Concert review: BEAT: Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, and Danny Carey reimagine 1980s King Crimson | 12.11.17, The Factory

I was one-week-ago-years-old when I learned just how fundamental King Crimson is to my musical preferences. I had some prior knowledge of the band going into the BEAT Tour, but it was patched together from different points of reference. I knew the band was influential for many rock giants. I knew 1969’s The Court of the Crimson King, especially “21st Century Schizoid Man,” is prog metal canon. I got to a few songs through cover versions performed by the next generation. Les Claypool, for example, is a huge King Crimson fan, so I know his take on “Thela Hun Ginjeet” as I would any well-loved jazz standard. And I learned a few more from seeing Adrian Belew’s solo tours in recent years. But the instant the BEAT quartet took the stage with “Nuerotica,” I knew we were digging deep into the fibers of my greatest music loves.

There are several eras of King Crimson. The first began in 1969, producing some of their most famous work. The music was crunchy and trippy, the chords were big and bold, the tracks were epic. Along the way, the lineup was dramatically overhauled and the anchor, Robert Fripp, picked up 80% new members, including Bill Bruford from Yes. This era ended in 1974, and after a seven-year hiatus, the band was rebuilt once again in 1981, with the addition of Adrian Belew and Tony Levin.

The second era of King Crimson resulted in three albums in three years, with imaginative sounds and instruments. Belew brought to the mix his distinct and unusual guitar sounds, shaped through Frank Zappa’s intensive training and honed as a soloist with Lodger-era David Bowie and Remain in Light-era Talking Heads. Levin brought influences from his work with Peter Gabriel and jazz musicians such as Buddy Rich and Herbie Mann, as well as a proclivity for newly-invented instruments. Though some players had changed, the experimental, grandiose, and conceptual aspects of the King Crimson remained consistent. The overwhelming majority of selections for the BEAT tour drew from those three second-era albums, now with guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who also cut his teeth working with Zappa, in the place of Fripp and Daney Carey, renowned drummer for Tool, rather than Bruford.

The evening opened with several tracks from the tour’s namesake album, Beat. The three musicians posted at the front of the stage wore loosely-coordinated beige suits with their own individual spin. Vai cut a striking figure at stage right in a zoot suit and tie and black bolero hat. Belew wore a simple black bowler, and Levin needed no accessories for his bald crown and impressive mustache. Who knows what Carey was wearing on his platform at the back of the stage; he was buried behind a wall of elaborate percussion construction.

“Neurotica” to start set a frantic and panicked tone and laid out many of the unique features that would resurface throughout the evening—guitars that sound like alarms, lyrical rants, tense harmonies, and elaborate rhythms. It was chaotic yet meticulously controlled at the same time, an apt harbinger for the evening. Followed by “Neal and Jack and Me,” the first track on the Beat album, these two selections allowed the guitars and bass the freedom to depart, converge, and respectfully step on each others’ toes, feats that only such giants in their respective careers could pull off so casually.

As a true product of my time, I am most familiar with Danny Carey, and it blew my mind to hear him create such a synthesized sound, so different from the echoing tabla work he has become famous for. But a melodic approach links the two and allowed him to execute King Crimson compositions with fidelity and emotion. There were times when I could not for the life of me figure out who was playing what I imagined to be a bassline, and discovered upon fixated inspection that Carey was making the slightest movement behind his transparent drum kit. While the electric quality of the sound was surprising, the rhythm and tone suggested roots of his distinct percussion style with Tool.

Really, the entire set put so much of my musical knowledge into context. The wonky guitar sounds that Vai produced were a dead ringer for Larry Lalonde’s dissonant, intentionally broken-sounding style with Primus. For another puzzling moment, I saw Levin’s fingers extended as tubes, like a hand of the Babadook, but red and prowling over the strings of the Chapman stick I was also seeing played live for the first time. Turns out it was not a hallucination—it was the “funky fingers” Levin invented in the mid-’80s, which allow him to play strings as with drumsticks. The slap sound called to mind Primus’ frontman, Les Claypool, whose King Crimson covers now make so much more sense.

About that Chapman stick—what a treat! Levin is one of the musicians most often associated with the stick, which is uniquely designed to play by touch rather than strumming. This allowed him to play as one would a piano, leading to another of my many puzzled and mystified moments of the night: is he playing bass or treble guitar? Where is that sound coming from? Answer: Levin, doing both, simultaneously. When he wasn’t drumming the bass with his drumstick fingers, he wrapped his arms around the stick, elbows jutted out perpendicular, and hammered away with two hands-full of notes. Truly a sight to see.

