King Crimson- In the Court of the Crimson King- the late Greg Lake

It is the Plymouth Rock of progressive rock, and  more than a half century  after King Crimson  released what Bruce Eder on AllMusic.com maintains is “one of the most daring debut albums ever recorded by anybody…”,  In the Court of the  Crimson King  never fails musically to startle and amaze.

In 1969 Buzz Aldrin, one of the first two humans on the Moon, described the unearthly sight as “beautiful desolation”, even as our ears beheld the same thing musically from the debut album by this King Crimson boundary-busting London quintet. Led by guitarist/electronic keyboardist/composer Robert Fripp, multi-instrumentalist to the max/songwriter Ian McDonald, and featuring a baby-faced singing bass player  Greg Lake, King Crimson’s first album in Autumn 1969  In the Court of the Crimson King   contains the sonic max out “21st Century Schizoid Man”, the soaring melancholy of”Epitaph”, the tranquil “I Talk to the Wind”, and the prog rock Rosetta Stone title song. In these classic rock interviews, find out from dearly departed Lake, prog titans Jon Anderson of YES and Mike Rutherford of Genesis why King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King  established the benchmark by which all progressive rock would be measured since. –Redbeard  (r) Robert Fripp