King Crimson “The Power to Believe”
Once, when I was 18 and a freshman in college, having never learned French and knowing nothing of critical theory, I decided to sit in on a grad level Semiotics class. I did this primarily because the instructor was said to have been good friends with Will Oldham, then of Palace Brothers. That day, over the course of two hours, I understood barely a word that was spoken. The essays that were being discussed didn’t even look like they were written for earthlings, much less born from a romance language. Words were typed into the margins. There seemed to be circular references and codes to other texts in other foreign languages. And yet, the hip, clove cigarette smoking twenty-somethings and their even cooler, lanky, balding teacher were in profound agreement. Nothing that anybody said that day made even a hint of sense to me. Some of it sounded like the prank language Danny Ocean and Rusty used against Linus in the Matsui meet-up in “Ocean’s Twelve.” They kept referring to “différance,” a term that, from what I could gather, indicated that meaning was both relative and endlessly deferred. The man who apparently coined this term was named Jacques Derrida and, from the little I could understand, he was very important to everyone in the room. This term and its implication were both more than I could comprehend and, also, intensely curious to me. “What if they’re right?” I wondered.
I left that class realizing that I had not walked into a master’s seminar or even a PHD-level thesis discussion. No, I had walked into a pedagogy. And this Derrida guy may not have been the founder of this pedagogy, but he certainly sounded like its Dean. I ended up spending a good part of the next four years of my life fascinated by Semiotics. I absorbed whatever I could, which I think amounted to a fraction of a fraction of a morsel. Somehow, every semester, I was able to muster the will to keep going even though I constantly felt like I was in over my head. And, with each successive class, I increasingly began to believe that this system of thinking, by its very nature, would deliver zero pay off in the end.
In retrospect, there was a certain naivete and bravery required to take on that material as a teenager. For whatever reason, I have never been able to conjure similar grit when it came to perhaps the most obtuse and divisive form of twentieth century music -- Progressive Rock. The comparison between Semiotics and Progressive Rock is not without merit. Both eschew traditional structures in favor of something more intellectually precise. Both largely exist in the realm of the White and educated. And both dare the user to try to draw a line between the text and its significance. Unlike Semiotics, the underlying structures of Progressive Rock are far less clear. There is no Prog Rock manifesto. There have been no attempts that I am aware of to repurpose the thinking that girders Prog for other media or venues. Prog is not seriously considered at universities, outside of, perhaps, the music programs. And, even there, it is often viewed with great suspicion. However, like Semiotics, there is a haughty elitism to Prog and the notion that it requires intellectual rigor to properly engage with it. And, as Semiotics had its Jacques Derrida, Prog has its Robert Fripp.
Perhaps even more than Jacques Derrida, Robert Fripp casts the image of a scholar. He is constantly overdressed for the occasion, preferring vests and ties when such attire was viewed as anathema. He speaks with a quiet English precision and class that sounds born from English Country life. He quite literally founded a school of guitar craft, which survives to this day. He invented the “Frippertronic” recording technique and advanced tuning and playing styles in Rock music that were previously the domain of Jazz, Classical and Experimental music. Whereas Derrida spent a lifetime knowing that the searching was the meaning, Robert Fripp was driven to “find the new.” And, unlike Derrida, Fripp always accompanied his theory with dry, but lovable, humor. To see Robert Fripp promoting his self-help seminars with his sister or to watch him and his wife sing together on Instagram is to see a man who is self-aware and in on the joke. While he may look like the assistant butler or head footman from a Julian Fellows production, there is a Monty Python player right beneath the surface.
In spite of Robert Fripp’s considerable wisdom and charm, I have never been able to approach the music of King Crimson. I have enjoyed his work with Bowie and Eno and, nominally, Peter Gabriel and Darryl Hall. I have occasionally, cautiously returned to “In the Court of the Crimson King” and “Red” and left similarly hesitant. Further, over the years, I had come to love improvisation in Rock music. Television is one of my favorite bands, and they were known to stretch songs out well past ten minutes. I love Sister Ray era, Velvet Underground. I love Miles Davis’ late 60s/early 70s “Rock band.” Can’s “Tago Mago” moves me. And yet, I have still spent decades looking away from Fripp in particular, and Prog in general.
