Okay, this is actually getting a little weird by now: I’ve been listening to King Crimson more or less nonstop since I put that mix together a couple of weekends ago. This is putting me in a bizarre, intense headspace. So many of Crimso’s songs rely on mechanistic repetition and build that listening to them almost demands repetition itself–I can’t count how many times I’ve listened to “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part II” over the past couple of days, for example–and the overall effect is similar to standing with your face a few inches away from some horrible giant industrial machine that could fly apart at any moment.
I’ve been tapping into YouTube to dig up what live versions I can find, and unfortunately a pretty tremendous Fripp/Belew/Levin/Bruford-era version of “Larks’…Part II” I’d planned on posting got disappeared due to copyright infringement in the time it took me to get home from work last night. However, this gives me an excuse to post this cover version by students from Utah’s Paul Green School of Rock. While the Belew-centric version by KC themselves pushed the song into the crystalline post-punk sound of the band in that time, these kids just go metal on its ass, bringing out the proto-Alice in Chains skronk from the original. What it must be like to be a proud parent in the audience!