King Crimson

condition (record/cover): VG+ (2 marks on side 1 producing clicks for a few seconds) / VG (ring wear and small tag residues on front and back)

The contents are extraordinary: a document of King Crimson performing at the Plumpton Festival on 9 August 1969, two months before the release of In The Court Of The Crimson King and at the absolute peak of the original quintet's powers. Robert Fripp, Greg Lake, Ian McDonald, Michael Giles and Peter Sinfield (lights, on tour) played a set that included "The Devil's Triangle", "In The Court Of The Crimson King" and a furious early "21st Century Schizoid Man", all captured by what was probably an audience-circulated tape that found its way onto vinyl roughly a decade later.

The pressing on offer is the early-1980s unofficial bootleg edition catalogued as KC-4, plain white labels with no company indicated. Side A contains the long improvisation that became the basis for "The Devil's Triangle". Side B contains the title-track sequence with "In The Court Of The Crimson King" and the early "Schizoid Man". The sound is bootleg-quality but emotionally extraordinary: this is the moment Crimson were inventing themselves in front of an audience. The same recording would later surface in slightly modified form on the Italian Court Of The Schizoid Man bootleg and, decades later, on Fripp's own DGM Collectors' Club as part of his programme to legitimise the early live tapes.

The collector market for KC-4 reflects what it is: an unofficial pressing of a historically vital recording. Listeners interested in the original-quintet live document should know that DGM's archival programme now offers similar material through official channels. An artifact of the 1980s bootleg economy.