Some of this resistance is, no doubt, my own insecurity. I do not play a musical instrument. I do not read music. Therefore, I wonder, “how could I possibly appreciate the innovation of King Crimson?” Some of the resistance is my bias against the fanbase and its alpha elitism. That being said, the exact same accusations could be levied against fans (like myself) of Tom Verlaine or Lou Reed. Some of it could be the tone of the music, which is less indebted to the Blues or to Country music. And, if I am really reaching, I guess some of my aversion could be the lack of closure in Fripp’s improvisation. When most Rock bands begin an extended jam, as a listener you have the joy of surprise but the comfort of knowing that the band will return home to some familiar structure, no matter how lost they allow themselves to get. Consider the longer solos and freak outs on Television’s “Marquee Moon” or The Stones on “Sticky Fingers” or Yo La Tengo on “Electropura.” Those records can delve deeply into the unexpected but they will eventually gratify the need for order. In the worst Prog Rock, the jams get lost within themselves trying to locate a new idea within the player or instrument without regard to the listener. If I presume that King Crimson is among the very best Prog Rock bands, I presume that there is an immaculate sense of structure to the improvisation -- that there are rules girdering the exploration. I presume that Fripp detests the solipsism of bad Prog and that he disbanded King Crimson in the 1970s, in part, because he feared that the journey of the form might, as Derrida predicted, lead to nowhere. And yet, I have always feared that I will not hear or understand the underlying structure of Prog Rock, not because it does not exist, but because it exists only in the written transcription or in the minds of its makers.
Over the years, for every reason I have to like Robert Fripp, I have found more reasons to avoid King Crimson. I can blame it on Yes or E.L.P. I can blame it on the wankery and elitism of the movement. I can blame it on Spinal Tap’s pitch perfect satire. I can blame it on the dean of Rock critics, Robert Christgau, who patently dismissed the form from the very outset. I can blame it on Punk, who disproved its very premise. I can sometimes even pretend that Prog died in the 1970s, in spite of Rush and Dream Theater and, candidly, Metallica, Radiohead, Talking Heads and a dozen or so of my favorite bands. I can make tons of excuses and rationalizations. But they would all be lies. I have avoided King Crimson because their music did not immediately gratify my desire for pleasure but also because I secretly feared that I could not understand what it meant -- that it would be like musical différance.
It was this admission -- that fear and not taste that was driving my avoidance -- that required me to reconsider King Crimson. Over the previous year, I had spent weeks of my middle-age with the worst music Stephen Stills, James Taylor, Rick James and David Lee Roth ever made. Surely, I figured, I could steady myself for the Math Metal of a kindly English countryman. Robert Fripp was over seventy years old. He was kind of adorable. And he was undoubtedly cognizant of this form he had unleashed and its divisive reputation. If anything, that self-awareness seemed to have been at the root of his ongoing fits and starts with King Crimson. Every time King Crimson became too big of a target, Fripp would put the band on the shelf and search elsewhere. This ebbing and flowing led to three somewhat distinct eras and permutations of the band. There was the original, historic late 60s and early 70s run, weighed down by great expectations and the sins of lesser Prog purveyors. Then there was the early 80s version wherein Adrian Belew joined, adding a second guitarist and a whiff of arty Post-Punk to the line-up. And, finally, there was the later 90s and early 2000s variations that included the “double trio” and the “double double.” These late models both referenced earlier Crimson texts and searched for meaning in a heaviness that approached noise. In between those broad strokes, of course, there were additional refactorings -- some subtle and some dramatic. But, I was less interested in the full oeuvre than I was in search of meaning.
Nonetheless, I started at the beginning, “In the Court of the Crimson King.” What had decades earlier sounded like bloated pretense, now sounded almost quaint and familiar to me. Compared with what was the follow, their debut is exceedingly melodic and folksy, in its own grand manner. Part of this is the proximity of the music to Pink Floyd and early Genesis, the satire of Spinal Tap and the contrast to Yes and E.L.P. Whatever the case, I found more pleasure and less meaning than I expected, in part, because that album had already been poured over and fully canonized.
Quickly, but methodically, I advanced. Spending more time with “Red,” from 1974, which felt like a shift in force and also like the final statement of the band’s first act (in fact, it was). In the 1980s, with the arrival of singer and guitarist Adrian Belew, the band got less Baroque and more Expressionist in their artiness. Some of this might have to do with Fripp’s collaborations with Eno and Bowie or Belew’s work with the Talking Heads. Some of it might have simply been a search for “the new.” Regardless, I found this period to be most interesting, peaking perhaps with “Three of a Perfect Pair.” That four piece version of the band added more knobs and buttons. They sound not unlike the Talking Heads stripped of their art school hearts and injected with the brains of chemists. The effect is exponentially more complex, nearly as interesting but apparently far less hip than the RISD version.
