BEAT!!! Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Via, and Danny Carey Play the Music of King Crimson.

King Crimson fans rejoice! Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai, and Danny Carey (of the band Tool) are on the road playing songs from King Crimson's 1980s releases. We're talking songs from the records Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. This incredible period in King Crimson's career marked a rebirth. Fresh after recording some brilliant guitar on Talking Heads' Remain In Light, Belew joined forces Levin, drummer Bill Bruford, and guitarist and founding Crimson member, Robert Fripp. Following quite a long hiatus from their previous 1974 release, Red, King Crimson were back with a new sense of purpose and potency. Discipline, released in 1981, was every bit as adventurous and vital as the band's late 60s and early 70s work.

Adrian Belew's pedalboards on the BEAT Tour

The new lineup of Belew, Levin, Vai, and Carey call themselves BEAT, named after the second record in their 80s trilogy. Anybody who calls themself a guitar or bass enthusiast... aficionado... addict, needs to attend this show. The thought of Adrian Belew and Steve Vai sharing the same stage for an entire evening is the "stuff that dreams are made of." 

All of us here at Source Audio were thrilled to learn that Adrian Belew has added our Nemesis Delay ADT and Artifakt Lo-Fi Elements to his touring rig. Our friends over at Premier Guitar just posted a couple of excellent videos with Adrian, a comprehensive Rig Rundown as well as an thoroughly engaging interview. â€‹

We need to give a shout-out to fine people at Eastside Music Supply. Eastside is THE place to go if you are looking for effects pedals in Nashville, TN. Nobody else comes close when it comes to carrying the widest and best quality selection of pedals in Music City USA. They have been an excellent dealer of Source Audio pedals for a number of years now and we sincerely appreciate what they do. They also helped Adrian Belew put together his rig for the BEAT tour.

The rig is a behemoth, combining much of the gear that Adrian used back in the 80s while recording and touring with King Crimson. 80s era gear includes his one-of-a-kind Fender Mustang (a.k.a. the "Twang Bar King")  equipped with a Kahler Tremolo, custom paint job, and a hexaphonic pickup that runs, via a 21 pin cable, to his Roland GR-300 Polyphonic Guitar Synthesizer. The vintage gear works seamlessly, side-by-side with contemporary equipment like the Eventide H9 and the Source Audio pedals. Adrian talked about his Source Audio pedals: "I'm really happy with the new Source Audio stuff because it just did what I needed. Especially the Nemesis, it's so easy to dial up the delay you want - boom, there it is!" Take a look at Eastside Music's Instagram post for some photos of the gear (that's our man Blair of Eastside Music helping out with some of the technical details). Make sure you check out slide #5 in Eastside's post - it's a graphic map of Adrian's full signal path, which is a bit head-spinning but completely awesome!

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The BEAT Tour marches on through mid-December 2024. If tickets are still available, you must attend - this line-up of musicians is not the kind of thing that happens very often. Click the link below to find out if they are coming to your town.

CHECK OUT THE REMAINING DATES ON THE "BEAT" TOUR

Ooh, check this out. The BEAT tour revisits King Crimson's 80s material, but it appears they are not leaving some of Robert Fripp's music from the 70s completely out of the picture. Here is ripping version of the song "Red" from the 1974 album of the same name.

While we're here, how about we revisit a King Crimson video from Munich, Germany in 1982? This video is quite a treat with Belew, Fripp, Levin, and Bruford at the peak of their powers. The set includes a fantastic collection of songs from the albums Discipline and Beat.