King Crimson - Indiscipline (Live At The Warfield Theatre, 1995)

Any drummer who solos every night of a long tour has a lot of people to please. His colleagues want to hear something they haven’t heard a thousand times before; a non-specialist audience is often indifferent (oh, no - not a drum solo…); and most of all the drummer him or herself. That person wants to feel that it flows, that it has ideas that are related to something that preceded the moment at hand, something that gave him the reason to be playing the thing he’s playing right now and not just showing off his favourite lick. Is there some sense of form, of pacing, of dramatic intent? That’s quite a list of boxes to tick, but this song Indiscipline was not a hard task. It came with built-in neurotic tension. The title of the piece itself conjures images of feral school-kids kicking over trash cans down at the schoolyard. In other words, it’s a perfect set-up to toy with the listener, to put him on edge, jumpy. Is there going to be a manic outburst? “Playing little games…” sneered singer Adrian Belew,