In this middle period, I found something unexpected in King Crimson: fun. It was not the delirious joy I get from The Beatles or The Stones. It was not the human relatability I get from indie rock or the force and immediacy of Punk. But, there it was -- King Crimson sounded kind of fun. More rhythmic. More frenetic. More open. More global, for sure. For much better than worse, it seemed to me, Adrian Belew was not Greg Lake. But, within three years, almost as soon as they arrived, this version of King Crimson was again gone.
In truth, part of what I most admired about Robert Fripp was his willingness to repeatedly burn the whole thing down. He seemed a man at war with orthodoxy. When the battles were over, no matter how assured or pyrrhic the victory, he was there, ready to strike a match. Although fans who listened to all of the live shows and demos could hear iterative optimization, from the outside King Crimson sounds like a band that makes disruptive, step function changes. The steps between the 70s and 80s, to my ears, benefited greatly from Bowie, Punk, Post-Punk and World music. The steps between 1984 and 1985 traversed Crimson acolytes (Rush, Dream Theater, etc.), Heavy Metal, Prog Metal, Hair Metal, Nu Metal, Electronic, Industrial and everything in between. The final permutations of Crimson were famously heavier than previous incarnations, occasionally being likened to Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica and other bands they helped spawn. These final studio line-ups, dubbed the “Double Trio” and “Double Duo” both featured Trey Gunn on the “Warr Guitar,” an instrument that I had never heard of before last month and an instrument that I had to watch several videos on before I could even understand it’s ostensible function. In the early twenty-first century, following their tour with Tool and some reconsideration, it became almost de rigueur to reclaim King Crimson as prescient and --- dare I say it -- cool. Compared to Korn and Slipknot, they were. But I would be lying if I said that I entered this last phase of King Crimson with excitement. The image of Robert Fripp thrashing while seated in a tie made me giggle, but also squirm. The notion of Avant Metal Symphonies conjured thoughts of failed Frank Zappa experiments. It made me queasy. I was never into Industrial music. And, frankly, I detested Nu Metal. So, I approached the last three Crimson albums with some trepidation and a box of Dramamine. Just in case.
It turned out that my anxiety was somewhat founded. The sextet that made 1995s “THRAK,” a breathless and breakneck album that delighted ardent fans and the most erudite critics, managed to almost completely lose me. There are several moments on the album wherein the band slows down and employs more traditional Rock structures for moments that resemble early Floyd or even The Beatles. But, gone was the worldliness of “Three of a Perfect Pair.” This was music for musicians. It was music that was to be transcribed and marveled at on paper, hanging in a museum. Its force was somewhat impressive. But, as a regular listener, unavowed to any blood oath, it was almost impossible to access.
2000’s “The Construkction of Light” was harsher and, amazingly, more obtuse. It contained intra-textual references to previous Crimson songs and movements and a three piece set entitled “Larks' Tongues in Aspic – Part IV" that was a continuation of ideas first introduced on their albums from decades before. The band sounds heavier and more academic than ever before. As a consumer, it is not music made for enjoyment, be it casual or serious. And as a writer searching for meaning, I began to suspect that “THRAK” and, especially, “The Construkction of Light,” might require a doctorate of some sort. Once I climbed the steps of the those ivory towers, I realized that there was a “staff only” elevator to some additional ivory tower that I needed to access but could not.
All of this searching led me, of course, to “The Power to Believe,” the final studio album (to date) from King Crimson. If I was ever going to find meaning, surely it would be here, in Fripp’s closing statement. It simply had to be here. Released in 2003 with the same “Double Duo” line-up that recorded “The Construkction of Light,” the band continued their habit of working out material through EPs and live albums before polishing them for the full length. Of their three final albums, “The Power to Believe” grinds the heaviest. THRAK” sounded “heavy” in the way that June of 44, Gastr del Sol and late 90s Post-Rock sounded heavy. This album, however, was “heavy” like a misshapen skyscraper. It was guttural like Tool, searing like Korn, noisy like Nine Inch Nails and slippery like 90s EDM. The confluence of effects could be impressive, but it is also unpleasant. It almost never stops to breathe or let you in. There is nary a semblance of melody. It’s all hitchy time signatures and show of force. In 2003, this music may well have echoed the Western civilization on the brink of war. Many years later, it frequently sounds like Rage Against the Bizkit.
