Concert: Prog-rock kings (From Croydon Guardian)

Concert: Prog-rock kings

2:03pm Wednesday 2nd October 2002

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It's always a pleasure to hear really skilled musicians and the 21st Century Schizoid Band has them in spades.

They brought their full talents to bear on the early work of prog-rock pioneers King Crimson at the Fairfield, Wednesday, September 25.

It has to be said, this is not simply a tribute band. Ian McDonald, Michael Giles, Peter Giles and Mel Collins were all in King Crimson in its earliest incarnations. The only exception was amiable front man Jakko Jakszyk from Level 42. Here he showed that Mark King isn't the only virtuoso in that group by putting on an amazing display on the intensely complex guitar work created by Robert Fripp. No mean feat by any musician's standards.

It really shows that these people have been playing for over 30 years and they looked like they were thoroughly enjoying the chance to play tracks that had not seen the live light of day in decades. Their musicianship is just incredible and their lifetimes' experience shows in their slick delivery.

That said prog-rock has its problems. It's prone to bouts of musical noodling and is notorious for disappearing up its own navel into 20 minute solos in between bizarre lyrics about elves, unicorns and jesters. Indeed, Bill Bailey has centred a decent part of his act around parodying it.

Most of the noodling on the night avoided self-indulgence - the Schizoid Band practically defined the word tight'. They played together so smoothly it boggled the mind as much as the psychedelic nature of their music which stuck pretty faithfully to the original album versions without major detours.

They kept to the material from the early albums with a few diversions into pieces from solo projects. Sometimes this was great and sometimes pleasantly soporific but the quality of playing was universal.

With support from an interesting soloist named Steve Lawson who was able to create entire ranges of instrumentation out of the one six-string bass and digital looping trickery - the aging music showed there is considerable life in it yet.

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