The Mars Volta reminds everyone of King Crimson
I'm not the first one to notice that "Goliath" from the new Mars Volta album sounds like King Crimson's 1969 prog-rock classic, "21st Century Schizoid Man," but I did arrive at that conclusion independently. At just after the 4-minute mark they abandon all pretense that they're doing an original song (compare to "Schizoid" at 2:08):
Okay, so Cedric's lyrics and vocal melodies are different. Still, I think "21st Century Schizoid Dude" would have been a better song title.
As happens so often, King Crimson's original song was another I learned about in reverse. In ninth grade I was completely taken by Canadian AOR band April Wine. "Roller" was one of my radio favorites, especially the part in the instrumental break where the three guitarists trade off the descending six-note motif. That was on the First Glance album, their first after adding third guitarist Brian Greenway. I rushed out to buy the next album, Harder...Faster (a little double entendre there, get it?), when it came out in 1979, and played it over and over and over. The last song on the album is "21st Century Schizoid Man," sung by Greenway (instead of bandleader Myles Goodwyn); the jamming and stop-start unison playing on it is far beyond anything else they ever attempted. It took about a year for me to connect the song to King Crimson, which then opened up a whole new world of music to me. Here, then, is April Wine's version:
