Earthbound - KING CRIMSON**

21st Century Schizoid Man/Peoria/The Sailor's Tale/Earthbound/Groon

Earthbound was the first live release from the progressive group King Crimson. Regarded as very disappointing due to the poor sound quality, short length and questionable choice of tracks.

“It's impossible to write about Earthbound without mentioning the audio quality, which is terrible and literally sounds like a bootleg audience tape. The five tracks are taken from four different American tour dates, so there isn't really any continuity, and it has the impression of being a collection of recordings rather than a cohesive album.”

“That Peoria, Earthbound and Groon make up most of the LP, despite being inessential to the Crimson catalogue, and entirely inconsequential, is ridiculous.”

“The opening 21st Century Schizoid Man is a pretty powerful performance, further enhanced by the rough-cut engineering job. The next three tracks are pretty standard fare for them at this point, despite sounding nice. But Groon is something else, a messy jazz half-improvisation with some wild sax playing, that turns into a wild drum solo and later into a crazy tornado of noisy chaos.”

“Get all the other King Crimson live material you could ever want in the world before you even consider wasting a scrap of your money on this one. As far as King Crimson's discography goes, this is as close as it gets to the bottom of the barrel unless you're willing to dabble in bootlegs; most will sound better than this turkey.”

“Not a complete show by any stretch, but chosen cuts performed live, and I have yet to find a better performance of 21st Century Schizoid Man. The sound is definitely tolerable, but probably only if you are a King Crimson fan.”

“Yes, the sound quality is poor, but if you are able to get past that, these live performances are fantastic. I would have given anything to have seen this band in their prime. The performance of 21st Century Schizoid Man is flawless, and absolutely chaotic. Surely the best live rendition I've heard. This album surely does not deserve its reputation of one of the worst of all time.”

“It pulls off the neat trick of achieving consensus in the stubbornly diverse field of rock criticism, to be universally agreed to be one of the worst live albums Features legendarily bad sound quality, indifferent/awful performances, inexplicably perverse song selections, combined with a brief running time.”