Earthbound (King Crimson album)

Earthbound is a live album by the band King Crimson, released in June 1972 as a budget record shortly after the line-up that recorded it had broken up. It contains the band's first official live release of their signature song "21st Century Schizoid Man", and an extended live version of their 1970 non-LP B-side "Groon". It also contains two improvised tracks with scat vocals from Boz Burrell.

The album's sound quality is relatively poor, because of being recorded onto cassette tape (a low-fidelity recording medium, even by 1972 standards) by live sound engineer Hunter MacDonald. The liner notes to the original LP cover and recent CD reissues of the album state that it was "captured live on an Ampex stereo cassette fed from a Kelsey Morris custom built mixer ... in the rain from the back of a Volkswagen truck." Atlantic Records, the original distributor for King Crimson in the United States and Canada, declined to release Earthbound because of its poor sound. Because of the origins of the masters, the sound could not be significantly improved on later CD reissues of the album.

An expanded CD-DVD version of the album was released on 13 November 2017. The CD is expanded to twelve tracks, whereas the DVD features hi-res audio of the album along with much additional audio material including a live radio session in surround sound.

Personnel

 * King Crimson
 * Robert Fripp – electric guitar
 * Boz Burrell – bass guitar, vocals
 * Mel Collins – alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, mellotron
 * Ian Wallace – drums


 * Additional personnel
 * Hunter MacDonald – VCS3 synthesizer, recording engineer