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Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
Quite possibly the most elaborate parody ever made
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Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
Quite possibly the most elaborate parody ever made
The damages:
Live at the Isle of
Wright Festival (1970)
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (1971)
Pictures at an Exhibition (1972)
Emerson, Lake, and Powell (1986)
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were one hell of a band for a while. They were practically the epitome of prog-rock, no matter how much you real prog rockers want to deny it. That's probably because the proggiest guy from the band that invented the genre was in it (Keith Emerson), as well as the bassist and guitar player from the proggiest band (Greg Lake). They also had a pretty proggy guy from a band I've never heard of on drums (Carl Palmer of the excellently titled Atomic Rooster).
ELP (or Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, as they liked to be called) at the same time represent everything that was good and bad about the genre. On one hand, they were exceptionally talented. Emerson in particular was the most talented keyboard player on the planet for quite a while, rattling off 100 keys/minute with godlike accuracy (most of the time). Unfortunately, he liked playing his keys so much that he often forgot to stop. Lots of their albums are filled with what the experts call "wankfests", which is essentially Emerson going zip-a-zip-zoop on the synths for seemingly hours at a time. Greg Lake was a great singer and was the best songwriter in the band for a while (most of ELPs hits came from the occasional Lake ballad). For a while the band's weakness was simply not ever letting him play...until Works came along and suggested that many Greg was just getting lucky. Carl Palmer is an amazing drummer, bashing out solos with incredible energy, but his problem was that it seemed like he just had some advanced form of ADD most of the time and could never just keep a straight beat. As a result of all this, the band was an absolute mess at times, although they were still entertaining most of the time.
The other 'trademark' of ELP was how they took the concept of prog rock (the merging of classical music and rock music) a little too far by actually including covers of classical pieces. This worked out pretty well some of the time ("Knife Edge", "Toccatta", "Hoedown"...) but other times just insulted people who liked the original (I know that a lot of people got pissed off at the Pictures at an Exhibition album).
Despite all this, ELP did end up releasing several worthy albums that would fit fine into a the collections of any fan of good ol' fashioned rock. They reached an incredibly bombastic peak (Brain Salad Surgery) before they took a few years off and became even worse at songwriting than they already were. So here are some reviews:
Live
at the Isle of Wright Festival (1970)
Best Song: The Barbarian
The first official release from ELP, but you probably won't be able to find it anywhere. This is their first actual performance, featuring what would become the first two songs from their debut, the entire Pictures at an Exhibition album, and a 3 minute "Rondo" (one of The Nice's best songs). Problem is, after a riveting "The Barbarian" (which they wouldn't do live anymore) and a nice "Take a Pebble", the album becomes mercilessly long with a subpar "Pictures at an Exhibition" which eats over 35 minutes of the album. It uses even more crappy Moogs than the real one (and by real one I mean ELP's live album version of this). After a bad "Rondo" (with some real showoffy stuff by Palmer), they do "Nutrocker", which breaks one of the fundamental rules of performing live - don't play songs that nobody wants to hear. Don't bother.
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (1971)
Best
Song: Knife Edge or Lucky Man
If you really want to get into ELP, here’s where you start.
This is a good example of when the band actually played together as a band,
or at the very least, the only time where every member gets his chance to fully show
off his chops (until Works Vol. 1). See,
while most artists get more and more complicated as time goes on, ELP started this way. It’s easy to
see where the band’s downfalls would be by this record as well.
For example, the band is in top form for the first side. Starting off with “The Barbarian”, an adaptation of a piece by some guy named Bartok, and ending up with “Knife Edge” (which also samples some classical composer, but his name escapes me), side number one just tears up the place. Of course, the pretty “Take A Pebble” is thrown in the middle…well, thrown I guess isn’t a good way to describe it, as it’s 12 minutes long. Yet this shows the strength of these guys as a team – it’s a Lake number at heart (notice the more-than-just-coincidental similarity to King Crimson’s “Epitaph?), yet in the middle, after some cool section where you can actually hear pebbles thrown into a river over Lake’s clap-along classical guitar solo, Emerson chimes in with this pretty little piano part. That works. So does “Knife Edge”, my favorite on the record…that obviously copied bass line, accompanied by a gentle *tap tap tap*, suddenly exploding with Emerson’s keyboard part…this song absolutely rules. “The Barbarian” is also great...fuzzed out bass notes, tense keyboard lines...everything goes together great.
Side 2 is where the band starts to fall apart.
