol, the City had no proper heart to speak of — but now, well, roll over Manhattan, a new brand of hipsters is taking over. The lyrics overall have a Springsteen vibe to them ("so baby make it with me in preparation for tonight..."), but, unfortunately, the song troddles along at such a funereal pace that where Bruce is able to conjure a mental image of the romantic working class protagonist zipping on his bike at light speed with his baby by his side, ʽNext Exitʼ is more of a super-slow ride on a stinky suburban train through all those grey-colored piles of rotting slums that you have to stare at for hours. Not uplifting. Not depressing. Just monotonous and dull, made even worse by the never-breaking air of glum solemnity conjured by the vocals.  

And it is still better than the three completely interchangeable songs (ʽSlow Handsʼ, ʽEvilʼ, ʽCʼmereʼ) that were released as the first three singles from the album — the best I can say about these is that they might be doing a tiny bit better job at separating verses from choruses, which is not really much to say and could, in fact, be completely wrong and misleading because I am listening to the chorus of ʽSlow Handsʼ right now and things may easily change by the time I press the «publish» button. I do like the groove power of the rhythm section — I think it takes its cue more from Blondie than from Joy Division — but then again, I could hardly picture an organic hybrid of ʽHeart Of Glassʼ with ʽShadowplayʼ in the first place, so what could be said about this particular marriage of tranquilized existential sorrow with swaggy dancefloor rhythms?

But once again, I will repeat that the albumʼs saving grace is its relative diversity. At least when only a third of your record sounds like monotonous, uninspired post-punk, while the other third tries to rock out and yet another third plays out like an homage to every second-rate shoegazing act that ever gazed at its shoes, fourty minutes of this stuff is somehow easier to sit through, and by the end of it all you might even begin to think that, you know, God did a good job sending us Interpol just so somebody could say, «hey guys! weʼre here to end it all! weʼre here to tell you that these musical formulae are done, done, done forever, and this is why try to sound so sad and clueless even if weʼre doing a pretty piss poor job of it». Of course, then you remember that at the very same time Arcade Fire were putting out Funeral and inventing a great recipe of combining sorrow with optimism — everything that a song like ʽNot Even Jailʼ does wrong, a song like ʽRebellion (Lies)ʼ does right with almost the same ingredients. But then even Arcade Fire turned out to be a dead end rather than an inspiring beginning. 

Tom Tom Club: Dark Sneak Love Action

TOM TOM CLUB: DARK SNEAK LOVE ACTION (1992)

1) Love Wave; 2) Sunshine And Ecstasy; 3) You Sexy Thing; 4) Who Wants An Ugly Girl; 5) Say I Am; 6) Irresistible Party Dip; 7) Dark Sneak Love Action; 8) Innocent Sex Kiss; 9) Dogs In The Trash; 10) My Mama Told Me; 11) As The Disco Ball Turns; 12) Daddy Come Home.

General verdict: The one Tom Tom Club album with a definite edge to it, even if the label reads «creepy dance-pop for the age of Basic Instinct».

Pretty much the only thing you can very easily dig up about this album from Internet sources is that it includes a cover of Hot Chocolateʼs ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ — which, in all fairness, only makes sense to those who were of the right age when ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ was a thing in 1976. Apparently, after the lackluster performance of Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom most people in the world came to think the most sensible thing — that Tom Tom Club was a limited-time joke act, that its time had expired, and that following the musical future of Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz in the next decade would be the epitome of the Losing Game.

These most people, though, they couldnʼt be more wrong. Dark Sneak Love Action, an album totally and completely buried in time, is actually... Tom Tom Clubʼs best album. Mind you, the stress here is on album. It does not contain any immediate gems like ʽWordy Rappinghoodʼ, it cannot boast a single track with the hit potential of ʽGenius Of Loveʼ, and I do not even think there are that many hooks here on the level of ʽSuboceanaʼ. But it sets itself a perfectly clear and interesting goal — write a cycle of sexy, seductive, sublimely naughty dance tracks — and carries out the prescribed task in twelve moves with nary a single obvious miss. And if ever there was an album title in this groupʼs history to perfectly match its musical content... well, guess what, it certainly wasnʼt Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom.

Compared to their previous records, this one was recorded in very small company: Tina and Chris are accompanied by guitarist Mark Roule and keyboardist Bruce Martin, plus a couple backing vocalists — no Byrne, no Jerry, no Belew, just a very barebones edition of Tom Tom Club left completely to their own devices. Maybe because of this, precisely, they really stick to just one device: get a good dance beat, set up a dark, suspenseful, mischievous funk vibe, and use all the limited instrumental and vocal means at their disposal to build up an atmosphere that suggests dark corners, dirty winks, casual encounters, illicit substances, adultery, and all sorts of kinks a-plenty. If the album had just a wee bit more recognition in its time, I am pretty sure somebody would have come up with the idea to license it for the soundtrack of a «Middle Aged Couple Seduces Innocent Teens» porn movie or something.

One might play the puritan and find such a purpose disgusting, or one might play the highbrow intellectual and find it ridiculous and cheap, but the record does have a unique flavor — it isnʼt overtly sexy, with its reliance on heavy bass grooves, whispered vocals and innuendos, itʼs more like an album for some really really shy people with some really really gross hidden desires. Actually, you will not notice anything particularly indecent going on if you just browse through the lyrics, even the ones for songs with really suggestive titles such as ʽInnocent Sex Kissʼ; itʼs all in the little details of singing, arrangements, and production. But in the end, youʼll still walk away feeling dirty and ever so slightly shocked — I mean, we all had our suspicions, but we never thought thereʼd be that much of this kinky stuff in Tinaʼs and Chrisʼ basement.

Speaking of individual songs, like I said, there are no clear highlights, but almost each title has something going for it. ʽLove Waveʼ is a slow, cocky, funky rap embellished with a few surf guitar lines (is «surf-funk» actually a thing?) to metaphorically remind you of all the oceanic connections of sexual attraction. ʽSunshine And Ecstasyʼ, the first single from the album, is arguably one of the weakest numbers, being closer than most other songs to generic early 1990s dance pop, but even that song is quirked up by stealing the guitar riff of ʽYou Really Got Meʼ and inserting a fun jazzy piano break in the middle. ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ actually sounds nothing like the original, being given a synth-pop edge and a whiff of stalkerish atmosphere by means of Tinaʼs ghostly-mechanical falsetto vocals. ʽWho Wants An Ugly Girlʼ chooses a reggae beat to tell a simplistic, endearing narrative that would most likely be tabooed in 2020, but possibly lets us in on some of Tinaʼs personal complexes — with a catchy chorus to boot.

