Music Is Our Friend - 2023 European Panegyric label 19-track 3LP set

“Music Is Our Friend” is an official bootleg featuring all of King Crimson’s final
performance in North America at Washington in September, 2021.

It is now being made available as a limited edition 3LP set, re-sequenced from the CD
running order to maintain the complete release, including the four pieces from the first
concert of the tour’s second leg in Albany.  Taken together, these tracks represent both a
beginning and an end of a tour that took place despite almost insurmountable issues.
Originally scheduled for 2020, postponed for a full year because of the pandemic, the tour
began in July 2021 in Florida as the latest Covid wave hit and the band moved across the
country in a tour bus bubble.
Following a two-week break due to scheduling conflicts, the band took to the road again,
with the Zappa Band appearing nightly before Crimson.
Now facing gigs that had to be moved due to extreme weather, with one venue flooded a
day before a concert, an open-air venue in New York transferred to the more familiar
Beacon Theatre, and even a band member flown to hospital via helicopter, King Crimson
faced a range of challenging conditions. Happily, the band member fully recovered and
no gigs were missed despite the array of setbacks and obstacles.
By the time King Crimson reached Washington, the band was in ferocious form with a
powerful, energetic set with some arrangements reworked and differing from previous
tours. Featuring a restored middle section of ‘Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part One’ that had
not been played since 1973, substantial keyboard arrangements, Tony Levin on upright
bass during ‘Neurotica’ giving the piece an extra swing, an emotional Starless and an
immensely powerful ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ as an encore.

Tracklisting:

1. Introductory Soundscape
2. Hell Hounds of Krim
3. Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One
4. Pictures of a City
5. The Court of the Crimson King
6. Red
7. Tony Cadenza Deals It Slitheryacious-To-The-Max
8. Neurotica
9. One More Red Nightmare
10. Indiscipline
11. Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part Two
12. Epitaph
13. Radical Action II
14. Level Five
15. Tony Cadenza Serves It Piping Hot
16. Discipline
17. Starless
18. Islands
19. 21st Century Schizoid Man