At the opposite side of the stage, Vai tapped out runs with furious fingers. Throughout the show, he switched from lightning-fast fretwork to matrix-defying sound-bending that resonated more like a theremin than a guitar. For the most part, a hat brim shaded his eyes, leaving only a small and speedy frame poised behind a series of guitars, some of which he hand-painted for this tour. Occasionally, as he surveyed the crowd for a reaction, his wraparound sunglasses flashed with the reflection of stage lights as he turned his head just so. I confess—I knew the name “Steve Vai” before that night but had no clue the singular talent that it signified. Consider me schooled.

In the middle of the stage, Belew sawed away on his guitar, creating noises that belong to other objects and creatures. Seagulls, dolphins, robots (R2D2, specifically), violin, saw—Belew conjured a parade of the most experimental sounds, mostly with his bare hands, except for the moment he pulled out an electric drill and put that to the strings for fun. Sometimes it felt like we were underwater, other times in space, and Belew appeared to be just giddy with every minute of it. Like an endearingly dorky elementary school music teacher, Belew clapped and kept time with an innocently joyful charm, seemingly unconcerned with appearances and looking cool. He lauded his bandmates with high fives and fist bumps without an ounce of pretense. The pure glee at executing this feat of a tour, which he informed us took five years to assemble, was written all over his beaming grin. And he was pleased as punch to be able to share it with us.

The moment Belew raised his legendary, beautifully painted, customized Twang Bar King guitar, the audience broke into cheers of recognition. He informed us it had not been on tour since 1984, and we were treated to a splendidly warped and distorted rendition of “Dig Me,” followed by “Man With an Open Heart,” where Belew’s guitar accompanied his voice at chipmunk-high pitch. The first set closed with “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Pt. III,” an older selection from the pre-Belew-and-Levin era, which saw Vai noodling fiercely up and down the neck of his instrument.

After an intermission just long enough for the smokers to sneak one in, Set 2 opened with Danny Carey strolling out alone to position himself over a tenor quad drum set. After he laid the fundamental beats, Belew walked out with more drumsticks and faced Carey on another quad set. Just as it was impossible to determine Carey’s attire behind the full, elaborate drum kit, it was impossible to grasp what a towering figure Carey is until he was standing face-to-face with someone of seemingly average height, such as Belew. He is giant. The two played together, laying the foundation for “Waiting Man,” as the rest of the band gradually joined from backstage. Vai apparently had a near-complete wardrobe change during the break, now in what appeared to be black flares with brightly-colored embroidery near the hems.

While the first set primarily featured Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair selections, the second half focused on Discipline, the first album created by the Fripp, Bruford, Belew, and Levin configuration. Traces of King Crimson to be found in my contemporary loves rolled on, as “Frame by Frame” cut a path to both Marnie Stern’s bright, energetic guitar and the intense and mesmerizing melodies in Tool’s “Schism.” And the gloriously synchronized chaos of “Indiscipline” once again called to mind some of my favorite, crunchiest moments in the Primus catalog.

The staging overall was absent of much razzle dazzle, just a giant elephant head backdrop in reference to “Elephant Talk” (which must have inspired the initial musings that Les Claypool eventually transformed into the South Park theme song). Even the simpler moments of sound were beautiful. Belew’s voice rang clear and true in the pleading “Frame by Frame,” and the heartfelt delivery of “Matte Kudasai” over the bird call of his guitar reminded us how tender a lyricist he can be.

Despite the wonderful weirdness of the sounds, I was surprised to see the audience was barely tethered to their chairs, occasionally popping up as the lone dancer for a portion of a song, bouncing in their steps en route to the bar or restroom, or lingering just a little longer in the corners of the room where they could let loose without obstructing the view of the otherwise seated audience. The jams were the perfect length to give the musicians room to shine without crossing into indulgence, steadily whittling away on a groove without losing connection to the source material. Finally, at the evening’s end, Belew released us all to rise and boogie to “Thela Hun Ginjeet” for one final ecstatic celebration of this incredible accomplishment.

For once in my life, I was immensely thankful that folks were recording this show. Remarkably few people had phones out at all—another testament to just how captivating a performance was given. But I actually found myself looking hopefully for the phones, for someone to capture a decent quality video, not only to relive the experience, but also to give me some time to spend with the performances. I need that repeat viewing opportunity to focus layer-by-layer on incredible talent assembled on that stage and to fully comprehend the life they breathed into this particular era of King Crimson compositions. It was one for the record books. | Courtney Dowdall

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