Skipping ahead to a couple of songs that are particularly juicy, the title track is arguably the culmination of this style — all hush-hush, herky-jerky percussion, quiet bubbly synth riffs in the background, menacing blues-rock lead guitar lines roaming on the edges, and backing vocals with purring curves. The songʼs message is basically the same as Madonnaʼs ʽBurning Upʼ ("strip me down and burn me to the core"), with the important distinction that Madonna is offering herself to you right in front of everybody in the middle of Times Square, whereas Tina is doing that in the darkest, most secluded corner of the club, away from the lights and crowds — itʼs up to you to decide which of the two approaches is hotter, even if in the long run both are probably fatal. At the other end of the spectrum is ʽDogs In The Trashʼ, a hilariously corny «nightmarish» account of a jilted lover stalking a socialite (or something like that), with the howling dog trope exploited both vocally and instrumentally (if that ainʼt a Termenvox providing the main counter-riff, it sounds damn close to one).

It is possible that the consistent dark-sneak atmosphere might wear you out by the end of the album, but somehow they never ever run out of little ideas to help get you going — right down to the very las song, ʽDaddy Come Homeʼ, which is graced with... bagpipes, marrying together the old Celtic folk vibe with contemporary dancefloor rhythms. Seriously, more care and inspiration went into the making of this record than into most of David Byrneʼs solo albums from that same period — Dark Sneak Love Action is a light-art pop piece with a purpose, and it should be holding up rather proudly next to hundreds of completely generic dance-pop products of the time. Too bad they pretty much gave up on it: ʽYou Sexy Thingʼ was the only number, I think, that they regularly performed live for a while, and it isnʼt even the most representative track from the record. Then again, if it is largely a «dark corner» record, maybe Tina and Chris just gather in secret to perform these tunes for each other every once in a while. (There definitely is quite a bit of potential here to spruce up a middle-aged coupleʼs sex life, thatʼs for sure). 

King Crimson: THRAK

KING CRIMSON: THRAK (1995)

1) VROOOM; 2) Coda: Marine 475; 3) Dinosaur; 4) Walking On Air; 5) BʼBoom; 6) THRaK; 7) Inner Garden I; 8) People; 9) Radio I; 10) One Time; 11) Radio II; 12) Inner Garden; 13) Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream; 14) VROOOM VROOOM; 15) VROOOM VROOOM: Coda.

General verdict: A slightly cellulitish variant of King Crimson for the Grunge Age — but the mix of nostalgia with then-current production trends still works fine for me.

No band has ever proven itself to be so adaptable to each new musical time period as King Crimson has — that is, of course, if we are talking intelligent adaptations that still allow the music to be easily recognizable and identifiable, while at the same time reflecting and honoring the most serious new musical developments of each period. But as years, and decades, went by, adaptation to new musical developments became harder — simply because it became harder to identify these new developments. And it is not merely old age that has resulted in a lack of properly «iconic» new albums from King Crimson past their third (or was that fourth?) traditional resurrection. It is also the fact that in 1994-95, it was not exactly clear who could serve as Frippʼs new source of inspiration. Last time we checked, it was Talking Heads. But in the mid-1990s? Kurt Cobain? Black Francis? Alanis Morissette?

Still, far be it from us to suggest that Frippʼs brain cells might have gotten too rusty or confused in a period which was, after all, more or less the very last hooray period for rock music in general. On the formal scale, change was reflected in the adoption of a «Double Trio» format — all the players from the Discipline lineup were back, but now augmented with a second bassist (Trey Gunn, an actual graduate of Frippʼs Guitar Craft school) and a second drummer (Pat Mastelotto); apparently, Fripp had acquired this love for weird symmetries, or, perhaps, it was just a part of his evil plan to tone down the presence and influence of Bruford, who was almost supposed not to be part of this new show, but allegedly shamed Robert into letting him back in.

On the substantial scale, the very title of the album (THRAK), as well as that of the mini-album which preceded it with several alternate versions of the same songs (VROOOM), already sort of suggests something fairly brutal and violent — and while it would be pushing things way too far to call this phase King Crimsonʼs «grunge period», I am absolutely certain that the grunge and alt-rock explosion of the early 1990s could not have gone unnoticed by the man who had already, to a large degree, predicted the New Wave revolution, and to an even larger degree, embraced it more wholeheartedly than any of his peers when it did come. In a way, THRAK is a synthesis of the heavy, infernal math-rock of KCʼs Larksʼ Tongues / Red period with the polygonal futurism of their Discipline era — you can think of it as a more structured and disciplined take on Larks or as a heavier, more metallic take on Discipline, it works in both directions. The problem is that when you are able to slap on such a precise definition, the effect becomes predictable, and so THRAK no longer has the capacity of blowing your mind in the same sudden ways as the three previous incarnations of King Crimson could.

Which is not to say that THRAK is not an excellent, consistent, thoroughly enjoyable set of tunes for which I have the same type of love and admiration as, say, the Stonesʼ Voodoo Lounge — we know very well what to expect at this point, but there is still enough inspiration from the general spirit of the times to keep on infecting you even 25 years later. With the exception of a few minor transitional links, every major composition on THRAK has plenty of energy, one or more thick instrumental hooks, and tons of atmosphere. The doubled rhythm sections make the songs seem lumpy and bulgy, but the professionalism of the players gives them all the precision and agility of a raging hippo — or, perhaps, a T-Rex would be a better analogy, given the title of one of the albumʼs most memorable songs, to which we will be coming shortly.