And by band, I mean Emerson, because this is now Emerson’s show, for a
while anyways. “The Three
Fates” is just Emerson playing lots of organs, pianos, and what not.
There’s actually three different movements here (give me a break,
Jake). Of course, this is only as bad as you want to make it, after all, after
the first five minutes it actually starts to get kind of good.
“Tank”, then, will probably get on your nerves, this being basically
a big drum solo, but not without Emerson pushing random buttons on his computer,
leaving you with one of the most random melodies I’ve heard since…uh…Trout
Mask Replica. And that album isn't
even very random. The drum solo is
okay, but basically just making out Palmer to be a complete showoff, which, for
the most part, he is, so it’s fine.
We end up with “Lucky Man”, which I’m sure you’ve all heard before, but hey it's quite a great song and I'm sure has rounded up a lot of borderline scores. Except I think that now ‘legendary’ Moog part in the end is completely unnecessary. So there.
Tarkus
(1971) 
Best Song: Well, Tarkus...!?
You know, everyone thinks they haven’t got this record figured out.
The first part of every review usually states how this is about some
armadillo tank, who does some stuff and gets poked in the eye and dies, yet
lyrically, it’s about some war. The
pictures on the inside match up with the titles of the parts of Tarkus, as do
the lyrics, but the lyrics and the pictures don’t mix.
I don’t understand it either. All
I know is that Side 1 of this album kicks it in the hard spot.
Now, I know everyone’s into doing sidelongs these days (early 70s), but
this one actually warrants all odd twenty and a half minutes of its length.
The beginning? Awesome!
Starting with this running sneaky synth-line, then piling on more synths
and…uh…words, until somewhere at the seven minute mark (I can’t remember
many of the individual sections, unfortunately) it just explodes into this
full-fledged rock song (I think this part is called Mass).
The end? Better luck next
time! Well, I can see the whole war
march slowly fading out thing, but it gets even cheesier in the end when all the
sudden we get the whole beginning part again!
Whoosh! And poor me, I
thought my CD player had skipped and the song was starting over.
And then, an overblown actual ending to the thing, and Side one is
through! But the point here is that the song "Tarkus" may be one
of ELP's best, because there's about a zillion musical ideas here, and most of
them good. It's not quite as good as, say, "Supper's Ready", but
it certainly does never get boring.
The problem is, the guys spent so much time getting "Tarkus" together
that they forgot to think, "wait, these records ain't one sided", Well, “Bitches Crystal” ain’t so bad.
They actually get the mood of paranoia and lunacy right,
which is I suppose what they're going for. I especially love the way how
it starts all quiet and then gets all frantic like a cabbie in traffic
(who runs off the road and kills a little boy, thus ending his career). And “A Time and a Place” is pretty good, if you're into synth-rock in
goofy time signatures. See, these
both sound like “Tarkus”, so it’s obvious why I like ‘em, although the
latter definitely sounds like a second-rate outtake.
But
that's pretty much all the good stuff.
“Only Way” is a hymn, Lake being the choir. I’m not even gonna mention how bad the six million Jews
line is, because there’s an even worse one.
Here goes:
“Jeremy
Bender”
Jeremy bender was a man of leisure, took his pleasure in the evening sun
Laid him down in a bed of roses, finally decided to become a nun.
Talk with the Sister, spoke in a whisper, threatened to fist her if she didn't come clean
Jumped on the Mother just like a brother asked one another if the other is a queen.
Diggin' the sister she was a mister shouldn't have kissed her, but he couldn't say no
Wanted to leave her couldn't believe her, so he picked up his suit-case and decided to go.
What the…? If a battle between an armadillo tank and a lion that looks like Larry King isn’t weird enough, we also get a song about incest! “Infinite Space” is even more offensive, being what, “Dadadada dun, dadadada dun dun” over and over again. The only song I didn’t mention is “Are You Ready Eddy?”. There’s a reason for that. No, I did like the song at one time. But it just sounds like an inside joke. It’s a tribute to the sound engineer Eddy Offord. His name shows up on a couple of Yes albums. But I’m guessing ELP didn’t like him, which is why they immortalized him with such a god-awful song. Okay, so it's a guilty pleasure. I once listened to it seven times in a row because of how bizarre it was: “Eddy, Eddy, Eddy Eddy Eddy”, now that’s poetry!
