King Crimson - "Starless - Live in Europe" box set confirmed

I am not a Led Zeppelin fan but even among fans there is consensus that a large part of the Zeppelin shows were sub-par so I doubt their legacy would benefit from such an extensive issue of live recordings.

 

Well, you could be right, but "sub-par" is "sub-jective" Surely he could find as many good ones spanning 11+ years that Fripp has found spanning 21 months?

 

It's up on Burning Shed 130 lbs

https://www.burningshed.com/store/k...dium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter+14+08+2014

still no show on Amazon

Sept Oct is going to be expensive with Beatles Mono Vinyl Box, KC and others

 

Unfortunately despite reading many of these posts I am still way confused. Previously I bought the Larks box set. Some great stuff & some really poor stuff. The extra studio outtakes actually quite entertaining. But the concerts like the zoom club one sound like you are listening to the show at the venue during a bathroom break. Oh but the performance is incredible, still I can't stand awful sound. (years back I bought the Brighton 1971 2 disc concert from the KC Collectors club, such awful sound I can never get through it). When they announced Road to Red I passed because it seems like I had previously purchased about half of the live material years earlier. Not quite sure if I missed out but I was sure glad to save some money to use towards other mostly Grateful Dead related releases.

So now is this box set comprised of all new unreleased multi track concert recordings that have NOT been released either on the Larks box, Red box, numerous same period Collectors Club releases or Great Deceiver Box? Please let me know

 

Frakking ordered! Can't wait for this. Road to Red was killler. All the other previous boxes have been stellar too.

 

There was a long thread recently on that subject where such groundless claims got refuted by renown music experts from around the world. There were a few dissenting voices indeed, but the crushing majority confirmed Led Zeppelin's live greatness. A live box from that band would surely sell as fast as Grateful Dead's Dave's Picks releases.

 

If I read it right, it consists of three multitrack shows, Glasgow (incomplete on Great Deceiver/complete from DGMLive), Zurich (incomplete on Great Deceiver/complete on Collectors Choice release) and Amsterdam (near-complete on The Nightwatch) plus other two track soundboards.

 

This will make a really nice birthday present for me - good way to not have to justify spending the money "on myself" again.

 

Great news - consider it bought, but c'mon DGM list the shows that will be included!

Need to plug dates into my spreadsheet

 

I assume that as he's always done, Sid Smith will write a blurb which will appear on the DGM news page soon.

 

Tempting. I was close to getting Nightwatch which I heard is terrific. Guess I'll hold off & invest in this box. Sounds like the multi tracks will be worth having as complete shows.

 

I actually passed on the Road to Red set because there was just too much material there that I already had, but this time there appears to be a lot more fresh meat, as it were. I love a lot of the European shows that I've heard from late '73 and early '74 and I'm glad that we'll at least be getting a few quad mixes here on some key shows. So how did folks feel about the DVD/BR discs on the Red set, with the master tape performances in two channel? Was it a pretty significant upgrade in sound quality over what we had previously?

 

I think the multitrack to 2-track shows on Road to Red sounded significantly better than what we had earlier. I hope that carries over.

 

You're not a Led Zeppelin fan but you are saying there live output is not good is a fallacy. The years 1969- 73 are some of there finest shows ever which I can attest too because I have heard some incredible bootlegs. Plus I saw two of there best shows ever 5/69 first American tour, and 1972 Long Beach Arena which was released as " How the West was Won."

 

I'll never understand why big bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd don't have some kind of official bootleg series or whatever covering their classic late 60s/70s heyday. It's almost like they're so protective of "the brand" that they don't want to release anything that's less than perfect, so they let great performances languish in the vaults. (At least Zeppelin gave us the BBC sessions.) Meanwhile, smaller bands like King Crimson and the Soft Machine keep serving up the goods for fans. I know the KC in particular just did a better job of documenting their performances overall, but still, LZ and PF could be doing more with live archival releases.

 

This is fantastic. I still haven't listened to all of "The road to red" or even Lark's box, but those were so great , I can't imagine any flaw with this new box.
Is it safe to assume that if you reunite the three boxes you have ALL the live recordings from that Mark of KC that have survived until today ? Or am I a little bit too enthousiastic here ?