The meat part of any KC album are always the instrumentals, whose titles this time around bring on associations with Batman comics or Jackie Chan movies more than anything else: ʽTHRAKʼ, ʽVROOOMʼ, ʽBʼBoomʼ, ʽVROOOM VROOOMʼ (for all I know, they might be hidden acronyms, but whoʼs crazy enough to want to find out?). And already the first one of these, ʽVROOOMʼ, is an absolutely shameless variation on the melodic structure and atmosphere of ʽRedʼ — one fanfare-like opening riff, one slowly winding main riff, a quiet mid-section (though here, more than anywhere else, the jangly geometry of Discipline is being shown off), and then coming back around full circle for the coda. The riffs are memorable and the band still pushes ahead with all the ferocity of a freshly oiled old Panzer, but one listen to this track is also enough to understand why THRAK will never be remembered with the same sense of awe as its predecessors — as brutal as it may sound, the level of self-plagiarism is through the roof here. That may have been the intention — here we are, making up a new ʽRedʼ for a new generation of music players and music listeners — but these intentions are limited by definition. I actually think that the extended ʽCoda: Marine 475ʼ conclusion to the track is more interesting — unlike the self-plagiarizing ʽRedʼ-based main body of ʽVROOOMʼ, this part sounds more like a King Crimson attempt to put together the codas of ʽI Am The Walrusʼ and ʽI Want You (Sheʼs So Heavy)ʼ and see what happens when you give them the «double trio» treatment.

The impression does not change much when you go through the rest of the instrumentals. Heavy echoes of ʽLarksʼ Tongues In Aspicʼ (both parts), on one hand, and ʽThela Hun Ginjeetʼ and the like, on the other, resonate all through ʽTHRAKʼ and particularly ʽVROOOM  VROOOMʼ; only ʽBʼBoomʼ is different in that it is mainly a skill show for the bandʼs percussionists, with a tribal jungle sound that, for once, does not seem to have any direct analogies in KCʼs past — but letʼs admit it, we have hardly come here with a primary goal of hearing Bruford and Mastelotto play off each other for four minutes.

In the end, THRAKʼs main attraction are its vocal numbers — not entirely original, either, but not as blatantly ripping off past frameworks as the instrumentals. I suppose that Belew should be taking a lot of credit for these. Over an entire decade separating Three Of A Perfect Pair from THRAK, Adrian had grown into a major solo artist in his own right, with four first-rate albums of neo-Beatlesque pop under his belt, and although the base aesthetics of King Crimson strictly prohibits him from sneaking any of those blatantly pop melodies past Inspector Fripp, some of that classic Beatles spirit, particularly its moody and psychedelic parts, still manage to get smuggled in — see ʽPeopleʼ, for instance, with its ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ-influenced back­ward guitar solos and ominously repetitive riff in the coda (once again, highly reminiscent of ʽI Want Youʼ). On the other hand, even Belew slips into formula every now and then: the gently dreamy ballad ʽWalking On Airʼ borrows many elements from ʽMatte Kudasaiʼ, a fact that is hard to hide even behind all the extra layers of guitar complexity that this new decade has brought in. (Amusingly, its lyrics also make reference to "sheltering sky", as if we really needed one more reminder of the greatness of Discipline).

Still, the album does contain two of my favourite KC vocal numbers of all time. The already mentioned ʽDinosaurʼ reflects Belewʼs usual eco-minded themes, though the lyrics are clever enough to yield to both universal (inevitable extinction of man) and personal (inevitable extinction of ME) interpretation — what matters most, though, is the slow, lumbering, brooding atmosphere, with lots of dry, creaky, sustained notes that make you picture this very large, very old, very rusty entity that is nevertheless still clinging to life with all the power it can muster, still strong enough to shoo away all the petty youngsters.

Even more catchy — and more terrifying, when you stop for long enough to truly ponder its symbolism — is ʽSex Sleep Eat Drink Dreamʼ, the portrait of the human being as a simplistically programmed genetic machine with severely limited functionality, hung high up on the nail of one of the most distinctly memorable bass riffs in KC history and featuring Belew in total meat zombie mode: "sex... sleep... eat... drink... dream... sex... sleep... eat... drink... dream..." (listen closely and you will see that only the word ʽdreamʼ in this chain is slightly drawn out, with a tiny bit of tenderness involved — creepy, lately I have been noticing it too that dreaming is becoming the most enjoyable part of my life). If the entire album is nowhere close to a masterpiece, ʽSex Sleep Eat Drink Dreamʼ might arguably be the last properly great song in King Crimsonʼs entire catalog — at least, it is definitely the last King Crimson song that has managed to etch itself a permanent position in the back of my brain.

Summing up, I must point out that normally I experience a sense of disappointment with albums like these — seeing great artists clearly making an effort to progress and ultimately failing because even the greatest ones have their natural limits. But despite its obvious shortcomings, THRAK still holds up as a positive, rather than pathetic, experience. It is an album that says to you, «my main goal is to tell you that King Crimson are still alive and that they are aware that musical fashions have shifted once again», but it is written and produced by people who still have not run out of impressive riffs, catchy vocal melodies, and well-disciplined collective energy to pull it all off with gusto. Fripp himself, as far as I know, does not like to remember this period with too much fondness (probably because he never thought reteaming with Belew and Bruford would be such a great idea), and in the overall critical eye it also seems to somehow have slipped through the cracks, but I think that in the general perspective, it was still more innovative and creative than the Construkction Of Light period, for instance. At the very least, like I said, it would be a pity to have the 1990s, arguably the last properly creative decade for rock music, to have remained without an actual King Crimson incarnation — and it would be rash and silly to expect such an incarnation deliver anything better than these results. 

The Beatles: On Air - Live At The BBC Vol. 2

THE BEATLES: ON AIR: LIVE AT THE BBC VOL. 2 (1963-1966; 2013)

CD I: 1) And Here We Are Again (speech); 2) Words Of Love; 3) How About It, Gorgeous? (speech); 4) Do You Want To Know A Secret?; 5) Lucille; 6) Hey, Paul... (speech); 7) Anna (Go To Him); 8) Hello! (speech); 9) Please Please Me; 10) Misery; 11) Iʼm Talking About You; 12) A Real Treat (speech); 13) Boys; 14) Absolutely Fab (speech); 15) Chains; 16) Ask Me Why; 17) Till There Was You; 18) Lend Me Your Comb; 19) Lower 5E (speech); 20) The Hippy Hippy Shake; 21) Roll Over Beethoven; 22) Thereʼs A Place; 23) Bumper Bundle (speech); 24) P.S. I Love You; 25) Please Mister Postman; 26) Beautiful Dreamer; 27) Devil In Her Heart; 28) The 49 Weeks (speech); 29) Sure To Fall (In Love With You); 30) Never Mind, Eh? (speech); 31) Twist And Shout; 32) Bye, Bye (speech).

