King Crimson At the Park West

Set List:

Drum Intro.
The Construction of Light
Frame By Frame
Red
Neurotica
Three of a Perfect Pair
VROOOM
Coda: Marine 475
One Time
B'Boom
Dinosaur
Level Five
Larks Tongues in Aspic

Drum intro.
Thelma Hun Ginjeet
Sleepless
Indiscipline
Elephant Talk

King Crimson thoroughly rocked the Park West Theatre. Every moment was a lesson in R-O-C-K---how it should be played with consummate precision, cerebral ingenuity, and abstruse time signatures. The set started off with a thunderous drum onslaught that slithered well into the inordinately complex, "The Construction of Light". Then one of the standout tracks on Discipline made an appearance (Frame By Frame). This song featured ultra-fast picking on behalf of Fripp, jarring chords on behalf of Belew, post-funk basslines dished out by Levin, and a welter of criss-crossing drum patterns supplied by Harrison and Mastellato. "Red," "Neurotica," and "Three of a Perfect Pair" followed; each song confirming to the audience that True Artists (ie: King Crimson) repudiate the well-trodden streams and paths of Standardized Rock (Ie: top forty swill). By the time "One Time" made an appearance, Fripp was catapulting the listeners into a sonic empyrean where only pure tones and pure hearts exist. The incomparable "Larks Tongues In Aspic" closed off the set.

The encores were fabulous as well. There was another "drum-scape," a thumping and pulsating version of "Thelma Hun Ginjeet," an updated version of "Sleepless," a captivating and somewhat raunchy version of "Indiscipline," and a fluidic and mesmerizing version of "Elephant Talk". All and all, this show unequivocally made the trip to Chicago worth while. King Crimson demonstrated that they're the alchemical troubadors of contemporary music. Their forward-thinking mentality and aural-epistemologies separate them from a pack that can't even track them down anymore. Long live the Crim!