Tony Levin Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

What Rough Beast? – King Crimson Returns to Touring

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ~ Yeats

The beast stirs from fitful sleep, opening voluminous eyes – slowly becomes upright. This beast, this Crimson beast, is awake and ready.

Master bassist Tony Levin and his Stick Fingers.

What instruments? What batterie? What music?

In this world, a fourth world, normal is abnormal, expectation is shattered, all bets are on and off, time past-present-future is both linear and spiraled.

This is no polite English tea party. Hell’s bells, boys. This is Crimson, King Crimson.

This is a band that wants to melt your face, fracture your skull, then suddenly lead you to restrained introspection, delicate chamber interplay, nuance, color and light.

This is a band where a man plays his electric bass with sticks attached to his fingers, where exotic percussion instruments are scraped, swiped and sticked by three drummers. A band whose blue-flame serpentine guitars announce, with all the vigor of St. John’s Revelations, the dawning apocalypse.

To this mix, we add woodwinds of all shape, size and sound.

But you say, “This is trickery! The deception of the thrush! All is preplanned, informed and overly considered. This is merely the wizard’s art: slight-of-hand, frippery and rehearsed spectacle!”

Nay.

Not even The Wizard Priest knows what will happen. This band exists in the moment, the precise moment – the moving razor’s edge of music. Crimson improvisations are not the solo-over-the-known-and-carefully-charted-chord-progression species, but the whole band creating a collective once-in-a-moment music. What you hear at a Crimson concert is a unique incarnation, a creation only found in that time and that place. Time is both linear and spiraled.

This is why KC fans are buying tickets and extra dates are being added. This is why shows are selling out. Because in today’s world of autotune stars, lipsyncing and prerecorded tracks, listeners want something real. Something daring – live without a net.

No other band comes close to this high-wire act. Go see them.

with KING CRIMSON Canada 2015
Nov 13   Palais Montcalm / Quebec
Nov 14   Palais Montcalm / Quebec
Nov 16   Theatre St. Denis / Montreal
Nov 17   Theatre St. Denis / Montreal
Nov 19   Queen Elizabeth Theatre / Toronto
Nov 20   Queen Elizabeth Theatre / Toronto
Nov 21   Queen Elizabeth Theatre / Toronto
Nov 24   Jack Singer Concert Hall / Calgary
Nov 26   Vogue Theatre / Vancouver
Nov 27   Vogue Theatre / Vancouver
Nov 29   Royal Theatre / Victoria

with KING CRIMSON Japan 2015
Dec 7    Bunkamura Orchard Hall / Tokyo
Dec 8    Bunkamura Orchard Hall / Tokyo
Dec 9    Bunkamura Orchard Hall / Tokyo
Dec 10   Bunkamura Orchard Hall / Tokyo
Dec 12    Festival Hall / Osaka
Dec 13    Festival Hall / Osaka
Dec 21    Century Hall / Nagoya

The Classical King Crimson

I know I’m a bit obsessed about this band. I get that.

To be perfectly honest, my tireless enthusiasm is founded on one basic idea: by comparison, every other band seems lame. When friends or family talk wildly about some country singer (yawn) or some muso drones on endlessly about a new hot band, I sigh internally. About 40% of the time, the music is engaging and I might even download it and roll it through the Eclectopian wheels. It’s clever and catchy, but it pales by any comparison. It’s not fair to do that, but music people are like that.

Most bands play what you expect- KC dispenses with expectations and operates by its own rules. Fripp calls it, “A way of doing things.” Isn’t that like saying, “I painted this little thing in the Sistene Chapel. Hope you like it.”?

To be fair, KC are their own language, their own country and it is frightfully difficult to compare them to anyone else.

That’s because every player in the group is a monster in their own right.

But, I digress.

The Elements Tour, currently North American leg, is selling out everywhere they play. Not bad for a band with a famous (or infamous) on again – off again history, one that hasn’t ever had a hit single and music that most public radio stations with serious “risk aversion” programming would avoid playing.

Tony Levin’s pic of the edits that Rachmaninoff made to a score. Mind blowing stuff.

Bassist Tony Levin has an interesting post. Levin is classically trained and the Philadelphia Orchestra librarian opened up their library to him. Utterly fascinating.

So, peace, love and understanding to you all. I leave you with this:

“In strange and uncertain times, such as those we are living in, sometimes a reasonable person might despair. But Hope is unreasonable and Love is greater even than this.

May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the Creative Impulse.”

King Crimson 2014: Joy?

"Everything you've heard about King Crimson is true. It's an absolutely terrifying place." ~Bill Bruford

King Crimson – a place where the music might resemble a tsunami, a typhoon, a hurricane and that’s just the nice bits. King Crimson – where musical ideas such as acerbic Bartokian Jimi Hendrix guitar riffs, wicked bass lines and polyrhythmic drumming are commonplace. King Crimson – where the 21st century schizoid man roams in all his fractured red nightmares.

Those are some pretty fanciful words, but KC is a force of nature when all of these disparate elements come together. It’s like witnessing something truly magical. It’s as if the players are no longer individuals, but merely pawns in the service of the “good fairy” (Robert Fripp and company’s term.) – something that enters and animates the players into music.

Most Crimsos now know that King Crimson, that eternal flame of creativity in contemporary music, is back in business. The KC 2014 lineup can be found here.

What we didn’t expect was descriptions of “joy” being involved in the rehearsal place. From the RF diary August 25, 2014:

King Crimson Principles.

1.    May King Crimson bring joy to us all. Including me.
2.    If you don’t want to play a part, that’s fine! Give it to someone else – there’s enough of us.
3.    All the music is new, whenever it was written.
4.    If you don’t know your note, hit C#.
5.    If you don’t the time, play in 5. Or 7.
6.    If you don’t know what to play, get more gear.
7.    If you still don’t know what to play, play nothing.

Here’s what bassist Tony Levin said about rejoining King Crimson:

"For me, it's about 5 days into rehearsing that my musical brain finally arrives back in Crimson land. It's kind of a way of thinking, and somewhat different ways of playing. I can try to jump into it right away, but some parts of me lag behind. Also, after a few days playing this music, 4/4 time signature seems as foreign as a language you studied back in school. 7/4 or more complex, becomes the norm. You even start to dream in it."

The working strategy or paradigm for King Crimson is unlike any other “rock” band. The fans expect the unexpected, but above, some serious chops from these mighty players. And a wild musical ride unlike any other.

There is joy in Crimson after all.