We went to see Nick play in a small club the night before going to see Roy at the Royal Festival Hall. The Borderline is a great place and Jakko Jaksyk from King Crimson joined him for a jam. That was special!
Nick’s gig was brilliant (though the lighting was low).
Henry and me before the gig!
Jakko Jaksyk
The first time I saw King Crimson was at Hyde Park Free Concert as support for the Rolling Stones way back in 1969. I’d been going to those free concerts for a while. They started as a gathering of a few hundred freaks with some great bands and grew into these mass concerts with the Stones and Blind Faith.
It was supposedly King Crimson’s debut live performance. Quite how they landed that gig was unclear. They were playing along with stalwarts such as Roy Harper, Family and Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments.
I preferred those Hyde Park gatherings at the beginning but I was very impressed with King Crimson – particularly this song. I thought it was very powerful.
I thought its poetry captured the madness of war and the crazy hypocrisy of modern life.
“21st Century Schizoid Man”
Blood rack barbed wire
Politicians’ funeral pyre
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty first century schizoid man
Death seed blind man’s greed
Poets’ starving children bleed
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty first century schizoid man