Right, here goes:
So I ride the Acela from Boston to NYC on Friday the 15th, get checked in to my, er, 'palatial' hotel room (Comfort Inn, Central Park West) and taxi to the Nokia Theatre Times Square....not quite.
The cabbie, a genial Polish immigrant, has no idea where 1515 Broadway is.
I mean, it's TIMES SQUARE. Kind of a famous place, no?
Most people living in New York City have a general idea of its location, right?
Incredulous, I get out of the cab and figure out its location on my own. In a downpour of Biblical proportions. I guess I need a little bit of adventure even for something as mundane as a cab ride!
But once there....wow.
State of the art facility.
Smallish - seats something like 2,500 people.
I think Crimson chose it for the acoustics, which were superb.
Anyway, I'm there for the 2nd of 4 consecutive sold-out concerts, and I can't wait. I've already raided the merchandise space for the ubiquitous tour T-Shirt, which I don't mind having seeing that it's a special, one-off 40th Anniversary celebration of the Crim. I also picked up the 40th Anniversary Tour Box, and an autographed drum head graced with the signatures of Gavin Harrison (of Porcupine Tree) and Pat Mastelotto. Pretty cool, say I.
Robert Fripp surprises one and all by emerging from the wings a full half-hour before the scheduled beginning of the concert, and he treats us to one of his signature Soundscapes. For those of you unfamiliar with these, Robert puts modern technology to work in the service of creative musicmaking: thanks to advanced signal processing, he can layer sounds upon sounds and loop these to create a sort of guitar orchestra.
Then the band comes out to a standing ovation and Gavin & Pat launch into a phenomenal drum duo - polyrhythmic pyrotechnics is the term I settled on to describe those percussive fireworks! This segues into The ConstruKction of Light (the misspelling is deliberate on Crim's part, for reasons unfathomable to me). Tony Levin weaves a hypnotic, grooving bass line on the Chapman Stick, and the rest of the band joins in mightily. What a beginning!
I could continue for another 6 posts' worth on the whole concert - the set list, the little improvisational twists the band injects into each song to help keep them fresh as ever, even for songs from as far back as Larks' Tongues In Aspic - as you can tell by now, I thoroughly enjoyed the gig. The band did two lengthy encores; added to Robert's preliminary Soundscape, the band played for 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Some phenomenal drumming by Gavin and Pat - breathtaking exchanges of rhythms and textures. Gavin has a wonderfully dry sense of humor behind the drum kit, also; combined with the stage presence of Tony Levin and Adrian Belew, there were all kinds of interesting little visual details to reward the attentive concert-goer.
This seems like enough for now....will follow up somewhere along the way with comments about Day 2 in the Big Apple.
So I ride the Acela from Boston to NYC on Friday the 15th, get checked in to my, er, 'palatial' hotel room (Comfort Inn, Central Park West) and taxi to the Nokia Theatre Times Square....not quite.
The cabbie, a genial Polish immigrant, has no idea where 1515 Broadway is.
I mean, it's TIMES SQUARE. Kind of a famous place, no?
Most people living in New York City have a general idea of its location, right?
Incredulous, I get out of the cab and figure out its location on my own. In a downpour of Biblical proportions. I guess I need a little bit of adventure even for something as mundane as a cab ride!
But once there....wow.
State of the art facility.
Smallish - seats something like 2,500 people.
I think Crimson chose it for the acoustics, which were superb.
Anyway, I'm there for the 2nd of 4 consecutive sold-out concerts, and I can't wait. I've already raided the merchandise space for the ubiquitous tour T-Shirt, which I don't mind having seeing that it's a special, one-off 40th Anniversary celebration of the Crim. I also picked up the 40th Anniversary Tour Box, and an autographed drum head graced with the signatures of Gavin Harrison (of Porcupine Tree) and Pat Mastelotto. Pretty cool, say I.
Robert Fripp surprises one and all by emerging from the wings a full half-hour before the scheduled beginning of the concert, and he treats us to one of his signature Soundscapes. For those of you unfamiliar with these, Robert puts modern technology to work in the service of creative musicmaking: thanks to advanced signal processing, he can layer sounds upon sounds and loop these to create a sort of guitar orchestra.
Then the band comes out to a standing ovation and Gavin & Pat launch into a phenomenal drum duo - polyrhythmic pyrotechnics is the term I settled on to describe those percussive fireworks! This segues into The ConstruKction of Light (the misspelling is deliberate on Crim's part, for reasons unfathomable to me). Tony Levin weaves a hypnotic, grooving bass line on the Chapman Stick, and the rest of the band joins in mightily. What a beginning!
I could continue for another 6 posts' worth on the whole concert - the set list, the little improvisational twists the band injects into each song to help keep them fresh as ever, even for songs from as far back as Larks' Tongues In Aspic - as you can tell by now, I thoroughly enjoyed the gig. The band did two lengthy encores; added to Robert's preliminary Soundscape, the band played for 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Some phenomenal drumming by Gavin and Pat - breathtaking exchanges of rhythms and textures. Gavin has a wonderfully dry sense of humor behind the drum kit, also; combined with the stage presence of Tony Levin and Adrian Belew, there were all kinds of interesting little visual details to reward the attentive concert-goer.
This seems like enough for now....will follow up somewhere along the way with comments about Day 2 in the Big Apple.
