CLUB26 - Live in Philadelphia, PA , July 30, 1982: A great show and incredibly well-recorded set from a period from which it seems to be hard to find both qualities in a live offering. Also of interest is the presence here of "The Howler," which just didn't seem to get out much in the concert setting for some reason.

CLUB31 - Live at the Wiltern, July 1, 1995: If I was to tell you, the King Crimson fan, that you have to buy one Double Trio live recording, it would be this one. Everything about it is perfect, and it should be: it started out life with the intention to be an official release, then got shelved when Fripp got wind of bootleggers selling the hell out of copies of illicit recordings of their 1994 opening nights in Brazil after a nearly 10 year break. He released B'Boom instead, which is a good live album, but it pales in comparison to the power and intensity presented on this much more seasoned and road-tested band. The interest in B'Boom is hearing how the band is just learning how to read and play off of each other. Here you reap the results of countless hours of incredible musicians having learned each other's nuances and tendencies, the gift to the listener being a much tighter, but more playful experience.

Some suggestions to download from DGMLive.com:

Montreal - August 4, 1982: Recorded less than a week after the Club 26 disc above, this is an entirely different beast. Songs stretch out a bit more ("Waiting Man," which opens the show here, clocks in at nearly 12 minutes compared to its frugal 4 minutes studio version) and the band seems a bit more contemplative, rather than furious and full of energy as on the Philadelphia show. Sound quality here is excellent, nearly as good as Club 26, but not quite as spectacular.

I also have an interesting personal tie to this show. It was one of my very first (ahem) bootlegs that I picked up many years ago. The sound quality was terrible, and I lamented many times that if it were available in better sound quality, it would be a favorite of mine. Instead, for years, I would hunker down and listen through the warbling, old-cassette sound quality, over the chatting audience and general din of a boomy concert venue to the magic happening on stage — and hoped that one day maybe something special would happen. And then it did.