CD II: 1) 1) I Saw Her Standing There; 2) Glad All Over; 3) Lift Lid Again (speech); 4) Iʼll Get You; 5) She Loves You; 6) Memphis, Tennessee; 7) Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club; 8) Now Hush, Hush (speech); 9) From Me To You; 10) Money (Thatʼs What I Want); 11) I Want To Hold Your Hand; 12) Brian Bathtubes (speech); 13) This Boy; 14) If I Wasnʼt In America (speech); 15) I Got A Woman; 16) Long Tall Sally; 17) If I Fell; 18) A Hard Job Writing Them (speech); 19) And I Love Her; 20) Oh, Canʼt We? Yes We Can (speech); 21) You Canʼt Do That; 22) Honey Donʼt; 23) Iʼll Follow The Sun; 24) Green With Black Shutters (speech); 25) Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!; 26) Thatʼs What Weʼre Here For (speech); 27) I Feel Fine (studio outtake).

General verdict: Pitiful, really. Just pitiful.

Look, we get it, many of us still have these delightful sexual fantasies of waking up in bed with a brand new Beatles album. But when the original Live At The BBC was officially released in 1994, for all its relative freshness and historical importance it was not for nothing that the compilers actually selected material from several preserved shows, rather than simply taking the first few in their entirety and saving the remaining ones for later. They were actually working on choosing the better takes, the less heard rarities, even the funniest studio banter between the boys and their BBC host Brian Matthew. And back in 1994, there were clearly no plans in the air for a sequel: they took the best and let the worst lie.

Who would have guessed, alas, that either popular demand, or corporate greed, or both, would ascend to such lamentable peaks by the second decade of the 21st century that Apple would renege upon its unspoken pledge, and make the «dregs» officially available as well? Well... okay, anybody with the most basic predictive powers and a healthy amount of cynical attitude most probably could. And in all honesty, there is nothing inherently wrong in making the entirety of archival content preserved from the greatest pop band of all time publicly available. But this is simply not how you go about it.

If you want to have a proper historical document, what you actually do is take all the stuff, arrange it in proper chronological order and release it, as a «deluxe package» or «special limited time release only» whatever. Such a Live At The BBC Complete Edition would be objectively unimpeachable — aimed at history buffs, mostly, but actually doing its job properly for all the history buffs, you know, the way they do with all those latest mammoth-size King Crimson or Bob Dylan releases. On Air does precisely the opposite: it gives you a chronologically bizarre mish-mash of mostly second-rate performances that were rejected the first time around, leaving the completist still yearning for more and the more casual fan confused as to what the hell s/he has just been offered.

If, for some reason, you have never heard the original Live At The BBC, you will find here many live versions of Beatles classics that are inferior to the studio originals, but worth hearing just for that special brand of youthful Beatles enthusiasm that still oozed out of the Fab Four even within the confines of a radio program. If, for some totally incomprehensible reason, you have never heard any songs from the Beatles, period (or, at least, their early period), On Air is, of course, a five-star album, because hearing these songs even with flubbed notes and occasionally off-key vocals still does not detract from their ultimate greatness. But if you are saddled with all that experience, well, I am sad to say that:

(a) the only two completely «new» songs are a cover of Chuck Berryʼs ʽIʼm Talking About Youʼ and of Tony Orlandoʼs interpretation of the old standard ʽBeautiful Dreamerʼ. Both are taken from early 1963 performances for Saturday Club, featuring very shitty sound quality. Chuckʼs song at least features a credible John performance, but also shows how little suited George was to the position of a lead guitarist in a blues-rock band — the Stones kick the shit out of them with this kind of material anyway. ʽBeautiful Dreamerʼ is about as good as ʽMy Bonnieʼ was, which is hardly a compliment. Thatʼs all you get, folks;

(b) the absolute majority of the other songs was already featured on the original Live At The BBC — at worst, in equally competent versions, at best, in vastly superior ones as far as playing and recording quality were concerned. Sure, I only really listened to the album once, and I may have missed some subtle cute nuances every now and then, but who really expects subtle cute nuances from the Beatles in concert?;

(c) of the numerous bits of studio banter between the boys and Matthew, I do not remember even a single one that would match the occasional humor and wittiness of the original. Most of this is just stupid trash-talk that needed to be spoken because you had to say something into those mikes, and you couldnʼt always be expected to come up with something funny and/or intelligent even if you had the dirty mind of a John Lennon. Oh, they sing "Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club" at one point. If that ainʼt a true Beatles highlight, I donʼt know what is.

Honestly, it is a little sad to realize that this might be the final review for the final official album release of previously unheard Beatles material — even sadder to realize that this might not be such a final review, because who knows what the future still has in store for us. Having Fun With The Beatles On Stage? Eight Hours Of Relaxing Nature Sounds — The Beatlesʼ Footsteps On The Threshold Of Abbey Road Studios? The Beatles Live At Wherever There Was No Recording Equipment In The First Place, But You Can Feel Their Presence All The Same? Come to think of it, the possibilities are endless.

In the meantime, do not waste your time on this shameless scam. There is actually a 9-CD bootleg edition out there called The Complete BBC Sessions, which does precisely what I was talking about — collect everything the band did in chronological order and provide you with a wholesome, historically cohesive perspective, if not necessarily give you nine hours of thorough musical enjoyment. Just get your thieving hands on this package instead, and show those money-grabbing capitalists at EMI what social justice, artistic taste, and personal accuracy are all about.

Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock

ELVIS PRESLEY: JAILHOUSE ROCK (1957)

1) Jailhouse Rock; 2) Treat Me Nice*; 3) I Want To Be Free; 4) Donʼt Leave Me Now; 5) Young And Beautiful; 6) (Youʼre So Square) Baby I Donʼt Care; 7) Poor Boy*; 8) Let Me*.

General verdict: Short, but essential — the culmination (or, at least, the beginning of the culmination) of the Elvis + Leiber/Stoller teamwork.

Although, for some reason, the soundtrack to Jailhouse Rock never got expanded to the status of a full-blown LP, it is still well worth making a brief stop for this short 5-song EP — if only because both the movie and the title track were such iconic landmarks in the Elvis legend. The movie, despite the clichéd plot, still remains as one of the few genuinely watchable Elvis films, and the title track... well, just one more great result of the Elvis + Leiber & Stoller collaboration. Unlike ʽHound Dogʼ, ʽJailhouse Rockʼ does not really bite: its main melody is a fairly harmless, comical piece of boogie, and the maniacal energy of its vocals is rowdy, but not aggressive — it is, after all, the manifesto of jailbirds who just want to have some fun, not beat up the warden or anything. But still, it is a call for fun from the other side of the bars — already the opening beat brings on associations with truncheons hitting against polished steel — and this definitely takes us at least one step further than, say, ripping it up on a Saturday night.

