It's easy to forget how quickly things moved for the first incarnation of King Crimson: They formed on January 13, 1969; by April they were performing regularly at clubs like The Marquee and The Speakeasy and appearing with Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Lyceum; in May they recorded the first of two BBC sessions; in June the first (aborted) album recordings took place; and in early July - the big breakthrough - they played to an audience of 650,000 at Hyde Park as the opening act for The Rolling Stones. The album was recorded in August, signed to Island Records (and Atlantic in the U.S.), missed the Isle of Wight Festival due to illness/exhaustion, more gigs and a second BBC session in September, a unanimously praised Top 5 album in the U.K., followed by a Top 30 debut in the U.S. weeks later, then a tour of the U.S. - performing at legendary venues like the Boston Tea Party, the Kinetic Playground in Chicago, the Fillmore East in New York, and another appearance with the Rolling Stones - this time at a festival in Miami, and then, after a series of December shows at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, it was over as quickly as it had begun - the arc for the band from formation to breakup had lasted little more than 11 months. What remained was an iconic - both musically and in terms of cover artwork - self-produced debut album, a fearsome live reputation, and the sense of a band that had set its own agenda in its short existence.