About This Track
The song makes reference to the Vietnam War as exemplified in the lyric “innocents raped with napalm fire” and “politicians’ funeral pyre.” Before a live performance of the song on 14 December 1969 (as shown in the live album Epitaph), Fripp remarked that the song was dedicated to “an American political personality whom we all know and love dearly. His name is Spiro Agnew.”
Musically, the song is notable for its heavily distorted vocals sung by Greg Lake, a driving mechanical rhythm and piercingly loud saxophone and guitar, along with its instrumental middle section, called “Mirrors”. Most of the song is in either 4/4 or 6/8 time, save for the percussive section in “Mirrors” which alternates between 1/4, 2/4 and 5/4. The very end of the song is in free time.
King Crimson continued to perform it in their live act after Greg Lake left King Crimson in 1970 to form Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It appeared on four live albums from different versions of the band, first sung by Greg Lake on Epitaph, then by Boz Burrell on Earthbound (1972), by John Wetton, on USA (1974), and by Adrian Belew on Vrooom Vrooom (2001, recorded in 1996).
The song has recently been covered by Ozzy Osbourne on his cover album Under Cover. Flower Travellin’ Band, Entombed, Voivod, Unrest, Noir Désir, Afterhours, Rorschach and April Wine have also covered this song, as have Forbidden on their album Distortion. Cripple Bastards also covered this song on their ‘Your Lies In Check’ album
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Albums featuring this track
Shouts
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GrandMaister Oh mai god duuuuuuud inchfolk gave to mah biutiful dark twizted fantaci a 10/10 it must be the most biutiful fantaci eber if dey sai so. Hurr durr and so on.
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ArcadeFirez Lol Who discovers Kanye West from pitchfork? He's extremely famous in the mainstream. Hurr
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GrandMaister
Why is this shoutbox getting full of hipsters who just discovered rap music by listening to Kanye West? Also, I'm sure they discovered Kanye West because of Pitchfork. Derp.
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ChunkyTomster ITT: Butthurt King Crimson fans
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pg666donegan Both this and Kanye West's Power are great songs, from outstanding albums. [3] But Kanye West is just a good musician with an excellent album, the other ones are from Good/Ok to average at best. King Crimson are legendary. But if he helped other people to find out about the almighty King Crimson, I think that´s a good thing.
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ArcadeFirez
Both this and Kanye West's Power are great songs, from outstanding albums. [2] Power>21st Century Schizoid Man Elitist.
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nima1024 How you dare to compare King Crimson with "Kayne West"?
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snake289 Kanye can't rap for shit.
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pablo323 "One of the "heaviest" tracks pre heavy metal" I think there were many others (LZ, Jimi, The Doors, The Who, and many other obscure bands)
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Grzesiu_ "blablabla Kanye West's Power are great songs" FWwwwAAHAHAHAHaahhahahahaaaAHAAHAHAHAhAahahahaaaaaaahahahahahahaa. Kanye West fucking sucks. Shame on you losers claiming he brought you here btw.
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pablo323
hola
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arenescu Both this and Kanye West's Power are great songs, from outstanding albums.
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CypheroN What is the problem with a homage, a sample of King Crimson? This only proves that Kanye is one of the biggest genuises in rap music today. I love both In the Court of the Crimson King LP and Kanye's latest LP. Great music.
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thomas_hobbes You hipsters should be shot. Get over it.
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Zodiark111 If one more person mentions Kanye Fucking West here... I'm going to... Once again ask you to please not mention him here because I was enjoying this until he killed it.
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Gurdaur Clueless to know which Kanye track is sampling this song.
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inkalot Just got this album. Had no idea Kanye sampled it. For shame!
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JeffersonBV Everything here is pretty much perfect.
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KillMov3s 2nd heaviest song from 60's? the 1st is the trashman's Surfing Bird
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thesubject- "Nobody should give a f*** about Kanye's POWER. It's horrible, really. Shame on them who found out about this song from that.. well, that's it let's forget that now. " -- Hey What other mainstream Hip-Hop artist would sample King Crimson?
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