Omg............uk

[BradH]

31 years ago. yeesh.

Yeah, that's disturbing. I was a junior in high school in Colorado Springs when this came out in Winter of '78. It was love at first sight. I'm thinking, cool, a little bit more of King Crimson with Bruford & Wetton - and Holdsworth is there so that'll be killer after hearing Bruford's Feels Good To Me in heavy rotation. I'm always thinking of the combinations of musicians and the resulting sound. But this was fully the equal of Crimson albeit in a more fusion direction. Later that summer I was in Colo and my old school buds from Oklahoma saw this line up at a festival headlined by Van Hurlin. (Turns out Eddie was a big Holdsworth fan.) I was sick with jealousy. When U.K. became a 3-piece on Danger Money it didn't strike me as all that great until I saw that lineup opening for Tull and was knocked out. Then it made sense in a big way. But that first U.K. album is the last of the truly great prog albums, the last that holds up to the best of the genre. It's a standard classic for me. Every few months I'll pull it out (the disc) and play along on my trusty Carvin LB-70. Massive fun to play, just a blast.

[MasterCylinder]

I'm thinking, cool, a little bit more of King Crimson with Bruford & Wetton - and Holdsworth is there so that'll be killer after hearing Bruford's Feels Good To Me in heavy rotation. I'm always thinking of the combinations of musicians and the resulting sound. But this was fully the equal of Crimson albeit in a more fusion direction.

I may get slammed for this..........but, if I'm reading you correctly, I agree that first UK was CrimsonPlus...........the Wetton vocals..........the Bruford touch...........even the violin.........but for my money, I also prefer Holdsworth over Fripp..................in addition, not to knock Crimson, but these compositions and arrangements were extremely well thought out...........and I LOVED the fusion direction.

[Hyfi]

I may get slammed for this..........but, if I'm reading you correctly, I agree that first UK was CrimsonPlus...........the Wetton vocals..........the Bruford touch...........even the violin.........but for my money, I also prefer Holdsworth over Fripp..................in addition, not to knock Crimson, but these compositions and arrangements were extremely well thought out...........and I LOVED the fusion direction.

I'll join ya with Haldsworth over Fripp. I can remember seeing him with Jon Luc Ponty and never lost respect for his talents. It was very close to the UK release year.

[Troy]

Yeah, I saw the 3 piece UK open for Tull too. Thought they stole the show from an aging Tull band. It's also the only time I ever saw Bozzio play live. Man, what a monster. Anderson stole Jobson for Tull because of that tour.

[BradH]

I may get slammed for this..........but, if I'm reading you correctly, I agree that first UK was CrimsonPlus...........the Wetton vocals..........the Bruford touch...........even the violin.........but for my money, I also prefer Holdsworth over Fripp..................in addition, not to knock Crimson, but these compositions and arrangements were extremely well thought out...........and I LOVED the fusion direction.

Funny, I never made the violin connection until you mentioned it but that makes sense. I guess I would've called it Crimson Equal instead of Crimson Plus, although I suppose you could make a hell of an argument in U.K.'s favor. But there's a raw aggression to Red that's unique in the prog canon and, before that, Lark's Tongues was itself a turn toward a fusion direction. I've always thought of Lark's as being a little influnced by Mahavishnu Orchestra, (I did make the violin connection that time). Bruford definitely saw Crimson as an oppurtunity to play jazzier stuff compared to Yes. He also saw U.K. as a fusion band but Wetton & Jobson did not. Hell, he even thought Yes was going to be a jazz group when they started. So he was always pushing more and more in this direction. Which is odd because I agree, U.K.'s stuff was better constructed and arranged compared to Crimson, not something always associated with fusion.

On another note, I think Bruford's next album after leaving U.K., One Of A Kind, is as good as anything we've talked about. It's like a perfect fusion album - no crappy vocals from Annette Peacock this time, the return of Stewart and Berlin, and even some killer songs left over from the U.K. tour like "Sahara of Snow" and "Forever Until Sunday". Beautiful. Right up there with Clarke's Schooldays or, I would argue, Brand X's Do They Hurt? (which nobody else seems to heart as much as me).

Btw, I remember a press release in '76 talking about a trio formed by Wakeman, Wetton & Bruford. Being a bunch of progheads, we were throughly jazzed about that but it supposedly fell apart because the press exposed it or some bs reason. Bruford later said he never had any intention of playing what the other two wanted and "Beelzebub" from those sessions later turned up on his first solo record. Notice how pure fusion oriented "Beelzebub" is. Apparently, that was the embryonic form of U.K. because the idea of Wakeman was replaced by the reality of Jobson, then Bruford brought in Holdsworth fresh from Feels Good To Me. But if you read behind the lines of Bruford's story on the Wakeman thing you can already see the tension between pop and fusion that eventually split U.K. apart. Too bad, they were selling out soccer stadiums in Europe.

Anderson stole Jobson for Tull because of that tour.

He wanted Bozzio too, but Bozzio was already commited to making Missing Persons a success. The guy was f*cking unreal. I saw him five times, once with U.K., three times with Missing Persons and once with Jeff Beck. It was always funny seeing him with Missing Persons because most of the audience was there for Dale or the the videos or whatever. At some point in the show, everyone in the building became aware they were in the presence of greatness and even the band members would all stare in awe at Terry Bozzio during "U.S. Drag". It happened every time I saw them.