How did King Crimson strive where other bands from the 60s - 70s fail?

How did King Crimson strive where other bands from the 60s - 70s fail?

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*blocks your path*

Because Fripp is a man with integrity

They changed their sound instead of doing the same old shit. 80s king crimson is best king crimson.

Artists who failed to adapt to the times...yeah.

Pretty sure 80s Yes and the stuff some of the Genesis members did in the 80s is more popular than anything King Crimson did.

Nah the masterstroke is that they changed their sound while becoming even more musically impressive, something that cannot be said of 80s Genesis or Rabin-era Yes; I say this as both a massive KC, Genesis, and Yes fan. Notice also that 80s KC still holds up very well as opposed to 90125 (which I do love) and Invisible Touch (a guilty pleasure album)

Lyl Donovan failed to adapt to the 70s, let alone the 60s.

But Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, among some other 70s prog were already far more complex int he 70s than King Crimson. King Crimson was easily the second most easiest prog band to get into after Pink Floyd because like Floyd they also had a very similar "illusion of complexity but actually pretty simple" style approach.

>How did King Crimson strive where other bands from the 60s - 70s fail?
>strive
I don't think you know what that word means

The 80s was not a good decade at all for folk/blues shitters like Bob Dylan.

80s KC just went god mode on actual complexity while being the most listenable they'd been up to that point

The Moody Blues ought to factor into the equation as well, too bad they get almost no love from anyone.

Maybe if your name is Keith Emerson and you want wrist surgery for the 5th time in a year. Otherwise what the fuck are you talking about?

I don't think you understand the meaning of the word "strive"

>changed their sound
Not that hard when you replace two members especially when one of the new ones is Adrian Belew.

Donovan cut a pretty towering figure in the hippie days (more hit singles than Bob Dylan), but he pretty much ended with the 60s. He never recovered and is now kind of seen as a joke.

He was a good writer of folk-pop and could even rock when he wanted to (cf. Superlungs My Supergirl - a song that used to be covered a lot but isn't so much these days, for understandable reasons and Barbajagal, his collaboration with the Jeff Beck Group).

The word is thrive, and because Adrian Belew.

His Sutras album - particularly if you're already bought into his work - is quite nice.

I'm a little disappointed at just how little love Donovan gets. There are elements of his sound and approach that are certainly of that time, but it's a funny thing--for other artists, that thing of being "of a time" has boosted their cred. For Donovan, it seems to only have hurt him.

Donovan and the Moody Blues have always been beaten up by critics because they were just trippin' hippies who didn't have any edge or politics.

this shit, they adapted their sound a bit but didnt sacrifice any integrity in the process. they also basically created mathrock as it sounds today. id still say that 73-74 kc is the best crimson but fripp survived the 80's in the smoothest way possible

I wonder how much of the negative attitude is due to his portrayal in "Don't Look Back"? It seems that gets brought up a lot whenever Donovan's name comes up--writing him off as "the wannabe dissed by Dylan."

I saw Donovan in 2005. Still a great performer, although I did feel a little weirded out by some remarks he made about his daughter who was co-performing with him. My Russian companion didn't have good enough English skills to know what he was saying though.

Oh for sure. This I agree with.
In terms of sheer instrumentation, Genesis has them all beat with their sheer variety that they have offered which also leads to a more going on at once feel than the other prog bands. Yes has some very creative approaches to harmonic progression that KC doesn't even get close to till Red, before that some of that was borderline blues level simple. When it comes to general technical playing, overall nobody beats out Gentle Giant.

Donovan was a better songwriter than he's generally credited for and he was quite well respected in music circles back in the day, some of his songs were widely covered. I think he got pigeonholed as a British Dylan wannabee, which was wrong, even though he was (obviously) influenced a lot by Bob Dylan, he still had very much his own sound and wasn't a simple copycat. Since as I said, everyone and their mother covered his songs back then, he can't have been too shabby a songwriter. He also influenced quite a few artists including Kate Bush.

I do agree he was too cutesy-looking and wasn't edgy enough for critics like the Rolling Stones were. The songs of his that most people know are the upbeat ones like "Mellow Yellow", but he could also write darker material like "Witch".

Like a lot of his peers (Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Moody Blues, etc), he kind of fell off a cliff with the end of the 60s--the times changed and he didn't fit into the new, darker sound of guys like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. Yet it's still very odd that he's become the butt of jokes to the extent he has.

what did he say???

Yes, Donovan was a big influence on a lot of artists--he was also one of the first guys to embrace traditional music from the British Isles instead of just copying American blues and R&B sounds verbatim. Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan were all hugely influenced by him. His cutesy image probably did harm him a bit and he also limited his drug usage pretty much to hallucinogens, he didn't try booze or heroin which of course is the basis for most darker forms of rock.