Recent assessments of ʽJailhouse Rockʼ often tend to dwell on the homoerotic connotations of the tune (and especially the movie sequence), of which there are plenty, but I think that the prison theme in general is more essential here — Leiber and Stoller always liked subtly playing around with issues of social justice, and if they could infuse the music of the countryʼs most popular rockʼnʼroll performer with such a subject, even in a purely comical manner, how could they have bypassed the chance? Up until then, the jail theme was largely the domain of old bluesmen and weathered country-western performers; ʽJailhouse Rockʼ introduces it to the prom-party-oriented genre of rockabilly, and in such a way that it would be impossible not to take notice — the production is right in your face, without the slightest traces of echo on the Kingʼs voice and Scottyʼs simple boogie rhythm guitar downtuned and distorted just enough to make the song join the long queue of pretenders for the «proto-metal» sound. Such a friendly atmosphere, but still enough to piss off your parents — and this right at the very moment when theyʼd nearly come to terms with the man for all his Christmas and gospel offerings.

This is not to demean the quality and importance of the other songs here — if anything, the short length of the EP guarantees its consistency. There is ʽTreat Me Niceʼ, which has easily the best combination of piano and quirky percussion on any Elvis record, and a hilarious blend of Elvisʼ bass mumble and The Jordanairesʼ backing vocals — always a touch of ecstasy when his "if you donʼt behave..." rockets out of this confusing vocal soup. There is ʽBaby I Donʼt Careʼ, on which Elvis himself plays bass — and although the bassline is as simple as you could predict, it still somehow ends up making the song. There is ʽI Want To Be Freeʼ, a song which does for Elvis pretty much the same thing as ʽHelp!ʼ would do for The Beatles — formulaic love song on the surface, subtle and painful cry for assistance at the bottom: the way he modulates that "I want to be FREE, FREE, FREE - EE - EE... I want to be free, like the bird in the tree" goes from aching to hysteria and back to yearning pain in an amazing emotional somersault. (Did he ever perform the song live? I donʼt think so — I donʼt think the Colonel would have approved). There are also two more ballads by Aaron Schroeder that are not as good as the Leiber/Stoller material, but there is still enough first-rate vocal acrobatics on ʽDonʼt Leave Me Nowʼ to pardon its rather generic doo-wop characteristics.

On a technical note, Jailhouse Rock did make it to CD on its own, expanded with a bunch of alternate takes (not essential — for instance, the movie version of ʽJailhouse Rockʼ with backing vocals from the «inmates» somewhat smoothes out the punch of the single version) and also throwing on the earlier EP Love Me Tender, with four songs from Elvisʼ first movie. It is a bit amusing to be reverted to that year-old sound and hear how different it was — though, allegedly, Love Me Tender was a cowboy movie, accounting for the generally C&W nature of the sound­track. ʽPoor Boyʼ, ʽLet Meʼ, ʽWeʼre Gonna Moveʼ — rowdy campfire material, all of them, and produced in such an intimate manner that you can almost feel yourself sharing a drink with the King after a hard day of rodeoing or whatever.

Elvis Presley: Elvis' Christmas Album

ELVIS PRESLEY: ELVISʼ CHRISTMAS ALBUM (1957)

1) Santa Claus Is Back In Town; 2) White Christmas; 3) Here Comes Santa Claus; 4) Iʼll Be Home For Christmas; 5) Blue Christmas; 6) Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me); 7) O Little Town Of Bethlehem; 8) Silent Night; 9) (Thereʼll Be) Peace In The Valley; 10) I Believe; 11) Take My Hand, Precious Lord; 12) It Is No Secret.

General verdict: A surprisingly fresh take on traditional styles, but one whose freshness might not hold up so well half a century later.

The actual LP going by this name, released in October ʼ57 so that it could be played non-stop for at least two months by Elvis fans, is really a combo, bringing together all the material from a shorter Christmas-themed EP and an earlier released EP of gospel songs (Peace In The Valley), thus giving the listener ample opportunity to evaluate and appreciate Mr. Presley in at least two related, but distinct roles — that of a Christmas caroler and that of an ardent gospel preacher. Both roles, of course, came just as naturally to his fairly traditionalist character as that of the hip-swinginʼ rockʼnʼroller, and how much you will appreciate them, to some degree, will depend on how fairly traditionalist you are.

Or maybe not, because, actually, the first side of the album was fairly groundbreaking by the standards of 1957. Accustomed as we are these days to all sorts of non-standard, individualistic, often arrogantly irreverent takes on the Christmas subject by zillions of artists, it is easy to forget that in the 1950s this domain was still completely dominated by crooners; so much so that, reportedly, Irving Berlin petitioned radio stations to ban Elvisʼ version of ʽWhite Christmasʼ, claiming that it profanated the very idea of the song (ironically, he never demanded the same for the earlier Drifters cover which was Elvisʼ main source of inspiration, since he most likely paid little attention to «colored» radio stations). It works much better, consequently, if you play this side back to back with a Bing Crosby Christmas compilation, if only to make sure how Elvis made the Christmas format adapt to his own style rather than vice versa.

It is hardly accidental, anyway, that the album begins with a newly written song, and that its authors are the same iconoclastic kids Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller whoʼd already given Elvis ʽHound Dogʼ — and even if the song is nothing but a generic mid-tempo 12-bar blues, this was arguably the first time in history that a bunch of punks was allowed to have this kind of fun with the established format. A couple other songs are done by Elvis in his «softcore» rockʼnʼroll mode (ʽHere Comes Santa Clausʼ and particularly ʽSanta Bring My Baby Back To Meʼ), nothing too offensive but still inviting you to get up on your feet and jump around in a decidedly un-solemn fashion. ʽBlue Christmasʼ is also innovative, with the Jordanaires playing on the title by singing blue notes in the background — and the entire song, consecutively, dipping into the blues rather than pure country, to which it originally belonged.

