Off- 21st Century Schizoid Band

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 5 Apr 2004, Ductor, Dan [NEUUS] wrote:

> Hey, has anyone on the list seen these guys?  I love old King Crimson and
> was delighted to see that 21st SB are touring the U.S.    Any info that
> can be shared is most appreciated!

        Meant to get to this sooner, but yes, I saw them when they played
Cambridge a while back, and I even wrote a review, which follows. I grant
you it's eighteen months old now, and the setlist must have changed, but
this was how it was then.

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Jon Jarrett wrote:
>
>       I wrote elsewhere:
>
>       "The 21st Century Schizoid Band. This, should you not know, is
> four ex-members of King Crimson and a new vocalist-guitarist doing old KC
> material and new solo etc. stuff. So we sort of had to go, what with them
> being in our town and everything.
>
>       "Support was one man with a six-string fretless bass, a load of
> pedals and a box which I shall term a loop generator. He came on stage,
> said, `Clap then, I'm the support act', and transpired to be called Steve
> Lawson. He had a lot of pedals, at least one of which was a pitchshifter,
> and thus managed to cover a lot of ground with his bass. What he did was
> to set up riffs and odd-noise patterns, loop them and build on them, but
> this is a rather limited art-form, and nothing he could do was interesting
> for longer than about two minutes because it became impossible to change
> anything much. He wasn't in full control of it either; he messed up the
> timing on a couple of the loops, his natural rhythm wasn't perfect and he
> was trying to work too many controls. He had to keep telling the audience
> when stuff was finished. I thought that there would be people interested
> to see how it was done who would then do similar things but not all by
> themselves. It wasn't an act in itself.
>
>       "The actual band though, whom we went to see and everything, were
> rather better. One may learn something from the instruments on stage as
> they took it; Mel Collins, ex-Lindisfarne among other things, had a
> treble, tenor and a baritone saxophone, a flute, and a synthesizer; the
> drummer, Michael Giles, had a huge drum-kit with ten cymbals on it, half
> of which turned out to be pressure pads set *loud* so that he sounded as
> if he were really belting it when in fact he was being normal; Jacko
> Jakszyk, the guitarist and vocalist, ex-Level 42 of all things but also
> Michael Giles's son-in-law, was also playing a flute in one number and
> helped Mel with the synth; the other Giles brother nearly only played the
> bass but also took a hand (literally--he pressed one key) with the second
> synth at one point; and Ian MacDonald played synthesizer, tambourines,
> flute and grand piano. They didn't have a mellotron, which was rather a
> pity but beyond that it was difficult to see what they might be
> missing. We got several twin-lead-flute passages therefore and everyone
> shifted round quite a lot outside the rhythm section. All were very good,
> *especially* the rhythm section; the bass player made everything look
> utterly effortless, doing everything the simplest way, and the drummer as
> I say was making full use of electronics to boost his kit, though the
> pressure pads didn't always help as they only seemed to have quiet and
> *loud* options and they were often louder than the rest of the kit, and at
> moments indeed the whole band. That was the only mix problem though. To
> get all criticisms done with quickly, Ian MacDonald shouldn't sing; and
> Jacko, though he was very good at imitating early Robert Fripp, wasn't
> half as good as Fripp is now, and seemed to actually want to be Satriani
> or someone more widdly than Fripp when he was actually let solo.
> Furthermore, though his pitch was perfect, unusually so, he couldn't reach
> the high notes as clearly as the (admittedly much-treated-in-the-studio)
> voice of Greg Lake does on the first album, and it was odd hearing the
> crystal-clear lines of `Epitaph' so husky, and losing the top note that
> makes it so poignant. He did very well but wasn't quite the thing. If you
> had to pick a weak link... but that would be very unfair because the band
> was ridiculously well-drilled and made no mistakes that I could spot,
> apart from nearly fluffing one of the all-change moments which you have to
> be damn good to try anyway mid-song, so no weakest link title need be
> awarded.
>
>       "The set-list, with comments, was like this:
>
> Pictures of a City (big sax!)
> Cat Food (this is a test song really, isn't it? A bad band can't do
>       it, only a good band can do it well; this proved we had a good
>       band here)
> Let There Be Light (a new number by MacDonald and Pete Seinfeld, not
>       bad but rather less ambitious in terms of rhythm and so on than
>       I might have hoped, 4/4 all through)
> Progress (a solo number of I think Mel's, social commentary of a
>       fairly usual sort--at this point I realised the problem of
>       having such a good band playing, it made it difficult to tell
>       when the material was poor because it was all given virtuoso
>       treatment anyway)
> The Court of the Crimson King (before which Jacko explained his
>       presence in the band as the result of winning 2001 Prog Idol
>       with this number... It was very good, but the lack of mellotron
>       meant it didn't swamp one as much it should do. 9/10)
> Formentara Lady (lovely building long jam here)
> Tomorrow's People (a Giles-MacDonald number, bouncy, again its
>       essential floppy-hippiness and lack of interest hidden by the
>       excellent playing--nonetheless I did not feel I needed the
>       album)
> If I Was (a solo number by Ian, again, not inspiring compared to what
>       else they were playing)
> Ladies of the Road (this was top stuff; Jacko's voice was fine for
>       this, and I'm probably going to like any song that starts in
>       9/4 and then `settles' into 7/4...)
> I Talk to the Wind (not so right for this, though he did it perfectly
>       well; he's just not Greg Lake)
> Epitaph (this would have been excellent had he made that top note,
>       but he, perhaps wisely, didn't try, and again only 9/10)
> *
> ? (I don't know what the first tune of the encore was--other setlists
>       suggest it would be `Birdman--The Reflection'? But it sounded
>       like a Rick Wright number and was easily the weakest thing they
>       played all night)
> 21st Century Schizoid Man (no complaints about this at all!)
>
>       "In sum, they weren't quite King Crimson but they were doing stuff
> KC don't do now, and they came damn close. I didn't feel the need to get
> their album because, basically, the studio recordings aren't different
> enough, which is a commendation of a sort I suppose? Worth seeing live
> though, definitely!"

        Yours,
                Jonathan

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)