Pictures at an Exibition (1972)
Best Song: The Curse of Baba Yaga
So “picture” this. One of the problems facing every band in its infacy is a lack of material to play. The problem is solved in several ways, you can:
A) Play shorter shows
B) Add material that didn’t make the album cut
C) Extend the running time of your songs
D) Butcher a well-known classical composition and release it on record
ELP wouldn’t want to do A (they needed as much attention as possible!), had no material for B and couldn’t possibly do any more C without the audience walking out, so what choice did they have? The composition they chose was a well-known one by Modest Mouse, called “Pictures at an Exhibition”. This version does sound more modern and does actually have sort of a rock edge to it, but at the same time it’s stripped down (keep in mind there’s three people doing this, as opposed to like a hundred). I’ve heard the original and it’s pretty good. As for this one…well, it’s quite a project. Considering this piece has been performed by orchestras, and, for the most part, the same way for 98 years by the time, it’s not hard to see why so many people are constantly bashing this release. Not only do they not perform the whole thing (they do about half), but they fill in the gaps with their own songs. Those being Lake’s “The Sage” and this thing called “Blues Variation” (tell me what that’s doing in Pictures at an Exhibition).
I guess I can’t help but not hate it, after all, not only is this a gutsy move that would leave thousands of classical lovers hating them for life, but it’s not as if this is necessarily bad. Being a live release, it’s surprising to hear just how good the players are, Emerson is…well, Emerson as usual, Lake’s guitar playing is pretty and his voice in top form (oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they added lyrics), and Palmer never misses a tap, so the band is good. The material is mostly okay, although it’s mostly divided into bad, unexciting parts (Side 1) and the bombastic, awesome parts (Side 2). Not until Emerson gives us a variation on the blues do things get exciting, and even after that they have the nerve to repeat “Promenade” for the third time.
But hey, the whole Baba Yaga thing kicks ass, as does “The Great Gates of Kiev”, yet hearing Lake belt out “LIFE IS DEATH!!!111” somehow makes you wonder whether or the band has finally lost it. Such a shame that they couldn’t END it this way, instead doing “Nutrocker”. It’s not as bad as everyone would have you believe, but then again it’s not like it possesses any…uh…”quality”.
Trilogy (1973)
Best Song: Trilogy
This is the first ELP album I ever owned. While it almost sounds as if ELP’s gone soft (they haven’t), this is really one of the more…well, ‘complete’ albums they did. Just so happens it’s also one of their most accessible. It starts with the 2-part “Endless Enigma” combo with a beautiful piano/bass duet thrown in the middle (“Fugue”). While it’s sort of an odd beginning (namely the first minute that really doesn’t sound like it’s going into such a toned-down song), it certainly works, leading into what I believe to be the best ballad Mr. Lake ever did, “From the Beginning”. Sure, it starts out by sounding just like…uh…”Roundabout” (seriously, play them both at the same time and be amazed), but it’s still a nice little song. And after a neat little honky-tonk number (“The Sheriff”, which continues the more playful ragtime-time songs that they started with "Jeremy Bender" way back in '71), comes the more rock-oriented side of the album (conveniently indexed into its own side if you owned the actual album, how convenient).
The second side starts with the obligatory classical cover, “Hoedown”. This time it’s Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo”, which I’m sure you’ve heard before somewhere. It was used a lot on those beef commercials, with all those people and dogs running around. Either way, this is a great piece – Emerson’s playing all these themes quickly and without a hitch, with the bass and drums just rolling along. “Trilogy”, however, is the absolute tour de force of the album. It’s got three parts, as you might expect…one part beautiful piano ballad which absolutely explodes into a synth rocker that will knock your socks off! No, literally! It’s happened to me several times and that’s why I don’t listen to this album anymore. Well, lucky me then, because there’s not much of worth afterwards…a short fuzzed out organ rock song with fuzzed out Lake vocals (where do you think they got that idea?), and a bolero. The bolero’s actually pretty good, if not for the fact that it’s…well, a bolero. The main theme (a war march) is neat, but what, 8 minutes? Can we do something called "variance" that I heard was supposed to make a song good?
Brain Salad Surgery (1974)
Best Song: Karn Evil 9, baby!
If
you need an intro to ELP, check out the debut or Trilogy.
If you need a slap in the mouth, buy this one first.
But you probably won’t enjoy it. See,
this is ELP at their most pretentious and bombastic, for better or worse.
Mostly better, luckily, as this album certainly shows that these guys CAN
actually write good songs and solo like responsible human beings!