All in all, it is evident that plenty of fun had been had with the source material, even if its impact has inevitably become dimmed with age, and today our enjoyment will largely depend on how much we like Christmas tunes in general and how much we remain in awe of Elvisʼ voice in particular. This is all in stark contrast with the gospel songs from Peace In The Valley — even though their arrangements, too, have been predictably modernized, it is obvious that fooling around with such a mediator of dubious origins as Father Christmas is one thing, but tinkering with the well-established format of a direct address to God is quite another. Here, Elvis loyally follows the singing formula of Mahalia Jackson and other gospel greats, and although he does a technically good job — this kind of material requires far stricter voice control and far more advanced technique, after all, than jump blues — this is not exactly the type of music into which I have immersed myself to the extent of needing to see what Elvis can do with it.

Back in the day, it was probably considered more of a PR move to reconcile Elvis with the offended parents of his teenage fans, or, perhaps, even more cynically, to put him on that last corner of the musical market that was still seriously dominated by African-American artists; Elvis himself, however, most likely regarded this as his sincere homage to all the great masters of spirituals, as well as, perhaps, his own way of making peace with God, just in case the latter really took offense at his hip-swivelling behavior. Regardless of the motives, Elvis has plenty of vocal power and subtlety to make some of these gospel songs every bit as sexy as his best love ballads — replacing the Old Testamental fire and brimstone of Mahalia Jacksonʼs deliveries with romantic sentiment that could make the Lord himself blush a little bit (I mean, ʽTake My Hand, Precious Lordʼ sounds like a wedding song all by itself, but Elvisʼ purry touch makes it even more of an under-the-balcony serenade than it already is).

In short, regardless of our personal feelings, this is an album of fairly major historical importance (a fact that is indirectly reflected in its mind-blowing sales records), and furthermore, it might be argued that Elvis would never really match the quality and the freshness of these gospel and Christmas recordings again. Maybe the best news is that this is all still done in the same low-profile, «chamber» format — just Elvis, his little backing band, and The Jordanaires singing hush-hush vocals in the background, no Vegasy glitz whatsoever. This way, the material does not stand at odds with the manʼs contemporary rock and pop classics; however, I still think that it works best next to these classics rather than completely on its own, and should rather be judged according to the «terrific rockʼnʼroll guy puts his stamp on more traditional genres» principle than the «young bumpkin from Memphis dares to compete with Bing Crosby and Mahalia Jackson» alternative. Then, finally, there will be peace in the valley for him. 

Interpol: Turn On The Bright Lights

INTERPOL: TURN ON THE BRIGHT LIGHTS (2002)

1) Untitled; 2) Obstacle 1; 3) NYC; 4) PDA; 5) Say Hello To The Angels; 6) Hands Away; 7) Obstacle 2; 8) Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down; 9) Roland; 10) The New; 11) Leif Erikson.

General verdict: If this is indeed one of the best indie rock albums of the 2000s, this explains the nichization of rock music more transparently than any other case study.

In the early and still somewhat optimistic years of the 21st century, God made a plan to save rock music — again — because rock music was apparently in need of saving — again. The plan was quick, rough, and impulsive, as should befit any plan dealing with rock music, and involved the usual three steps. Step 1: The Strokes lead an initial Panzer attack and take the world by surprise with their rejuvenated brand of garage punk, just like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols did 25 years before. Step 2: Interpol arrive with heavy infantry reinforcements and assuage the dazzled world with their reintellectualized brand of post-punk, just like Joy Division and the Cure did 25 years before. Step 3: Fuck knows what, itʼs all supposed to auto-pilot itself to Heaven.

Reading back on all sorts of stuff that has been written about the first albums by these bands and the general history of indie-rock in the first five years of the 21st century, you could almost make yourself believe that Godʼs plan totally succeeded. Many retro-reviews of Turn On The Bright Lights, in particular, still praise the record as a blissful poetic and musical revelation, almost singlehandedly responsible for the indie-rock revival of the 2000s — in the wake of Interpolʼs success came The National, Deerhunter, Arcade Fire, and tons of lesser artists to serve as trendy contemporary deities for young millennial hipsters with dark and sensitive hearts (the ones with bright and hedonistic hearts would rather have their choice of Strokes, Hives, and Vines). The album has definitely become part of the canon for rockʼs twilight years (I think we could safely reserve that term for the 2000s, since «rock music» as such in the 2010s has pretty much become relegated to museum exhibits and revival carnivals), and will most likely continue to be respected as long as millennials still have a voice in forming consensus.

Whether the record is really all that valuable if you do place it in the overall context of musical history rather than personal nostalgia is, however, quite a different matter. Over the course of quite a few listens — many more than the minimum requirement of three that I usually demand from myself to write about anything — there was never even one second during which I would find my senses in ecstasy, and quite a few seconds (and minutes) during which I would find myself in a state of terminal boredom. To my ears, this era of Interpol is characterized, above and beyond everything else, by barely-bearably lazy songwriting. The typical formula for an Interpol song is as follows: «find one chord — play it in staccato mid-tempo mode — stick to it for about three or four minutes — put some monotonous and emotionally drained vocals on top of it — rinse and repeat ten or eleven times». Sounds familiar?

To be fair, this is a formula that occasionally could work, and itʼs not as if the abovementioned Joy Division or Cure would always rise above it themselves. The problem is, I am still at a total loss when trying to understand what it is that Paul Banks and his not-so-merry band of young New Yorkers are actually adding to it. Subtracting, sure; adding, not so sure. Everything about this set of songs screams «competence»; not a single thing screams «genius». Heck, not even a single thing screams «so well adapted to the values of the 2000s!», though maybe that last one is actually a good thing, because at least the record still sounds relatively timeless 18 years later (unlike, say, Franz Ferdinand).

As an example, let us focus (as hard as it is) on ʽPDAʼ, the first single from the album. Like most other songs here, it is a mid-tempo rocker with all the musical complexity of a Ramones song but none of the Ramonesʼ humor and self-irony. Lyrically, it establishes its grim seriousness pretty much immediately with the opening line "yours is the only version of my desertion that I could ever subscribe to" (whatever that means) and confirms it with the chorus of "we have two hundred couches where you can sleep tight, grim rite" (I wonder why they didnʼt hire David Lynch to make the video for the song). But musically, the only thing that goes on is an incessant monotonous strum — which does gain a little intensity as they head into the coda, but certainly not enough to make me feel that they are doing anything even remotely interesting with those guitars. And what sort of atmosphere is the song trying to convey? Darkness? Desperation? Cold resignation? The vocals are so utterly bland and the guitar lines are so completely generic that the song just passes by without tickling a single nerve in my body.

