The Road To Red Q & A
What is it?
It's a multi CD/DVD-A/Blu-Ray set drawn from King Crimson's final US/Canadian tours from April - July 1974 & the studio recordings at Olympic studios in London in July 1974 presented in a 12" box similar to last year's Larks' Tongues in Aspic set.
I was at one of those shows. I still treasure the ticket stub/handbill/poster I grabbed from outside the venue after the show.
Lucky person. Please feel free to email DGM a decent scan of any/all of the above. If it's something we don't have in the archive & we use it, you'll get your name included in the 'thank you' section in the booklet, so long as you tell us your name.
When will it be released?
We're aiming for October.
What's in it?
The exact contents are still being finalised but it's looking like about 20CDs, 1 DVD-A & 2 Blu-Rays.
That's a lot. But what Music - not what number of discs?
Oh, yes, well on CD:
One concert from audio restored bootleg - Central Park - July 1st 1974 - previously only available as a KC mail order Collectors' Club release.
A number of concerts drawn from the band's own stereo soundboard cassettes.
Four of these are unreleased in any format: June 5th & 8th from Texas, June 16th from Colorado, June 23rd from Michigan.
A further group of concerts are issued on CD for the first time - having been available from DGMLive as downloads only.
The complete concerts from this tour previously issued on CD only in edited form on The Great Deceiver and/or as downloads from DGM live are also included:
Pittsburgh, Toronto, Penn. State University & Providence, as is the Chris Murphy mix of the Asbury Park concert - These CDs were all mixed from multitracks & appear as they did on the CDs as released.
Finally, on CD, there is also a new stereo mix of the Red album by Robert Fripp & Steven Wilson.
Some fans already own Great Deceiver and/or Asbury Park
We allow for this fact when we're setting the price of the set. Many other boxed sets in the market offer far less music for a similar or higher equivalent price.
Is that everything you have at DGM?
From this period, no, there are some bootlegs from the tour - but it would have made the box too expensive to include them. We could issue them separately at a later date if there's demand. The final concert in the box (from bootleg) is included as it's a great performance & the last of its kind. The DGM archive covers all eras of the band that may form the basis of future releases, but it made most sense to focus this set on the April/July 1974 tours
OK, sticking with this one for the moment, what about the DVD-A & the two Blu-Ray discs? What footage is there?
No footage (unless someone decides to send us the footage they shot of [insert gig name here] & forgot about for the last 39 years), this is an audio only set.
The DVD-A will feature the new stereo mix of Red & the stereo mixes of USA in high-resolution stereo.
The two Blu-Rays will feature the stereo mixes from the DVD-A above &
the (previously released) 5.1 mixes of Red.
You need two Blu-Rays for that?
I hadn't quite finished. The Blu-Rays also feature those complete concerts, Ontario, Penn. State University et al, that were professionally recorded & mixed from multi track recordings, newly transferred from the original Dolby SR half inch stereo master tapes in high resolution stereo.
Wow, what does that sound like?
The boxed set allows a listener to take a 'virtual tour' with King Crimson in 1974. For most of the concerts - drawn from soundboard cassettes - the sound is broadly similar to the perspective of the guys behind the desk on any given day, perfectly reasonable & better than many live recordings from the period.
The stereo CDs from the shows that were multi-tracked sound even better, as anyone familiar with The Great Deceiver knows.
The new transfers on the Blu-Rays are in a different league when it comes to audio quality.
Effectively, the listener is placed front & centre a few rows from the virtual stage while King Crimson play some of the best concerts of their career on a final tour schedule immediately prior to the recording of the classic Red album.
This is a key era for the band & one of the most requested from fans of the band when it comes to archive releases.
When can I order it?
Soon.
