King Crimson

King Crimson. The Modjeska Theater. In the front. There were no seats in the front of the theater, so Cyn and I were up close. We were twenty feet from Fripp and Belew.

Being that close had advantages that far outweighed having to stand all night. One of them was seeing that there were no keyboards on stage. I saw the band before and did not know that. This time I could see who was playing what. I could see that nobody was playing keyboards and Fripp's hands were moving on the strings in sync with the synthesizer sounds. It has to be seen to be believed. And I saw Robert Fripp laugh. Something else that must be seen to be believed.

For the uninitiated, Adrian Belew is the disheveled guy in the spotlight who is having a lot of fun. Robert Fripp is the guy in the dark. Belew has two Stratocasters that are spattered with paint. Fripp has a Les Paul looking guitar that usually sounds like a guitar. Belew looks at people, and makes funny expressions and moves around. Fripp shifts position on his stool and sits sideways to the audience. In the dark.

Adrian is a versatile guitarist. He can play anything. Fripp... invents sounds. When you list some of the great guitarists from rock history - Hendrix, Van Halen, Vaughan - one of the things many of them have in common is that they slept with their guitars. They just played until they dropped. Fripp, on the other hand, got up every morning and went down to the lab and plugged in his gear. It's simply amazing what he and his Frippertronics can do. He made his Gibson sound like a piano, or like strings, or just plain old keyboard sounding.

Trey Gunn played bass. He had a Warr Guitar (five fretted and four fretless) and a ten-string. He taps, so he just runs both hands up and down the strings like he's massaging sounds out of it. Sometimes he was wearing one guitar and had the other on a stand in front of him, and he played both at the same time.

Pat Mastelotto played drums. Most excellent. His drums stood out right from the start of the show. I'm going to have to find more of his playing. (There's a record out of him playing with Tony Levin and the California Guitar Trio. Must have!)

I was very happy to hear that King Crimson was coming to Milwaukee. I wasn't sure if they would ever play here.

He sits there on his stool for two hours, not six feet from the audience, who are leaning on the edge of the stage. He just plays his guitar. He smiles sometimes. Laughs seldom.

Then, at the end, he gets up, and walks towards the back of the stage where he stands, hands together. He looks at the audience only a little. He looks floorward a lot, or closes his eyes. Maybe Adrian waves him over, but he declines, shaking his head and closing his eyes again. Then as the rest of the band leaves the stage he crosses, eyes ahead, leaving behind only that token acknowledgment of his fans.

After I wrote that, I found Robert Fripp's tour diary entry on the show.

A generous audience in a mixed standing-sitting venue. Something to my left was disturbing. Not quite violation, more off-putting. I found myself unable to go to the front of the stage and acknowledge the audience, without knowing quite why. From the back of the stage I saw why: a library of vinyl records to be signed, just to my left. This was not a bad person, but a person with an agenda that was other to mine. I was there to play music. He was there to get his records autographed.

I guess the guy had gone round to Fripp's hotel before the show asking for autographs. Fripp hates that kind of shit. Nice going, asshole. Now they'll probably never come back to Milwaukee.