Of course, this is a VERY borderline release…it’s good, but if it
contained any more Emerson solos or weird synth noises I’d be tempted just to
throw the whole thing out.
So there’s two parts to this album, that being what is and isn’t Karn
Evil 9. What isn’t is pretty damn
good, only having one real throwaway and even that one’s pretty enjoyable
(“Benny the Bouncer”, which follows the same pattern as "Jeremy
Bender" and "The Sheriff" but is a good deal more wacky). The
other three are the hits, like the short “Jerusalem” cover that’s sorta
like a church tune but with more bombast. The
song doesn’t mean much to me anymore, but when I first got this album it was
stuck in my head pretty bad. Another
short song, the Lake ballad “Still…You Turn Me On” really seems more like
an obligation, but it’s another great ballad.
Even the funky chorus that totally threw me off the first hundred times I
heard it. I’d list it as a high
point, but…you know. “Someone
get me a ladder?” Why?
Let's
talk about the real gem on Side 1, “Toccata”.
It’s actually a sci-fi cover of something called “Toccata”.
By a man named “Ginastra”. I
don’t know who that is, but he must be an interesting guy to write something
sounding like this. Not that I’ve
heard the original…but this is a damn interesting “piece”.
See, back in 1974, ELP really threw everyone a loop when they put little
buzzers in the drums that made little spaceship noises!
Don’t tell me Kraftwerk started techno, it was these guys!
Okay, maybe not, but they sure did see it coming.
Now I’ve got to talk about Karn Evil 9, the 29-minute long magnum P.I. that dominates this record. There
are very few sick and disturbed people who can stand the whole thing, and even
fewer than like it. Now I, I love
it! The 1st Impression in
particular is pretty great. Then
again, it was another smash hit. You
know that song, “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends!”.
That’s the one! Actually
the first part of it…the “I’ll be there, I’ll be there, I WILL BE
THERE!” part is even better! It’s
all great until we get to the 2nd part, the part that we all know and love.
And I can’t say I dig it as much because it’s really just a repeat of
the second half of the first part. It’s
even got the same guitar solos. But
still, this is like, their biggest hit (sans “Lucky Man”, I guess), so
I’ll respect it. And it’s still
good.
Unlike “Tarkus”, however, they kind of forget to tie things together
in this suite, and after the overly dramatic ending “SEE THE SHOOOOOOOWW!”.
And after a short piano/steel drum interlude (8 minutes), we’re right
into the 3rd Impression. It’s not
even about seeing the show, unless “the show” is a spaceship.
This is a space drama, not a western like Star Wars but an actual drama
consisting of robots and lasers and lions and tigers and bears, my goodness!
It ends with a Greg Lake machine totally obliterating Greg Lake, much to
the enjoyment of us who know that ELP’s career was pretty much over after
this.
Of
course, this is the benchmark in ELP’s career, and to a bigger extent a
benchmark of prog in general. I’d
call it “the record that killed progressive rock”, but that’s too harsh.
Besides, who else besides Keith Emerson has the ability (and permission)
to kill prog? Joey Ramone?
Endeavor failed, my friend. So what I was trying to say is that if
you can find one of the remastered versions of this CD, do it.
They split Karn Evil 9 into its respective four parts, which is a real
boon because there’s really no reason for them to be together.
There’s not even a coherent concept here (unless that is the concept,
and it's not). But you do get lots
of cool liner notes and an interview at the end of the disc in case you can’t
read. And a holographic cover!
Speaking of covers, the cover painting is actually of a woman with a penis by her mouth (what do you suppose she was gonna do with it). But they airbrushed that out because it’s rude. Do you know what Brain Salad Surgery actually means? The same thing as “Whip Some Skull On You”, the original title of this album. Do you know what that means? (Keith Emerson doesn't) If so, you’re probably some kind of necrophiliac or just know really bad lingo. Of course it means blowjob! Just don’t ask your girlfriend for any “Brain Salad Surgery” because you’ll probably get an album in your mouth.
Welcome Back my Friends to the Show that Never Ends, Ladies and Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (1974)
Best Song: Toccata, or Tarkus, or whatever
Well,
maybe there’s more than just seven. That’s
being too harsh. You can’t really
count just one for the Jeremy Bender/Sheriff medley, and I’m sure Take a
Pebble (split up into three parts due to CD constraints) counts as more than
one, seeing as it’s got eleven minutes of Keith improvising (well, he’s
playing something, it’s listed as an improv but I seriously doubt it is), as
well as a completely acoustic Lucky Man AND Still You Turn Me On right in the
middle! What a mammoth of a song it
turns out to be. But it’s at
least pleasant. Except that he
screws up the lyrics to “Still…”, which certainly made me flinch a bit.
