February 12, 1972 - New York, NY - The Academy of Music (Late Show)
Pictures of a City
Starts with an incomplete Pictures just near the end. Doesn’t sound particularly energetic but there’s an audible response from the crowd. Followed by some energetic band banter while intro-ing Formentera. Off the bat the recording sounds better and more balanced than the Wilmington show.
Formentera Lady
Love Fripp’s little harmonics ringing under Collins flute intro. Collins has this wonderful winding, dizzy flute accompaniment to the lyric about Spanish wheels leaning, drying in the sun. It’s wonderful to hear the little differences Fripp and Collins are exploring in the piece even at this stage in the band’s tenure. Fripp in particular sounds like he’s feeling pretty free to roam here as Boz progresses through the vocal.
There’s a bit of calm, lovely wandering as the band slowly moves into the post-vocal jam. This is giving the piece a nice smooth building groove. Two recordings in and I’m really coming to love this jam. I like when Fripp steps back to just comp on chords and give Mel the stage. Ian really starts to play off of Mel a bit here as it moves towards frenzy but then Ian backs off and things calm and eddy out a bit.
Boz moves in here with a really high-falsetto scat. The jam then kind of falters out and we’re quickly into the Sailor’s Tale intro.
Sailor’s Tale
There’s some hard overbite blow from Mel here as the intro builds to the breakbeat and Fripp’s sustain solo over the mellotron. The mellotron comes in kind of sloppy and uneven, but goodness… Ian’s pocket and hi-hat work is such a lovely thing to get lost in here.
It’s interesting that they tighten this piece up and there’s no thrashing, slashing guitar solo.
Some fun little stage banter afterwards. Fripp was apparently reprimanded after the early show by the promoter to speak up when introducing the songs.
Cirkus
Again we’ve got that demonic plodding of these early versions of Cirkus that doesn’t really do it for me. Boz sounds a bit bored, but he does have a great moment where he screams off mic in a manic way after telling the crowd about how the ringleader invited him to join the parade.
After the mirror stops turning lyric the mood changes a bit with a lovely little melancholy tenor sax solo from Mel to Robert’s strings accompaniment. It might redeem this performance for me.
There’s an interesting accident (?) after the final verse where the mellotron drops in and out, but seems to do so in a way as to punctuate the main horn theme. I’m not sure if it’s a gaffe or Robert playing around.
Ladies of the Road
Another odd intro from Robert here talking about a woman astride a horse in a farming area outside Glastonbury. Not sure what that’s all about. But again we have an ode to rude young ladies.
More fun here from Robert’s bluesy intro accompanying Boz’s first verse. And then we get that gutter sax from Mel. A bit of feedback in the first chorus which Boz barks at the mic. Boz has trouble hitting the high range in the chorus and recovers with some scatting. The piece moves to a quick end and the audience doesn’t seem to know what to make of it oddly. Fripp jams on a few chords and then there’s some delayed applause.
A performance that started out strong, but quickly goes odd.
Groon
Let’s recover by a quick launch into Groon why don’t we! The head gives way quickly to a Mel bonanza with Ian taking it easy and then evolving it into a bit of a shuffle as Robert joins in comping away.
The improv develops into a very manic state. Very Eric Dolphy stuff coming from Mel now and some Tony Williams mania from Ian. Boz and Robert just hanging onto a pulse. Mel and Ian back off and give Robert some room to do some jazz runs. Very clean sound reminiscent of some Moonchild improv phrasings snuck in here. This improv stays pretty mellow until the stage is yielded to Ian.
Ian builds by tapping on the snare with a quick run on the Tom and back to the snare, building over and again back from snare hammer to Tom run. It evolves wonderfully. He’s holding off from any cymbal work for a lovely long time. This is just lovely snare and Tom work before starting to work in a little bit of hi hat. This goes on for about three minutes before paradiddles and shuffles start to bring the VCS3 synth into play and drum sounds start whipping around the room.
21st Century Schizoid Man
This version seems a little lower tempo and somewhat more subdued initially compared to some of the other tour performances. Both Robert’s and Mel’s solos in the middle section feel really open with Ian keeping time on the hi-hat and punctuating the beat with Boz in a really minimalist way.
Mel starts to wind up the frenzy and the whole band joins him. Great re-entry led in by Robert with the bapa-bot-bapa-dat-bapa-dat riff ahead of the unison part.
Rapturous response to this.
Cadence and Cascade
First we get a bit of a country jig from Fripp and then the opening line of Cadence. That was odd. Boz sounds great here. This is just a wonderfully subdued anti-encore…. and the tape runs out at the ‘wind of the tide’ lyric. A shame.
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