Most of “The Power to Believe” is instrumental and built around four references to the album’s title and a short poem written and repeatedly sung by Belew. The first half of the album puts you on notice. Track two, entitled “Level Five” and track four, entitled “Elektrik,” are discordant, jarring instrumentals wherein the array of guitars often sound like angry or desperate screams. The rhythms are so turbulent that they impact your head but not your ass. And while the grate of sound can evoke Industrial music, this is not music for the clubs. It is the sound of Elaine Benes dancing in “Seinfeld.”
In between, we get to hear Belew sing on “Eyes Wide Open.” The guitars get cleaned up while the beats remain elusive. Belew’s voice sounds almost pretty, but in a way that a complex math equation is pretty. On “The Power to Believe,” at their very best, King Crimson are an intriguing Calculus Rock band. I don’t especially like Math Rock. But, even still, I’d prefer Don Caballero and, certainly, Slint, to anything King Crimson released in 2003.
The second half of the record is spiritually the same as the first. However, there is, mercifully, more contrast and a couple of breathers. On “Facts of Life,” Belew and Fripp come out swinging, snarling at the inevitability of war. It is a furious Prog Metal song that is impressive in its own way. The guitars sound like power tools in a tornado. The storm just gets worse and worse. And, while I marvel at its force, I cannot say that I enjoyed even a minute of it.
“The Power to Believe II” (there are four parts in all) begins with a guitar tone that sounds like a kazoo playing middle eastern music, while rain drops fall on a bass drum head. This is followed by what sounds like a xylophone played on rusted pipes until, finally, something that sounds like strings arrives alongside the singer. On an album of smart ugliness, this is among the few genuinely attractive passages. Fortuitously, it is also followed by something resembling a melodic hook. Next, on "Dangerous Curves" we hear music that is insinuating rather than clobbering or snickering. The guitars follow a path while something synthesized haunts the melody. You can actually tap your toe to this song. The effect is relentless and dynamic. There is actual blood running through the veins of it.
Before the band puts their pencils down, they offer their version of a single with "Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With.” More a too-clever comment on song composition than an actual song, Belew literally annotates where he intends to add a chorus while he exposes the struggle of the musician in search of perfection. On top of a “wikiwiki” guitar record scratch effect and Nu Metal riffs, we hear a fifty year old man searching for zen in a purposely unfinished song. There is something quite brilliant in the notion. There is also something that reminds me of Garry Shandling, and the theme to his original “Garry Shandling Show.” Crimson’s version is smart but no fun. Shandling’s was silly, clever and fun.
Nearly an hour after it began, the album concludes with a brief, almost new agey meditation on the album’s title and that opening poem. After a minute of relief, as I closed my eyes and found my regular breath, Belew arrives one last time to recite the quartet. This time he employs a semi-falsetto played through a vocoder-like effect. It may be played through guitar, like Peter Frampton did. Maybe it’s a pedal. Maybe it’s twenty-second century technology inserted into his larynx. Whatever it is sounds fine, but it does interrupt my final cool down. Graciously, the album ends peacefully, as it began. Everything in between, however, is intense, and intensely disagreeable.
I listened to “The Power to Believe” six times through. And that was enough for me. It may also have been enough for Robert Fripp. There have been no new King Crimson studio albums since 2003. There have been countless live albums. There have been reissues of the entire Crimson discography, with some albums featuring dozens of alternate takes. After “The Power to Believe,” Fripp did not burn his band to the ground. He froze it in ember. And, looking back at it all, I had to wonder, “What was I searching for?” And, “What did I find?”
I focused on the end of King Crimson because I hoped that I could connect the signified back to the signifier. I knew that I could not fully understand, or even enjoy, all of the music. But I hoped that, in considering Robert Fripp’s journey and his destination, I would find meaning. I began with the unfair assumption that, in Prog, “more” is synonymous with “better.” More ability. More innovation. More complexity. More length. More change. But, on the other side of it, I no longer believe that Fripp was ever searching for more. I think he was searching for something. Maybe something new. Maybe something organizing. Maybe something present. Maybe the search itself had become his destination. Maybe there is no last word. Maybe there is no statement. Maybe there is no signified. Maybe it was all différance?
Fuck. And fuck school. I’m gonna go listen to The Ramones.