Six years later and it is clear that the Super Bowl’s organizers are still terrified of Janet Jackson’s nipple, that it comes to them at night and haunts them in their sleep, threatening to embroil them in scandal and to lose them millions in sponsorship deals. For what else can explain the entertainment decisions made by the Masters of the Bowl ever since that fateful Sunday afternoon in February 2004? 

Let’s take a look at who has played in the years since: 

2005 Paul McCartney (Age: 67) 

The less talented half of the Beatles songwriting team, more famous these days for his disastrous marriage to one-legged model Heather Mills. After spending years trying to promote his lackluster solo work he now dedicates most of his live shows to his 1960s catalogue, and has thus become a tribute act to his younger self. Not that he’s bitter or anything. 

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2006 The Rolling Stones (Collective age: 260+) 

This once great ‘dangerous’ band, notorious for their decadent lifestyles and provocative antics, have long since been reduced to a semi-parodic tribute act to their younger selves. Their drummer is a skeleton with a few wisps of hair attached to his skull. Mick Jagger made a mockery of himself by accepting a knighthood after launching a sustained whining campaign in the aftermath of “Sir” Paul McCartney’s own ennobling. Then Keith Richards fell out of a tree. 

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2007 Prince (Age 51) 

A spring chicken by super bowl standards (he was only 49 the year he performed), it’s been a long time since Prince thrilled, or indeed, entertained anybody. Furthermore, his performance at the Super Bowl came after he had joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and stopped playing his more scandalous songs.  

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2008 Tom Petty (Age: 59) 

Past it, middle of the road rocker whose interest in music began when he met Elvis aged 10: not exactly cutting edge, then. Is he a self-tribute act? I don’t know because like millions of others, I just don’t care. But I do note that he reformed his original band Mudcrutch in 2008 to pay homage to his younger self. 

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2009 Bruce Springsteen (Age: 60) 

Past it, tedious, ultra-earnest screecher who recently won a prize for a song about a tired old wrestler. Even Springsteen admitted re: the Superbowl: “…if we don’t do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I’m alive.” I suppose Springsteen at least still tries to stay vital, and many music critics have responded to his more recent efforts by kindly pretending to like them almost as much as the albums he recorded 20-30 years ago.  

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2010 The Who (Pete Townshend 64/Roger Daltrey 65/Keith Moon- dead/John Entwistle-dead) 

This year, clearly fearing that they were running out of heritage rock acts to hire, the Super Bowl organizers invited The Who to perform. Now I don’t mind a bit of The Who, they were definitely good about 40 years ago, possibly even still good 35 years ago around the time I was born, but ever since… well Who Cares? As they have only released one new record in several centuries they are perhaps the ultimate self-tribute band, not even interested in trying new things. Yawn. 

So it seems that the rules if you want to perform at the Superbowl post- Janet Jackson are:

1. No breasts, and thus no women
2. If you are a man, then you must have a prescription for Cialis. 

Now before anybody accuses me of ageism let me say this: I have nothing against venerable singers and guitarists, etc. A month or so back on this very site I sang the praises of King Crimson, who are very old indeed, if not exactly Super Bowl material. Johnny Cash did some of his best work in his 60s and 70s, although again I can’t imagine all that Rick Rubin produced death gospel going down all that well with the sponsors. Some people claim Dylan is still good, and although I’m not a huge Dylan fan, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. (I have grave reservations about Neil Young, however.) But there’s a difference between being old and vital and being The Who, or the Stones, or Paul McCartney. And while these acts can be entertaining enough even though they lost their mojo decades ago, too much heritage rock is a fairly awful, depressing, suffocating experience.   

I’m also a bit suspicious that these geriatric Super Bowl acts are those bands much beloved of the dismal late 60s Baby Boomer generation that has had a death grip on Western culture since the 80s at least, forcing its own nostalgia for a long passed youth down everybody else’s gullet. These coots just won’t let go: ‘Teenage Wasteland’ indeed. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for Janet Jackson’s nipple.