Another example — second single, ʽObstacle 1ʼ. Here you could make an interesting comparison, because the second of the songʼs two interlocking riffs, the repetitive two-chord strum, is a clear (even if subconscious) nod to Televisionʼs ʽMarquee Moonʼ, making it clear who these guysʼ principal role models are; and indeed, both songs strive to create a similar atmosphere, conveying a sense of emotional frustration in some restricted environment. But ʽMarquee Moonʼ actually uses that two-chord strum (opening the song) as a foundation, a base pulse around which the second, relatively complicated, swirling second riff winds around — not to mention the snapping, venomous vocals which tell you not to fuck around with the hero. In ʽObstacle 1ʼ, the two-chord strum arrives later and is actually the compositionʼs «lead» element; eventually, they start playing around with both riffs and trying to develop them in different directions, but the opening minute is disappointingly wasted, and the weak vocals offer little assistance — itʼs like somebody is desperately trying to get angry about something, but since heʼs actually got nothing serious to get angry about, the effort is not convincing.

What about something faster? ʽSay Hello To The Angelsʼ, for instance, whose main riff was actually shamelessly stolen by Arcade Fire for the coda to ʽWake Upʼ? (In all honesty, though, that is such an obvious riff, it must have been used in at least a couple dozen pop-rock songs before, I just canʼt unscramble them in my head right now). Formally, itʼs energetic, but where are the hooks? Are they supposed to be lodged somewhere within the "you move into my air space" chorus? But it is merely a case of raising the volume a little, there is nothing non-trivial or surprising, no real build-up, no classy melodic resolutions, just nothing: a perfect example of how to do a fast rock song with zero new ideas.

You can easily extrapolate all these comments on most of the rest of these songs. Like so many revered (or not revered) albums from its era, what Turn On The Bright Lights really does is cut out a small chunk of the legacy of one or two established acts of the past and then amplify that chunk to the extent that, if we want to really enjoy it, we have to force ourselves to distinguish between the slightest and subtlest of nuances. For all the comparisons to Ian Curtis, and for all the thematic and atmospheric homogeneity of Joy Division songs, I do not remember Joy Division starting every second song of theirs with the same repetitive «ching ching ching ching ching ching ching ching» pattern — their guitar lines could borrow from the arsenals of just about anybody from The Doors to Black Sabbath, and whatʼs even more important, they never sounded like a bunch of well-meaning school kids afraid to seriously crank it up because the headmaster could come along at any moment and throw them out of the rehearsal hall. Post-punk really does not work all that well on tranquilizers, and it honestly sounds as if these guys were popping them down by the dozen during recording sessions.

All in all, though, Turn On The Bright Lights is a pretty important record because it gives a very clear explanation — well, one of many possible and non-mutually excluding explanations — to why the 2000s finally spelt out the death of rock music as a major captivating form of artistic expression. Over several previous decades, there was always this feel that rock music can be revived by stripping itself from its accumulated excesses and going back to its roots. It worked in the late 1970s, it worked well enough in the early 1990s — but this record demonstrates why it didnʼt really work in the early 2000s, even if, for a while, some people thought (or at least pains­takingly tried to convince themselves) that it did. The thing is, if you do not really put out, 100%, there is no sense in putting out at all. Turn On The Bright Lights — and, alas, a lot of second-hand indie rock that it inspired — is a derivative, unimaginative, limp, hookless mess with some pretense to intellectualism (mainly due to Paul Banksʼ intentionally enigmatic but, frankly, not too engaging lyrics) that simply has no reason to exist unless we previously burn down every little thing that our forefathers have left for us in the New Wave era.

Of course, Turn On The Bright Lights is not even Interpolʼs best record (though it will be pretty hard to convince people otherwise, given its well-canonized status); of course, 2000s indie rock cannot be reduced to its influence and imitations; and it goes without saying that Interpol were hardly the inventors of this bland, boring, faux-intellectualized rock sound, what with second-rate post-punk bands being there on the scene from the day that post-punk was born. They simply happened to be one of the first second-rate rock bands of the 21st century to be promoted as first-rate — helping establish a new, lowered-expectation standard for the genre that looks so pathetic in the overall historical context. Alas, the fact that they seemingly had no competition for that standard in 2002 — and, come to think of it, they still donʼt have much of a competition as late as 2020 — sort of speaks for itself. 

King Crimson: The Great Deceiver

KING CRIMSON: THE GREAT DECEIVER (1973-1974; 1992)

CD I: 1) Walk On... No Pussyfooting; 2) Larksʼ Tongues In Aspic, Part Two; 3) Lament; 4) Exiles; 5) Improv: A Voyage To The Centre Of The Cosmos; 6) Easy Money; 7) Improv: Providence; 8) Fracture; 9) Starless.

CD II: 1) 21st Century Schizoid Man; 2) Walk Off From Providence/No Pussyfooting; 3) Sharksʼ Tongues In Lemsip; 4) Larksʼ Tongues In Aspic, Part One; 5) Book Of Saturday; 6) Easy Money; 7) Weʼll Let You Know; 8) The Night Watch; 9) Improv: Tight Scrummy; 10) Peace – A Theme; 11) Cat Food; 12) Easy Money; 13) It Is For You, But Not For Me.

CD III: 1) Walk On... No Pussyfooting; 2) The Great Deceiver; 3) Improv – Bartley Butsford; 4) Exiles; 5) Improv: Daniel Dust; 6) The Night Watch; 7) Doctor Diamond; 8) Starless; 9) Improv: Wilton Carpet; 10) The Talking Drum; 11) Larksʼ Tongues In Aspic, Part Two; 12) Applause & Announcement; 13) Improv: Is There Life Out There?

CD IV: 1) Improv: The Golden Walnut; 2) The Night Watch; 3) Fracture; 4) Improv: Clueless And Slightly Slack; 5) Walk On... No Pussyfooting; 6) Improv: Some Pussyfooting; 7) Larksʼ Tongues In Aspic Part One; 8) Improv: The Law Of Maximum Distress Part One; 9) Improv: The Law Of Maximum Distress Part Two; 10) Easy Money; 11) Improv: Some More Pussyfooting; 12) The Talking Drum.

