Queen of Peaches

Brian often speaks fondly of the days when he used to shop at the (now unfortunately out of business) all-heavy-metal record store Metal Haven. I always ask him to tell me about how one of their sections was labeled “Brutal Shit.” The phrase absolutely tickles me. And it’s also the perfect way to describe the incredible King Crimson show that we just saw this past Wednesday night at the Chicago Theatre.

We’re fortunate to have seen this lineup once before, back in September 2014 here in Chicago at the Vic, but the intervening years (and one additional member) have been kind to them. I’m not sure there’s any band that’s their equal. The show was riveting, inspiring, mind-blowing. I wish I could find and link the tweet from 2014 that some New York music blogger wrote about seeing Crimson live on that last U.S. tour, which said something to the effect of, “imagine a group of Victorian barbers playing the most punishing music you’ve ever heard.” It’s pretty much the best summation of what the band is currently doing, condensed to less than 140 characters, and remains truer than ever.

They are SO loud, playing with a sustained, labyrinthine complexity that will then give way, at the most unexpected moments, to pastoral English sweetness. Honestly, the only proper response to it all is laughter. I laughed constantly throughout the night. You know the kind–that sort of astonished, delighted, joyous reaction to a thing you’re experiencing when it borders on the miraculous.

This iteration of the group consists of three drummers who play front and center on stage, backed up by a sax/flute player, Tony Levin on bass, one dedicated keyboard player, guitarist/primary vocalist Jakko Jakszyk, and Robert Fripp also on guitar. They’re all operating at the top of their respective games and they cohere as a unit like the highest level experimental jazz ensemble or chamber orchestra you could imagine. (I kept shrieking in Brian’s ear throughout the night, only partially joking, “what if this means I’ll never be happy listening to a band with only one drummer ever again??”)

I couldn’t wait to play my old Musical Chakras game with these guys once they really locked in during the first set. When I psychically check out what chakra a musician is operating from, there are some predictable ways they tend to show up (drummers in the lower, earthier chakras; singers and horn players in the fifth/throat chakra; etc.). But with these guys, of course there were surprises. I’m used to seeing bass players operating in the first chakra (grounding the band) or second chakra (gettin’ sexy), but Levin was firmly in his sixth chakra, operating from vision. Perhaps I should have expected it considering that he’s also an excellent photographer, but it was still a lovely discovery, revealing a new nuance to why he’s remained such an in-demand player for literally decades. And Fripp, who I’ve been straight-up obsessed with for the past few years, thanks both to his playing and to the incredible wisdom that he shares in his online diary and through his Guitar Craft courses, was in his fifth chakra. Which, sure, is something I’ve seen in many talented guitarists. But the thing that really knocked me out with him was the way I could actually sense the presence of silence in his playing. Like, his genius is honed to such a degree that he’s actually managing to play the totality of any given note on the scale, which includes both the noise you’re hearing as well as its absence. This is major, crazypants, Zen master magic. What a gift to be in the room to witness, absorb, and learn from it.