David Cross Band's Four-Hour King Crimson Cookout

    David Cross Band’s performance at Club Soda was one of the most alienating evenings of live music I have ever endured. It was in most ways, objectively lame, but much of it was so endearing or otherwise strange that this feeling of inadequacy was easy to forget about. I have seldom felt so out of place in my entire life. I went expecting some great music and left satisfied in the part of my brain that loves not knowing what is happening. 

    I found out about the show a week before it happened through one of the poorest Instagram advertisements I’d ever seen. It was a fuzzed-out video with the words “David Cross Band plays King Crimson’ over it. It was the kind of thing I could have made on my iPod in three minutes at age ten, and I didn’t even know who David Cross was. 

David Cross was the violinist for the legendary King Crimson between 1972 and 1974, which in my young opinion is their greatest run of records. King Crimson is a band that’s extremely hit or miss for me, but some of those songs are worth any opportunity to see played live, due to their grandiosity alone. I’d pay money to see any group of guys play “Starless”, and David Cross himself being there was just a plus. The post’s description promised King Crimson alumni playing Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973) front to back, as well as ‘most’ of Red (1974) and Starless and Bible Black (1974). The word ‘most’ frightened me, as this is prog rock, so even one song each from those other albums would add a good 30 minutes to the show minimum. I was in for a long one.

    My friend who’d agreed to come cancelled on me last minute, and after 20 minutes of calling people with invites, I gave up and just went alone. This actually added to my experience, as sitting through the four-hour show without anyone to quip at was maddening to the point of hilarity. 

    When I arrived at Club Soda, I realized I was in for something new. The floor where I’d planned to stand was full of little lounge chairs and beer tables. People were sitting around, chatting and drinking as if in their own backyards. They had successfully turned Club Soda’s energy into that of an indoor cookout. I was an outlier in the audience by having hair. The distilled culture of aging Quebecois prog-heads all washed over me in an instant, in all its tough love glory. The audience was filled with wives and sons dragged by weirdo fathers proclaiming, ‘I know you don’t like my music, but you have to see this.’ I wasn’t sure yet what being there said about me, but I wasn’t about to be the only one without a beer. 

    I got a nice seat in the upstairs section. It was the first time I’d ever poked around up there. The openers were a band called Miriodor, from Quebec City, who announced that they don’t play very often anymore and that this was a special occasion. It was soon obvious that for those in tune with Quebecois prog-rock, (a deceptively large community outside of Montreal) these guys were the real deal. I wouldn’t doubt it if you told me half of the audience was there simply to see Miriodor, who’ve had an active, however aging, cult following for over 40 years. It’s a great thing when a band achieves perfect morphological homogeny with their audience. If any player swapped with an audience member while I wasn’t looking, I’d never notice. They all had that rough-edged but quiet barbecue swagger about them. 

    Miriodor’s music was about what you’d expect from a niche band stuck in the 70s. Apocalyptic, multiphase riffing. Quirky, shifting melodies and rapid chord changes. Some long droning passages with synthesizers. One song opened with a bizarre series of samples including opera singing and a car crash. The crowd seemed to love it and that’s what’s important, this never could have been my scene. A man screamed out so loudly and inappropriately during one of their songs that I saw him being scolded by his wife in the audience. Based on their music alone, you can tell Miriodor are King Crimson worshippers, and that this self-proclaimed rare appearance of theirs is a big night for them. I can’t imagine what it’s like to finally open for your heroes at such an old age. Their teen summer flick had its credits roll in their 70s. It’s possible that makes the payoff even more worth it, and that is a beautiful thing, even if it also took them this long to get the girl. After playing their final song, a perk to a seated audience revealed itself, and the band got a standing ovation. 

    Between acts, I went for a little walk to catch my breath and mentally prepare for another three hours of music. As I walked, I immersed myself in some of the drunkest people I have ever seen. Nobody’s wives looked impressed. Back inside, the venue played both a song with the Soviet Union’s anthem as a guitar solo, and Pink Floyd’s Animals, which people sang along to. There was weight to the culture I had accidentally barged into, and the people were ready for some prog.

