One of my favourite bands and one which has remainded consistently good by moving on and trying new things. But essentially they are a live band rather than studio based, so i thought it time to mention the wealth of recorded material. Obviously there are the two original albums Earthbound which is a flawed masterpiece, poorly recorded and badly edited but a shining example of the early style. Then of course USA which captures the final glory days of the Red period. IMO a must have album. The newly released HDCD has more tracks but the vinyl is still worth the postage.

After that I don't know, not having yet acquired the CDs but slowly but surely the concerts are coming out on DVD

So far you should check out Eyes Wide Open which has two concerts, London 2000 and Japan 2003. The London set has randomly placed improvs so the Concert never sounds the same twice. Then there is Neal & Jack & Me covering the period 1982-84 with Fripp, Bruford, Levin & Bellew. And finally Deja Vroom which unfortunately is still in the post so I've no idea except it's the six man line up from the end of the millenium and contains various tricksy camera choices and a chance to create your own band to play 21st CSM.

Of the lot I'd start with USA or Eyes Wide Open

With any luck Pete will now step in and provide more commentary.

Tom
Actively enjoying it all

Tom,

King Crimson is one of my favourite bands for the same reason that you cite: they have remained consistently good by moving on and trying new things.

Of the many lineups, my personal favourite is the Larks' Crim line-up of Cross, Fripp, Wetton, Bruford and (for a brief moment) Muir.

If you like USA, you'll love The Great Deceiver: Live 1973 - 1974, a 4-CD set that documents this "mounstrous live creature" at the height of its powers. The sound quality is excellent and shows what this band was capable of on stage. Although there appears to be some repetition, this band can get away with four versions of "Easy Money" on the same set because they never played the same song the same way two nights running.

Hard core Crimson completists will find a wealth of live recordings at the King Crimson Collectors' Club. My favourite Club release is Live at the Zoom Club, 1972, featuring Jamie Muir. Although the sound quality is at least as bad as the sound quality on "Earthbound", the sheer brilliance and audicity of the improvs makes me finally understand the daming with faint praise with which the critics greeted "Larks' Toungues in Aspic".

Incidentally, I can only half-agree with your assessment of "Earthbound". While I find it flawed, I find little of interest in it for me. I sometimes wonder if my damning review at the Elephant Talk web site was one of the things that prompted Ian Wallace to ask rehotorically, "Whant size spanner do they use to crank out this s**t?". In fairness to Ian and the rest of the "Isalnds" line-up, I think that Live at Summit Studios 1972 does much to rehabilitate the reputation of this line-up

Though I'm a Krimhead my real appreciation starts with the Discipline lineup onwards. For the 80s lineup you can do a great deal worse than Absent Lovers, a recording of the last gig they ever played. It's a two disc set and though not every single track is a reference standard version there are quite a few that are to my ears: Larks Tongues II, Waiting Man, Indiscipline, Sartori in Tangier and Sleepless, with Red and Discipline also about as good as you'll find them anywhere I've heard.

Moving on to the Double Trio lineup of the 90s, my personal favourite formation... VROOOM VROOOM is IMHO the one to go for here, showcasing a couple of gigs from their tours. The Mexico City disc is as heavy a slice of musical action as you're likely to find anywhere. Close the curtains, crank it to 11 and inform the local police and geological survey to expect seiemic movements. Awesome stuff.

And then we head on to the Noughties lineup, aka the "Double Duo". Heavy ConstruKCtion is a triple CD set from the tour supporting The ConstruKCtion of Light, and is, I'd say, very good but not great. One of the CDs is Improvs and they go to some pretty wild places. Not heard/seen Eyes Wide Open (don't have a TV...).

However, my personal fave Krim live set is the ProjeKCts box. After the Double Trio failed to record a second album (one of the KCCC discs is from the rehearsals for that aborted project, which are interesting but really only for saddoes like me) the band "fractalised" with 4 sub-groups playing improv gigs. Fripp and Gunn are in all 4, others are P1: Bruford, Levin; P2: Belew (on drums); P3: Mastelotto; P4: Mastelotto, Levin. The ProjeKCts box has 1 CD from each group culled from their various performances. P1 is good, P2 okay and 3 & 4 are awesome, with Pat Mastelotto throwing in all sorts of weird DnB influenced stuff in a mix of live and programmed playing. The P4 Deception of the Thrush is, to my ears, the reference version of the piece (later used as the basis for Power to Belive III) and is probably my Desert Island Krim Track.
Another KCCC disc is a P4 gig, and though on the whole I prefer the "West Coast Live" from the P Box the version of "Siezure" on the KCCC disc is worth the whole price (it found its way into my "bass moments" entry).
The ProjeKcts don't play any KC repertoire (aside from a joke "lounge" version of 21CSM at the end of the P2 disc) and it's all made up on the fly so is often not the most melodic stuff you'll find, but for sustained inventiveness in rock music there's little else to touch it.

Pete.

I've seen Crimson many times.

I lived in Bournemouth and as the Bournemouth Winter Gardens was the nearest venue to Fripp's hometown of Wimborne he'd bring his mum along to the any Crimson gig there. She'd sit in the posh seats and sometime during the evening under the glare of a travel spot Fripp would introduce her to the audience.