KING CRIMSON — Live In Hyde Park, 1969 (review)

KING CRIMSON — Live In Hyde Park, 1969 album cover Promos, fans club and other releases (no bootlegs) · 2002 · Proto-Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
The Rolling Stones were playing Hyde Park in July 1969 and wanted to get a good set of support bands together and make a proper mini-festival out of it; word of mouth had reached them that this King Crimson lot who hadn't even put out an album yet were pretty good, and so Robert Fripp, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald, and Michael Giles stepped onto the stage and into the limelight - and that momentous event in the band's history is captured here.

The sound quality is, on an objective basis, only fair - but for a tape of a live band on a makeshift stage in an outdoor festival from 1969, it's pretty good, and provides more or less the earliest glimpse we have of their primal stages. Though much material will be familiar from the debut album (and the Mars section of In the Wake of Poseidon rounds out the show), other material here shows a somewhat more overtly psychedelic side to the band which was already fading away; that said, the concluding blast of Mars and the opening thunder of 21st Century Schizoid Man reveal that a band of rare power was already out here.

This was recently reissued on the Complete 1969 Recordings boxed set with about as much audio tidying-up as can viably be expected; if sound quality is a factor and you have deep pockets, and you are extremely interested in this period of the band, I'd recommend that set. The lone CD, if you can get it at a good price, may be more the speed for folk who don't need multiple live releases from the 1969 lineup of the band, but do want to have a listen to how they sounded before In the Court of the Crimson King came out and are interested in this specific performance due to the Stones connection.
Share this review
more

Review Comments

Post a public comment below | Send private message to the reviewer
Please login to post a shout
No shouts posted yet. Be the first member to do so above!

Review Index

Member Zone

Username:
Password:
Stay signed in

Metal Subgenres

Artists Alpha-index

MMA TOP 5 Metal ALBUMS

Rating by members, ranked by custom algorithm
Albums with 30 ratings and more
Master of Puppets Thrash Metal
METALLICA
Buy this album from our partners
Paranoid Heavy Metal
BLACK SABBATH
Buy this album from our partners
Moving Pictures Hard Rock
RUSH
Buy this album from our partners
Powerslave NWoBHM
IRON MAIDEN
Buy this album from our partners
Rising Heavy Metal
RAINBOW
Buy this album from our partners

New Metal Artists

New Metal Releases

Tarantula Heart Sludge Metal
MELVINS
Buy this album from MMA partners
God Damned You To Hell Traditional Doom Metal
FRIENDS OF HELL
Buy this album from MMA partners
The Absence Melodic Death Metal
THE ABSENCE
Buy this album from MMA partners
Unextinct Technical Death Metal
HIDEOUS DIVINITY
Buy this album from MMA partners
Powerlords Power Metal
ELETTRA STORM
Buy this album from MMA partners
More new releases

New Metal Online Videos

Fallen Ashes - Wage War (Official Lyric Video)
FALLEN ASHES
Bosh66· 7 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Unreality (Single) 2024
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 7 days ago
EXISTENTIAL DEAD - Cold Hands
EXISTENTIAL DEAD
Bosh66· 7 days ago
IRON MONKEY - Misanthropizer (Official Music Video)
IRON MONKEY
Bosh66· 9 days ago
??? (Losing ART) - "????" (Official Music Video) [HD]
漂浮者樂團
Bosh66· 10 days ago
More videos

New MMA Metal Forum Topics

More in the forums

New Site interactions

More...

Latest Metal News

members-submitted

More in the forums

Social Media

Follow us
Follow us on Twitter Become a Facebook fan RSS Feed