You say you love Prog Metal and art rock, but how much do you know about King Crimson? Do you know that they are the band that set up the basis to art rock? Do you know that Robert Fripp, their guitarist, is hailed by a great bunch of Metal guitarists, prog or not?
To mark the occasion, the band has announced:
- 50 concerts for 2019
- Three physical releases
- 50 Collectors’ Club releases
- ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ companion and boxed set
- 50 special digital music releases, KC 50
- ‘Cosmic F*Kc: The King Crimson Documentary’ to be released later this year
- 12 special 50th-anniversary t-shirts
And then posted on their official site:
“On the evening of Monday, January 13th, 1969, King Crimson formally began rehearsals in the basement of the Fulham Palace Road Cafe.
“After hauling their equipment down the stairs into their cramped rehearsal room Greg Lake, Ian McDonald, Michael Giles, Robert Fripp plugged in their instruments, and with Peter Sinfield operating lights and sound, played and worked on material for the next hour and a half.
“By July of that year, the band was performing in Hyde Park on the same bill as The Rolling Stones to an audience of up to 500,000 people. By October, the debut album, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ was in the Top 5 of the UK album charts, shortly followed by a Top 30 position in the US album charts and a No. 1 slot – replacing [The Beatles’] ‘Abbey Road’ – in the Japanese international chart.
“By December, following a series of US concerts finishing at San Francisco’s Fillmore West, the band’s first line-up had imploded. But that was just the beginning…”
I may not be their biggest fan, but I do respect them and their history. That’s what makes us rockers or metallers different; the respect to our mutual past.
