Posts tagged Mel Collins

(Review from planetmellotron.com)

Six months before the Mark 2 lineup dissolved, the band sound like they were having a whale of a time the night Live in Denver, March 13, 1972 was recorded.

“Ladies Of The Road” has Boz Burrell introducing “Fingers Fripp, playing his blues licks”, while various members are laughing too hard to sing their backing vocal parts. The rest of the set is at least played properly, but is a case-book study as to why Fripp eventually tired of their approach.

Apart from the evergreen Schizoid Man, the two tracks containing mellotron standout with a fine The Sailors Tale and a ripping Cirkus.

It’s a great shame Fripp threw the repertoire baby out with the bathwater for his next version of the band, as that line-up would’ve more than done the song justice.

Line-up:
- Robert Fripp / guitar, mellotron
- Mel Collins / saxes, mellotron
- Boz Burrell / bass, vocals
- Ian Wallace / drums

Track List:
01. Formentera Lady – 9:27
02. The Sailor’s Tale – 6:41
03. Circus – 10:00
04. Ladies Of The Road – 6:33
05. The Letters – 6:35
06. Groon – 17:16
07. 21st Century Schizoid Band – 11:42
08. Cadence And Cascade – 4:56

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(Review from progarchives.com)

You can always rely on King Crimson to challenge your expectations, even in a 30-year old archive recording from arguably the least popular line-up of the band. If you only know this Crimson from their somewhat austere 1971 album “Islands”, prepare to have your eyes and ears belatedly opened, and better late than never.

At this point in the band’s history the signature King Crimson spirit of “energy, intensity, and eclecticism” had been all but reduced to just the eclecticism. But this live-in-the-station radio broadcast, recorded in Colorado during their final U.S. tour, offers a candid and surprisingly playful portrait of a group supposedly in disarray, and as a welcome bonus it sounds a heck of a lot better than the sub-bootleg concert tapes on the posthumous “Earthbound” album.

Forget everything you might have read about this being an unhappy quartet of mismatched talents, split by creative frictions: this set captures them in peak form and high spirits. Evidence of the informal nature of the gig can be heard in some of the goofy but affectionate banter between songs, including (in “My Hobby”) Ian Wallace doing his best Mr. Gumby impersonation, for an audience not yet acquainted with Monty Python (this from a drummer, keep in mind, who according to band biographer Sid Smith once performed for the goggle-eyed comedian Marty Feldman, while dressed as a duck).

Elsewhere the band’s enthusiasm (yes, even from the normally taciturn Fripp) must have been contagious, as more than half of their performance here was clearly unscheduled. The original four-song set opens with a tight, swinging variation of “Pictures of a City” (miles removed from the “21st Century Schizoid Man” similarity on the “Wake of Poseidon” album), and was meant to conclude with “Schizoid Man” itself, here in a more circumspect version played at a somewhat lachrymose pace, no doubt to accommodate the rookie bass guitarist.

But just as the studio host begins his closing acknowledgements and thanks, an irrepressible Ian Wallace starts a spontaneous drumbeat and the band kicks into another impromptu jam. “…Looks like we’re gonna get an encore”, drawls the DJ, and not for the last time that evening. There are at least two more false endings before the true final number: a long freeform arrangement of the Leon Thomas / Pharaoh Sanders composition “The Creator Has a Master Plan”.

The variable mix of this track suggests it might have actually been a pre-show microphone check. After 15 minutes the whole thing finally unravels (with unaccountable tape splices spoiling the continuity), but not before another surprise, when the upbeat melody suddenly breaks into a filthy blues riff, inspiring even Fripp to throw his guitar (all too briefly) into some unlikely sonic contortions.

The unexpected and wholly American blues-funk flavor of this line-up still doesn’t sit well with doctrinaire Crimheads, and was never quite to Fripp’s own taste either. The guitarist himself is often the odd man out here, but it’s fascinating to hear him beginning to move away from the jazzier sound of earlier King Crimson albums toward the harder, more aggressive style soon to reach fruition only a few short months later with the “Larks Tongues” crew.

Some tantalizing hints of that uncompromising musical future are already evident. At the end of the “Summit Going On” improv you’ll recognize what would become the opening motif to “Night Watch” and the guitarist can later be heard test-driving some of the white-lightning riffs of “Larks Tongues In Aspic, Part One”, almost daring the rest of the band to follow him.

Some of this show would later appear on the haphazard “Ladies of the Road” collection, but the entire set, warts and all, might go a long way toward rehabilitating the undervalued reputation of this Crimson. For diehard fans in particular, this album fills in the blanks of an only half-sketched and long neglected chapter in the ongoing King Crimson biography.

Line-up:
* Robert Fripp – Guitar, Mellotron
* Mel Collins – Sax, Flute, Mellotron
* Boz Burrell – Bass Guitar, Lead Vocal
* Ian Wallace – Drums, Backing Vocal

Track List:
01. Pictures of a City – 9:38
02. Cadence and Cascade – 4:46
03. Groon – 13:49
04. 21st Century Schizoid Man – 10:10
05. Improv: Summit Going On – 11:39
06. My Hobby – 1:31
07. Sailor’s Tale – 6:52
08. The Creator Has a Master Plan – 15:26

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(Review from progarchives.com, progreviews.com)

The recording quality of King Crimson’s first live album is little better than that of a bootleg with distortion aplenty, indeed, the sleeve notes actually state that the recordings were captured on a stereo cassette! To be fair, the cassette recorder was plugged into the mixer (sound board), this is not a microphone recording.

Looking through the mist, we find five tracks in total. An 11 minute rendition of “21st century schizoid man” kicks things off, the substantial lengthening of the song being due to improvisations on guitar by Robert Fripp, and sax by Mel Collins. It comes off in many ways more gloriously snaggle-toothed and mind-melting than ever.

As is clearly evident in listening to “21st Century Schizoid Man” and “Sailors Tale”; Fripp, Collins, and Wallace as a unit were none the want for instrumental earthshaking. The title track really doesn’t sound that far off from Miles Davis from the Black Beauty or Live-Evil era, the bass line at one point virtually duplicating that of his “It’s About That Time.”

The album shines an interesting flashlight on this short-lived line-up, with some of the material on here standing entirely at odds from anything any other line-up in King Crimson ever tackled. The general folklore about this line-up pursued a path devoted to more down-to-earth jamming of the blues-funk variety.

Though it has some locatable charms for the interested, the album stands very much alone in the Crimson canon.

Line-up:
- Robert Fripp / guitar
- Boz Burrell / bass, vocals
- Mel Collins / alto, baritone & tenor, saxophones, mellotron
- Ian Wallace / drums

Track List:
01. 21st Century Schizoid Man – 11:38
02. Peoria – 7:22
03. The Sailor’s Tale – 4:49
04. Earthbound – 6:14
05. Groon – 15:32

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