General verdict: A milestone in the history of boxed sets, but somewhat outdated now in terms of scope (too much for the beginner, too little for the completionist).

Back in 1992, the release of this sprawling, 4 CD-long archival boxset was nothing short of a minor sensation — the age of the Luxurious Boxset had only just begun, and although quite a few long-bearded bands had already invested in such items, the typical boxset was a compilation, something along the lines of «greatest hits and rarities». Here, by contrast, was a huge document specifically and thoroughly covering one single touring event in King Crimson history, namely, the Larksʼ Tongues and Red years, with several complete or near-complete shows joined together and, consequently, featuring plenty of overlaps (see no fewer than four different versions of ʽEasy Moneyʼ, for instance).

It was obvious from the start that this was a package only for the most dedicated fan, but it is somewhat symbolic that of all the progressive rock greats of the genreʼs golden era, it was Fripp who had chosen to initiate this trend, which, as far as King Crimson is concerned, is still going strong almost thirty years later. Live performance was an essential part of just about every prog rock act, but in King Crimsonʼs case, it was the stage where most of their music either began, as the result of a particularly lucky improvisation on a particularly inspired night, or became fleshed out in its most perfect, visceral, vivid form. For all the greatness of Yes or Genesis, it is hard to deny that their stage performances were essentially honest and efficient reproductions of their studio recordings (with the addition of impressive visuals, especially for Genesis), leaving little space to improvisation and not really following the «crank-it-up-to-eleven» law of a solid rock performance. Fripp took a completely different approach — yet up until the CD age proper audio documentation of King Crimson performances was severely limited by the LP format, at least when it came to the issue of officially releasing and promoting stuff.

Ironically, as we now move out of the CD age and into something completely different, boxsets like The Great Deceiver begin to look obsolete — a transitional state, if you wish, between the ages of «archival tapes rotting in the vaults» and «total availability at the wave of oneʼs finger». For the casual fan, this was overkill from the beginning; for the completionist and the historian, The Great Deceiver has largely been put out of business by even larger subsequent packages, such as Starless and The Road To Red, which in between them contain soundboard recordings of pretty much every show the band played in 1973 and 1974, making Deceiver now look like a puny sample of the goods in comparison.

I, personally, prefer my archival King Crimson in reasonably small doses, such as Epitaph or Absent Lovers, and for all my love and respect towards the band, think that setting oneself the challenge of listening to The Road To Red in its entirety requires a special level of fanaticism which I cannot afford. Even The Great Deceiver is a bit too much for me: I could easily live without more than half of the improvised pieces, and picking out the subtle performance nuances between so many different ʽExilesʼ and ʽFracturesʼ would be a cool task if you were paid to do this on the same level as they pay people to review bubblegum pop in Rolling Stone, but since this is obviously never going to happen, to hell with nuances.

Which is not to deny that 1973–74 was one of the finest moments in King Crimson history — these were, after all, the years during which most prog-rock acts had become to stagnate, repeat themselves, or lose direction, while King Crimson became the only act to have successfully reinvented and modernized their sound, and up until 1992, the only concert document of that reinvention which we had (not counting the studio-doctored live stuff on Starless And Bible Black) was the posthumously released USA: too brief, too non-representative, too quickly forgotten. In particular, we never got around to hear the Larksʼ Tongues incarnation of the band, with wild man Jamie Muir on percussion... oh, thatʼs right, we arenʼt going to hear it on here, either, since all the 1973 concerts included on Deceiver are post-Muir. Still, you do get to hear pretty much all the classic studio material from that epoch, interspersed with tons of improvs, a tiny bit of polite, gentlemanly stage banter, and even a rare live performance of ʽCat Foodʼ whose hysterical vocal melody suits Wetton just as fine as it suited Lake.

If I had to pick just a few exemplary rarities to promote the package for a randomly chosen poor sucker, I might have dwelled a bit on ʽDoctor Diamondʼ, not an improvisation but rather a fairly well-developed outtake from the Red sessions — perhaps its vocal melody was ultimately judged as too folk-bluesy to match the groundbreaking standards of Red, but it is quite a respectable representative of the bandʼs math-rock approach, alternating between jagged blues-rock and slow moving psychedelia with screechy hellish violin. Of the improvisational pieces, I gravitate more towards those with well-established, tight, relatively simplistic rhythms, such as ʽTight Scrummyʼ with its almost Latin percussion — Bruford keeps the tension high for about five minutes, making the entire band sound like «Santana meets Amon Düül II», before it all collapses and the rhythm disappears altogether, leaving the guitar and the violin duel each other to the death for another four minutes (spoiler: nobody wins). Most of the others blur into a homogeneous mass after a while, though my tolerance for large quantities of this mass steadily increases as I grow older and learn to perceive these soundscapes with a bit of cool-headed intellectualized detachment, rather than passionate amazement or equally passionate indignation.

In any case, it is hardly questionable that The Great Deceiver remains, first and foremost, a historical landmark in the story of King Crimson and progressive rock in general — a bold statement, in an era when prog-rock still remained one of rock criticsʼ easiest punching bags, that there was demand out there for more hidden treasures from the vaults, and that this demand was not at all limited to the likes of the Grateful Dead. One thing I cannot say about these recordings, though, is that owning them might be preferable to owning the studio records — if anything, King Crimsonʼs onstage powers only increased with age, whereas in the studio the standards set by Fripp in 1973–74 would arguably never be surpassed. Simply put, to my ears the Fripp / Wetton / Bruford (add or subtract Cross) lineup never gelled that good onstage as would the Discipline lineup — for one thing, Wetton was never that great a bass player, and for another, Brufordʼs love for complex polyrhythmics occasionally leads him to sloppiness: by the 1980s, heʼd actually tighten his act, but here itʼs as if he is still saddled way too much by staying in «Yes mode», which is a great mode for Yes, but not so great for King Crimson.

Of course, none of these criticisms are meant to be taken scientifically or even too seriously — and even if you agree with them, this slight element of sloppiness might seem preferable to some over the tightly run man-machine style of Discipline. But hoo boy, when you hear that tightly run man-machine style actually taken to its limits on stage... well, you can probably tell that The Great Deceiver ends up spending a lot less time in my player than Absent Lovers.