King Crimson, which was forced to cancel its June 2020 concert at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, has announced dates for its 2021 The Music Is Our Friend Tour, and they will include a different New Jersey venue: the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel. The pioneering progressive-rock group will perform there on Sept. 4; tickets go on sale June 11 at noon, with pre-sales starting June 9. Visit Ticketmaster.com.
The Zappa Band — featuring former Frank Zappa collaborators such as singer-guitarist Ray White and guitarist-keyboardist Mike Keneally — will open.
Other area King Crimson/Zappa Band shows will include The Mann Center in Philadelphia, Sept. 7, and Forest Hills Stadium in Forest Hills, N.Y., on Sept. 9.
Robert Fripp, King Crimson’s founder and leader, is joined in the band’s current lineup by bassist Tony Levin, singer and multi-instrumentalist Jakko Jakszyk, saxophonist and flutist Mel Collins, drummer and keyboardist Jeremy Stacey, and drummers Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harris.
Fripp wrote, in a statement: “The Crimson Beast of Terror has woken from its enforced slumbering and is venturing out to stomp flat the psyches of innocents not yet experienced in the hammering onslaught of King Crimson’s uncompromising pounding — bish! bish! bish! — before turning on a beat to jellify hearts with gut-wrenching passion and soul-squeezing epic unfoldings to remind us that we are all mere subjects in the unfolding drama of the universe’s unfathomable mysteries while simultaneously rocking out and having a great time bopping about with Tony and Bobby and Gavin and Jakko and Mel and Pat and Jezza, too.”
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