Classic Album Reviews, Pt. 7
Cirkus Chameleons
Reviewing King Crimson’s Lizard
Their second LP of 1970, third overall, saw King Crimson basically defining “Prog Rock,” in the sense of combining Rock, Jazz, and Classical music into one strange package. Likely not so strange-sounding today, though when I played the record last night for my wife while also cooking some tuna accompanied pasta from a recipe I got from Kim Duke, my wife said,
“This calls for some red wine.”
She was definitely referring to the music, as side two drifted into some free form or even acid jazz riffs. I half-expected her to ask me to change the music, because the wilder forms of jazz don’t hit her just right. She likes vintage BeBop Miles and Bossa Nova Stan. So I took this as a victory of sorts since she kept drinking and we kept talking and King Crimson kept making memswoon.
Which is more, apparently, than founder/keyboardist Robert Fripp can say about Lizard, a record he purportedly hates, though when it was remastered, he claimed to finally be able to hear the music within the music (or so says a story I read on Wikipedia). Actually, his word for it was “unlistenable,” belying what my wife and I did with it last night, of course.