    The David Cross Band stepped onstage and immediately carried on the feeling of the openers. David himself was elegantly suited and wearing a fedora. A real bloke. He was slightly hunched over but looked very good for his age overall. The man is a 75-year-old rock violinist, and that is something I’m sure the world is quickly running out of. After playing an original song that I didn’t recognize, he announced the names of every member of the band. They looked very thrown together, all being of different ages and dressed for different eras of rock music. I’m sure every one of them has an interesting story as to how they ended up playing with this band, but here it just seemed like a jumble of random folks plus a former King Crimson member, whose presence added more absurdity than star power.  

    David Crossed off the center square of Montreal concert bingo by attempting to speak French and thanked us for giving them our ears before getting into the King Crimson stuff. First, they played The "Great Deceiver", the opener from Starless and Bible Black, which he announced by saying he couldn’t remember the name of. I couldn’t tell if that was meant to be a little nudge to the superfans in the audience to call the name out or a genuine admission of a mental blank. Next, they played Red’s first track, and I started to really get into it. Despite having 3 alternating vocalists, their singing was always the weakest part of the performance. Every time they’d play a purely instrumental track, I found myself appreciating it a lot more, Red was the first of these moments.

    They announced that they’d play one more non-King-Crimson song, called "Calamity". David Cross explained the song’s metaphor before even playing it, likening a relationship to a shipwreck. The song was terrible, and, along with the beer-foamed cheer the relationship joke got from the audience, really made me question what I was doing at this show. The fact that I’d frantically looked for somebody to bring along became absurd. They were losing me again.

    David Cross then announced that it was time for us to go on a journey, unambiguously calling for the beginning of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic. On record, the album starts with a hypnotic Mbira (Kalimba) symphony. When every member pulled out a tiny thumb piano and awkwardly played it into their singing microphones, I was overcome with joy. Two hours deep, I felt that I could sit through another two. 

    Everything they played off the full, central album was gold. Many of the heavy parts involved wild, distorted playing from David Cross and his tiny green electric violin, and he could really play. His playing peaked on "Exiles", the album’s third track, with its beautiful sun-touched string leads and slow melodic builds. Mick Paul, the bassist, with his often-dull singing voice did a very good job on this track as well. I was able to immerse myself in the drama of it. A lot of King Crimson’s music walks a delicate line of trying hard to sound grand, beautiful and baroque without crossing over into sounding stupid and pretentious. This line is sometimes crossed even on their albums. That tightrope is much thinner at what amounts to a glorified cover band, which makes the moments where they do pull it all off all that much more impressive. Between passages of songs, there were several moments of sprawling improvisation. These were the moments when the tightrope snapped, and what they were trying to accomplish was never possible. They simply didn’t have enough chemistry as a band, and it always brought me back to the small-town local cookout vibe of the whole thing. 

    After "Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two", the album’s chaotic final track, the band all joined hands and bowed as if on their opening night for a high school play. They didn’t bother with waiting for the audience to urge an encore, as the flyer had promised a lot more music. I was quite tired by then and decided that I would stay until they inevitably played "Starless", which is by far my favourite King Crimson song, and one that nails that mysterious, larger-than-life alien creep so effortlessly, it never bothers me how full of itself it really is. I imagined that they’d save this song for last, which they did, but I did not expect it to be up next. When the opening strings welcomed us to its desolate sound, I felt a genuine rush of excitement. Robert Fripp’s iconic guitar tone on the recording has always been one of my favourite aspects of the song, and I, unfortunately, cannot say that John Mitchell had the same majesty in his performance. His vocals sorely lacked in the same way. Luckily, these were my only complaints about their performance of "Starless", and those only affect the first section of the song. The slow, anxiety-inducing climb toward the song’s climactic breakdown was something of awe, and people cheered throughout anticipating its release. That final burst of energy could never disappoint. I closed my eyes for a short while during the apex and was taken away from the barbecue and towards my idea of seeing the real King Crimson live back in the 70s. This was, after all, the closest I’d ever get. They even managed to nail some grinding, heavy improvisations before their grand finish.

    After the band bowed again, and I headed outside, I witnessed a concertgoer in such a furious argument with his wife that he pulled his pants down and mooned her publicly. It was the final piece clicking into place to reveal the true nature of this strange subculture I’d naively peered into. My place in it all still leaves me wondering.