Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 23:07:58 -0000 From: "D. Chinn" <dchinn at btinternet dot com> Subject: 21st Century Schizoid Band - some detailed reflections
Hello there,
For those who haven't come across it yet, my extensive review of one of the 21st Century Schizoid Band's autumn gigs in the UK is online in the Evo Music e-zine (where you'll also find a preview of "The Power To Believe", using notes taken from an advance copy). You can read the whole 21CSB review at http://www.geocities.com/evo_music/g-sch.html, and see how the band were on the night, and what they looked like, and what Steve Lawson's support slot was like. But I thought I'd also drop a few excerpts into ET to encourage a little more debate about the band and about what they're doing.
So far most of the discussion re 21CSB has been theoretical - about whether the band are Crimson or not; or whether they are in fact "more Crimson" than the ongoing King Crimson are; or whether they have any right to the name and the "energy" which it may or may not represent. Or, indeed, whether or not they're just reactionary Crim quitters coming back to exploit their past. Which are all fine as topics, but a bit academic if you're not drawing on much evidence from the "hot dates" of the live tour. I'm sure we'll get some more feedback once the band get round to touring America. But to date few people have gone into depth yet about the way the band seems to work live, what their onstage chemistry suggests and how their raison d'etre manifests itself. Here are a few of my reflections on those topics, taken from the review. All opinions are my own, subjective, and possibly erroneous! ;-)
On Ian McDonald:
"...people's eyes are mostly on Ian McDonald, once King Crimson's prime musical mover. Who doesn't blaze as much as he did in '69 - it's Collins who steals the show on saxophone for most numbers. Nevertheless, watching McDonald proves to be the most interesting spectator sport of the evening. Just as with the original Crimson, he's obviously very much the emotional fault-line in the band. The one you feel would be most likely to storm out, wrench the music off the rails, or make it fly higher. McDonald's commitment makes or breaks songs tonight - sometimes he's worryingly withdrawn, and notably it's him draining the flavour from a nervous race through Cat Food (minus its deranged Keith Tippett piano explosions, it sounds like anxious psychedelic whimsy). On the other hand, he approaches In The Court Of The Crimson King as if it were an old flame he'd just met again, and fallen blazingly back in love with. His flute part for that is fantastic - at a stroke, catching up on any ground he's lost to Collins over the course of the evening. As I hear him play, McDonald seems like a man finding his way back after being lost for years and years in the ghostly shroud of a brief but incandescent legend. It's moments like these which bring the magic back to the Schizoid Band's efforts."
On Jakko Jakszyk and his place in the band:
"...they can certainly play the music. But can they reanimate it? Thankfully, yes, they can. And those of you who place their faith in the sacred talent of old troupers may be surprised to hear that much of this is down to the dedication of new-boy Jakko. When he's not exercising his wry self-deprecation, that is. "So, Jakko, what are you doing in the sodding band?" he asks himself aloud, before kidding us that it's the result of a reality TV contest - "Yes, I'm the 2001 winner of 'Prog Idol'." Joking apart, when he's faced with the canonised shadow of old Crimson, he honours it. Not note-for-note - after all, his exemplary guitar playing leans towards the outrageously fluid legato school of Allan Holdsworth rather than to Fripp's ferocious, devious drone'n'burn. But he makes a great case for himself as one of the best members Crimson never had, singing with enough soul and passion to outdo even Greg Lake. A conscientious character, he seems a little uncomfortable with the lascivious boy's-club lyric of Ladies Of The Road, however much he and the band dive enthusiastically into its 7/4 swagger (with Collins' lustful tenor sax to the fore). But I Talk To The Wind has rarely been delivered better: delicate and wistful, it's still an enchanting butterfly of a song amongst the band's roaring and rasping."
And, finally, my take on the Crimson/not-Crimson/Fripp or no Fripp topic:
"...Apparently, the Schizoid Band aim to write new, original material as well as celebrating its members talents outside Crimson. Whether they can integrate and focus it - or match it to Crimson's old standard of quality control - remains to be seen. Which brings me - at last - to the "King Crimson-without-Fripp" question. What has the subtraction of Crimson's iconic, ultra-focussed, controlling guitarist done to this recreation of Crimson music? Most evidently, it's caused the wholesale disappearance of that underlying, intractable Crimson willpower - that stubbornness in the face of crowd-pleasing, that sense Fripp has always presented (and cultivated) of trying to channel a musical force bigger than both himself and the band. This is a prospect which initially sounds appalling to anyone who's revered King Crimson's inspiring, uneasy border-walking, their committed discipline and the sense of risk which the Schizoid Band so conspicuously lack.
The payoff, of course, is the different emotional territory which a Fripp-free band is at liberty to explore. Over the course of tonight's concert, it becomes clear the Schizoid Band are a team of oft-frustrated, outspoken romantics, now free to express themselves in a way that Fripp's passionate but neurotic compulsions would now never allow. McDonald's volatile on-off involvement with the music is part of this, as is Collins' proud smile and the untrammelled lyricism of his playing. It's in Michael Giles' twinkling eyes as he sings his way through the blissfully naive golden-age optimism of Tomorrow's People, and in Peter Giles' softly-thumbed, sleepy chording in his brief solo spot. Most of all, it's in Jakko's singing. Forthrightly, un-Englishly romantic in his solo endeavours, he tones nothing down for his role in the Schizoid Band; lending I Talk To The Wind a new level of naked melancholy and Cat Food a dose of consumer angst to steer it away from its puppet-show satire. It's this live connection with the more vulnerable spirit of Crimson music that fully justifies the Schizoid Band's existence as something more than a pension-fund filler for veteran proggies."
OK, over to the rest of you...
cheers,
Dann Chinn
http://www.collective.co.uk/misfitcity
http://www.geocities.com/evo_music