I like most all of his albums up to HMS Donovan, do agree he started to slip a bit as the 60s gave way to the 70s.

Donovan had a bunch of Top 40 crossover hits and some of them were even used in TV commercials back then. I think that hurt his reputation among critics and a lot of the core rock audience who thought he was a sellout to mainstream-ness. His light, spacey music did also sound awfully outdated by the early 70s.

>Like a lot of his peers (Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Moody Blues, etc), he kind of fell off a cliff with the end of the 60s--the times changed and he didn't fit into the new, darker sound of guys like Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath. Yet it's still very odd that he's become the butt of jokes to the extent he has.
Yeah he could have stayed relevant well into the 70s by changing his sound up a bit, maybe by sounding more like James Taylor or Cat Stevens.

Among other things, Donovan is very underrated as an acoustic guitar player--he can really get a lot of a guitar.

He got married in 1970--apparently he was tired of touring and publicity and wanted to take a break. Even though he was only 24, being a family man can have that effect. He still had some good material in the 70s and even beyond but never again recaptured his 1966-69 heyday.

I agree; for too long the narrative of rock history has been controlled by guys like Christgau and Jan Wenner who dismissed any number of important artists and made them into the butt of jokes. Thankfully in the Internet age, they can't control the narrative anymore.

^This. Back in the 70s, smug faggots like Christgau would use their smarmy little capsule reviews to exercise almost god-like powers over what artists were accepted and who weren't. If the critics didn't like you (as they didn't like Donovan, the Moody Blues, Grand Funk Railroad, etc) then they got relegated to the dust bin.

Dog bless the Internet age for breaking the power of professional rock critics.

Those who dismiss Donovan are missing out. Yes there were a couple hits that are indelibly linked to an era, but all of his 60s work and much in the 70s is very good. As mentioned, Sutras from the 90s is also a good listen. It was produced by Rick Rubin in the same fashion as the stuff he did with Johnny Cash, but IMO the results are a bit different as they are not really similar songwriters.

I wouldn't say he is unfashionable. He's a strong influence on such current bands as Belle and Sebastian, The Clientele, Decemberists, etc.

Good points about Donovan being airbrushed from history. Him, the Moody Blues, and Grand Funk could sell millions of albums, have hit singles, and pack arenas and at the same time still be ignored/dismissed by the critics. Licensing your songs for TV ads has always been slightly sellout-ish, but I believe the Doors did as well.

What about The Who? They actually licensed their songs for a US Air Force ad during the height of the Vietnam War.

The Doors only did this once; it was after Morrison died and it was only in the UK

youtube.com/watch?v=rl4zS_59RD8

:^)

I only have two best-of's. I like the songs but they are very much of their time, very hippy-dippy, not a bad thing.

Anytime I see him interviewed he seemed a bit smug. Kind of like Grace Slick, the eternal hippie.
"I am a sixties music legend and a wise mystical guru. Sit at my feet and let me expand your mind with my words of wisdom" He gives out those type of vibes.

I'd have to dispute just how innovative that Donovan actually was. To my British ears at least, he doesn't seem all that special particularly compared against contemporaries such as Davey Graham and Bert Jansch, neither of whom Americans have ever heard of. I do think the American and European POV here is different; my wife is French and thinks Donovan is rubbish and just "adult" pop for her parents' generation. Possibly because he reminds her a bit too much of Serge Gainsbourg and other adult pop artists of the 60s-70s era. Donovan's psych/folk pop maybe did sound fresher and more unique on American radio at the time than it did over here.

I think of Donovan as a likable lightweight. He could get so fey and cutesy sometimes, he made Paul McCartney look like Pantera. But I love his best songs nonetheless. There is no album of his I can sit through from start to finish without skipping songs. My fave Donovan track is "Get Thy Bearings", which (returning to the original thread topic) got heavy treatment from King Crimson in their early shows.

He had kind of fallen off the radar for a while before the punk era happened (he likes to call "Open Road" his answer to punk rock).

Yeh when I saw him in 05, he didn't disappoint as a live performer but he did sure like to brag about himself a lot which might be why the critics had it in for him.

Unfortunately I enjoy Donovan's music a lot less after reading his autobiography. At every opportunity he would tell the reader just how popular he was and how he did everything FIRST.

What did his bio say specifically?

Oh, you know. If you believe the guy, he invented finger picking, psychedelic rock, and Bob Dylan at all once. Talk about smug af.

Must be why critics didn't like him--Christgau couldn't stand anyone being smugger than himself.

And the best part of Donovan's bio...where he namedrops Oasis and claims that their outfits and look were inspired directly by him.

WAY DOOOOOWN BELOW THE OCEAN