Consisting of four skilled musicians plus one lyricist from England’s West Country (among them the now legendary guitarist Robert Fripp) King Crimson enjoyed a rapid ascent to fame and success. The band formed on January 13th 1969; were declared the ‘best band in the world’ by Jimi Hendrix in April; played with the Stones at Hyde Park in July; recorded their first album In the Court of the Crimson King in July and August; released it to great acclaim in October; then played their last gig together on December 14th in San Francisco, having imploded while on tour.

To celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary, ITCOKC has just been re-released in a deluxe, remastered edition. Playing it now, decades after its release, the record sounds ambitious, grandiose, with a majesty bordering on the utterly pompous- it could only have been made by very young men, absolutely confident of their abilities and vision. ITCOKC provides the listener with a gateway into a curious parallel universe where rock is not blues-based but rather European, avant-garde, jazzy, pastoral and apocalyptic. The most famous track is probably 21st Century Schizoid Man, a blistering assault on the listener for its time. My own favorite however is the eponymous final track, which is ominous and foreboding and yet quite possibly about nothing whatsoever- and who can object to such a bizarre clash of meaning and meaninglessness? Not me. ITCOKC is a message from a lost world, where things were cosmic, and the world of popular music was filled with uncharted possibilities. 

Audiophiles take note: the sound quality of the new edition (remastered from the original tapes) is excellent, and there is also a 5.1 stereo surround mix on DVD for those in possession of high quality sound systems. As is usual with re-releases there are various bits and bobs tabbed on as extras; however the best bonus is unquestionably the excision of 3 minutes of meandering improvisation from the track Moonchild. 

Having disintegrated at the end of 1969, King Crimson went through a dizzying series of personnel changes over the next five years. Thus the second album in this series of anniversary re-releases Red, has an almost entirely different line up from the band’s debut. Reduced to a trio of Fripp (the only constant in the group’s history), Bill Bruford and John Wetton the band had actually ceased to exist when Red was released in 1974 The buzz prior to the breakup was that Crimson were about to achieve Pink Floyd levels of success, albeit with infinitely superior levels of musicianship. Fripp didn’t much care: he had experienced a spiritual awakening and believed the world was ‘coming to an end’.   

Gone was all the florid stuff about purple pipers from ITCOKC; this King Crimson had a much darker, more brutal and yet still complex sound. Fripp’s guitar frequently had a harsh, grating quality; Wetton’s bass was incredibly heavy; Bruford’s drumming was jazzy and crisp. And yet in spite of this stripped down quality the record shows King Crimson still searching for new possibilities, exploring the space between jazz, improvisation and some alien form of the then embryonic heavy metal. The album’s finale, Starless is lyrical, melancholic, sinister, the sound of a man alone and adrift in the depths of space. It veers between mournfulness to terror and then back again. It is the sound of a last farewell, a slow descent into the abyss. It is also the rest of the record in microcosm, veering between aggressive assault and more delicate, exploratory passages. Red is one of the best albums of the 1970s. If you don’t own it, you should. 

Once again the re-release features bonus tracks plus a 5.1 stereo surround mix; it also includes ultra-rare video footage of the band in action on a French rock show, complete with period visual effects. 

King Crimson’s dissolution in 1974 was not final. Fripp returned with yet another configuration of the band in 1980 and since then King Crimson has materialized and dematerialized periodically, whenever- as Fripp puts it- there is music to be played that only King Crimson can play. A man of ferocious personal integrity, Fripp pursues his own path. Rumors swirl that he may reactivate King Crimson next year. If we are lucky, he will: for even after 40 years and nearly as many members the Crimson King sounds fresh, challenging, aggressive and uncompromising. The same cannot be said for any of Crimson’s peers who played at Woodstock, nor alas, for the works of the King’s other great contemporaries Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. Although Oscar is still moderately aggressive, it must be admitted.