King Crimson - 1974 Penn State University CD

To coincide with the releases of Starless & Bible Black in March 1974, King Crimson set out on a run of shows that many fans consider to be that line-up’s peak, with the late music critic John Kelman (All About Jazz) describing them as being at their “heaviest and most guitar-centric version of Crimson to date” where “even 24 hours represented a significant difference in how this group approached form-based material”.

In the final week of June, as the band neared its conclusion as a live act, four of these concerts – including the Asbury Park show from which much of the original 1975 release USA was derived – were recorded to multi-track tape but, with the exception of that release, lay unreleased until the 1992 assemblage/mix and compilation of The Great Deceiver box set by Robert Fripp & David Singleton, which was centred around those performances. In the notes to that set, Robert Fripp described the band’s 1974 tour as a period of “balanced disarray” characterised by “chaotic and intense” performances and “powerful, almost brutal improvisations”.

With the rapid growth of CD in the 1980s came an equally rapid growth in bootlegging and by 1992 there were over 120 different King Crimson bootlegs – many focusing on poor quality recordings of the 1973/74 touring band whose reputation among fans and influence on a generation of musicians continued to grow.

The first pressing run of The Great Deceiver sold out within weeks and was re-pressed by DGM in the same format before being split into two double CD sets in the early 2000s. The release also did much to re-establish King Crimson’s critical reputation, especially in the UK.

Of the four multi-tracked concerts, Penn State was a last-minute addition to the schedule and required gruelling additional journeys there and back, book-ended by the geographically easier Asbury Park, New Jersey on the 28th and Providence, Rhode Island on the 30th, leaving audiences then and since grateful for the band’s willingness to use a ‘rest day’ for an unplanned performance.

Despite the travel complications, the Penn State gig featured two of the best improvs from this tour – Is There Life Out There? and It Is For You But Not For Us, which sounded, in many respects, no less fully composed than the recently released Fracture or the yet to be recorded Starless. For most attendees, the majority of the material would have been heard for the first time, not an uncommon feature of King Crimson gigs in that period.

Recently released on 200-gram double vinyl exclusively via Record Store Day in April 2026, 1974 Penn State University is now being released on CD from 19th June 2026.

• Pre-Order
• Live King Crimson multi-track recording from June 29th, 1974 at Penn State University
• Available on CD following the Record Store Day double vinyl release
• Sleeve notes from King Crimson biographer Sid Smith

Track Listing:

*From Central Park, July 1st, 1974