VIA PRESS RELEASE | The 21st Century Schizoid Band, the long running outfit featuring both distant past and very recent members of the legendary King Crimson, returns with an extravagantly packaged, and beautifully designed 2 CD and 2 LP capturing one of their finest performances ever, recorded live in Barcelona in 2003.
With the breathtaking line-up of vocalist Jakko M. Jakszyk, saxophonist Mel Collins, multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, bassist Peter Giles, and drummer Ian Wallace—key Crimson members going back to the days of In the Court of the Crimson King, and forward to the band’s very last line-up, Live in Barcelona features faithful, but nevertheless wholly individual versions of a slew of Crimson classics—some oft-heard but still welcome; others (including “Formentera Lady” and “Cirkus”) rarely played and a must-hear for Crimson aficionados everywhere.
The show opens and (almost) closes, of course, with the still astonishing “21st Century Schizoid Man”—the first, a dramatic excerpt, the second a full-length exploration. Other highlights include further In The Court of the Crimson King favorites “Epitaph,” the title track, and a truly breathtaking “I Talk to the Wind,” a grinding “Ladies of the Road,” and a “Sailor’s Tale” that eclipses even Crimson’s best-known live version, from the 1972 Earthbound album. Crimson’s veteran saxophonist Mel Collins, who plays on both, doesn’t merely roll back the years; his improv denies they’ve even passed.
Also included is the band’s latest single, a sensational version of “Cadence and Cascade,” one of two songs here that bassist Peter Giles first performed back in 1970, on Crimson’s second album, In The Wake of Poseidon.
New band compositions dovetail effortlessly with the classics, painting their own portrait of how Crimson itself might have evolved, and it all comes to an awe-inspiring conclusion with “Starless,” the so-hypnotic Red-era veteran that has inspired cover versions from as far afield as ’80s supergroup Asia (whose vocalist John Wetton sang on the original) to modern folk heroes The Unthanks.
It was also the last number played by the most recent incarnation of Crimson, in Tokyo in December 2021, a fact that itself can bring a tear to the eye of the most hard-hearted Crimson fan. The Schizoid Band’s own Jakko M Jakszyk was fronting that band, too. So though they say the King is dead (although you never know with Robert Fripp)… long live the King’s music.
