Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 11:27:44 -0400 From: Peter Key <ET04193 at elephant-talk dot com> Subject: Response to Who has King Crimson opened for?
I saw the 1973-'74 King Crimson four times, twice as a supporting act.
KC opened for Todd Rundgren (with an early version of what would become Utopia) at Irvine Auditorium on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania's in Philadelphia in the spring of 1973. The following spring, the night before Starless and Bible Back came out, it played the Spectrum in Philadelphia as the middle act in a three-band concert headlined by the Kinks.
I also saw KC headline a three-band bill in Pittsburgh in the spring of 1973 - the other two bands were Foghat (in the middle) and Spooky Tooth (first) - and headline a concert at Penn State University in summer 1974 at which the opening band was the Michael Stanley Super Session.
Although it was a rock band, that version of KC would have been better suited teaming with the era's fusion groups, such as the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Miles Davis' various bands of the period. The intricacies of its music and caliber of its players gave it much more in common with those groups than with Spooky Tooth or Michael Stanley.
Peter Key