 

I think that Fripp is making up for lost time. As I'm sure you know, he only relatively recently got ownership of all the official recordings after being swindled by the record companies and management for the majority of his career. He never benefited from the "sweetheart" treatment that the Zeps and Floyds of the world received. On top of that, he makes sure that all musicians involved get paid, so one can't really argue that he's a completely selfish dude.

 

I purchased 'Larks' from Burning Shed and chose to pay extra for insurance as it was a pricey item. I purchased 'Red' from Amazon with the confidence that they would replace the set if it went missing.

Burning Shed have listed 'Starless' at 130 GBP. Does anyone have a feel if both stores were priced in the same ball park on those earlier sets? I'd like to secure a set before it stocks out but I'm concerned that Amazon may list it significantly less than 130 GBP.

 

You'd probably be ok with Amazon but they kept me on edge for a while with Road To Red. Burning Shed was already shipping and Amazon was still pending so I switched my order to Burning Shed and chalked up the price difference to paying for peace of mind.

With this box, I just went with Burning Shed for the same reason. This is a must have for me and I don't want to take any chances of missing out.

 

I'm guessing (hoping?) that Amazon will be considerably cheaper than Burning Shed.

 

Well it would be probably fair to say King Crimson didn't rake in the kind of money Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin did in their hayday or even the present, so perhaps KC are a little more motivated to mine their past

 

I hope so. I also think that there is no need to rush. Both LTIA and RTR boxsets are still easily available everywhere more than one year after their releases.

 

Pre-ordered

Can't help wondering what next year's box will be already! Sounds like people are already getting 1973-1974'd out already, so not sure whether they'll risk another box of that line-up. And yet there's an enormous amount of shows from the missing February-October 1973 tours not accounted for, only 4 of which have made it as official downloads. I'm not sure if any of the concerts from this era were recorded either on multi-track or cassette though, so perhaps very little exists outside bootlegs.

I seem to remember last year there was talk of a 1974 bootleg box "if demand exists", so that could be a possibility, but a similar 1973 box would be awesome - and enormous!

The trouble for 1969 and 1971/1972 is that there's very little that hasn't been released on download already, so there wouldn't be the same incentive to buy them again with so little new material included. As far as I know, there's only one poor-quality tape from 1969 (Croydon) and two from 1972 (Asbury Park/San Antonio) yet to be released, unless they find the missing Wilmington tape which was used in part for "Earthbound".

So my money's on a 1981 box!

 

You know, when you reach certain level of affluence you start to live in another world, where you (have to) employ professional folks to maintain your status, revenue and assets. And those guys do their best to minimize the effort, expenses and risk you (and they ) might be subject to. Since you pay them for this job you assume they know better, so you are not inclined to argue. Here is an interesting quote from the thread on the upcoming Queen's "Live at the Rainbow" release, which pretty much sums it all:

Let's hope that the new Queen's release will quickly become a bestseller, which will surely make Jim Beach boast in the business media about his brave opening of a new channel for monetizing the frozen vintage content of his clients. And this may hopefully make his peers working for other top bands think twice, especially after being approached by angry Phil Collins or David Gilmour with a new issue of Financial Times in hand...

 

Unfortunately, there do not appear to be a lot of high quality recordings from the first part of 1973, mainly just audience recordings. It's a shame because I really enjoy what I've heard from this period (like Richard's Club in Atlanta or the Paris show, despite the poor sound quality). Though Muir had already moved on, there was still much of his mercurial spirit kicking around. They were doing a lot of longer improv pieces that had a different sort of tone and character from what they were doing in '74, looser and more freewheeling as opposed to the more muscular workouts that they were producing once the fearsome Wetton/Bruford rhythm section had achieved dominance.

Here's one that I happened to stumble upon last night from June of '73. I'd never heard of this bootleg before, but the audio quality is not too bad for an audience recording and the performance here is quite thrilling. About three and a half minutes in, they drift into an early prototype for "Starless" before eventually moving on to some "Mincer"-like spookiness. I was pretty excited to find this one and hope that more recordings from this period surface.