As a whole, however, it’s a nice break from the rest of the set, so
“Take a Pebble” gets at least a thumbs sideways.
Which
is more than I can say for that bloated beast Karn Evil 9.
The good thing about it is that Palmer is a machine – he does a six
minute solo in the middle of the song and still has enough energy to keep
pounding away for the whole song! Well,
at least from what I can hear. He’s
not really in the mix too well. Emerson,
on the other hand, sounds like he hasn’t rehearsed this in a while, which
would explain why he keeps fucking up (that and it might be a little bit of a
complicated song). Lake, too,
isn’t his best – the vocals are not even close to how exciting as they were
on Brain Salad Surgery, and he makes it even more obvious that he’s doing the
same solo twice by replicating it note for note in the 1st
Impression. 2nd
Impression goes well, and then we have the 3rd, where I think
everyone just wants to go home but try not to show it.
Even the computer voices sound tired, like they’re running out of
batteries. It even makes a grunting
noise in the beginning that sounds like a fat man getting punched in the
stomach. Furthermore, the sound
quality on this track isn’t even up to par with the others…I mean, it’s
not as if they’re high standards in the first place.
Oh
yeah, there’s other songs too. But
by this time, you’ll probably have forgotten about them all.
“Tarkus” is very long as well, and, unlike Karn Evil 9, is actually enjoyable.
See, it starts off fast and furious, yet they extend it for seven minutes
by doing little things – the song kinda slows down near the end and Lake
throws in a few lines from King Crimson’s “Epitaph” (notice that the crowd
applauds this more than anything else; seems like they’re dropping the hint
that he should have stayed in Crimson longer than he did).
“Aquatarkus”, the war march in the end, is end quite extended which
covers the rest of the length.
There’s
also some songs in the beginning. “Toccata”,
in particular is amazing – it’s even more of a rock adaptation than the
original. I mean, it seriously
rocks. And “Hoedown” goes even
faster than it does in the studio. And
“Jerusalem”? Well, it’s
alright, I guess.
The medley of “Jeremy Bender” and “The Sheriff” right before Karn Evil 9 is also decent, but I kinda wish they’d have finished off the trilogy and fit in “Benny the Bouncer”, which is my favorite part anyways. But nooo, then you’d have the whole Brain Salad Surgery album on here and the record companies wouldn’t like this.
Works Vol. 1 (1977)
Best Song: Fanfare for the Common Man
Shortly after the Brain Salad Surgery tour, ELP decided that they were going to break up after such a creative explosion. In the three years that followed, they each decided to persue solo projects, an idea that Yes tried but didn't really succeed with. The problem was that only a hardcore ELP fanatic was going to buy something by Emerson, Lake, OR Palmer, so they decided hey, let's all take a side of a double album and call it "Works"! And then, to make this THE ULTIMATE ELP ALBUM they decided that they'd all come together for a group side! But first, let's look at the individual group sides:
Emerson does what everyone thought he would do and composed a piano concerto (no joke, bloke). It's actually quite good, even though it seems as though Emerson really doesn't know a whole lot about this composing thing. He has an orchestra this time, which he uses to it's 'full' effect. But for the most part, he just does the same piano things he's been doing all along - imagine "Take a Pebble" with an orchestra, extended by a lot and you've got it! Yeah, it's boring, at least until the "3rd Impression", or as it's called here, "3rd Movement". And even then this doesn't strike me as something I would listen to often. Even though I can't blame the guy for trying, the problem is that there's a lot of unnecessary junk here, stuff that a 'real' composer like...Mussorgsky might have come up with.
Still, at least he gave a good effort, something that Lake obviously didn't want to do. Lake's side has five songs on it, and only one of the real hokey numbers is good..."C'est La Vie" is nowhere near as good as "From the Beginning" or any other "classic" Lake song, but it's the best he has to offer here. The rest is just real blown-out-of-proportion bullshit...the problem is that none of this has any substance (unless you looooove showtunes), showing that Lake probably just threw this together on a week's notice. His use of the orchestra adds a little touch (hokey) here and there but it's not going to fool me Greg! I guess the problem is that he was really trying to become more than just an underplayed singer (in a rock and roll band).
Now take the first record (or CD) and put (throw) it away, because you're in for a surprise with the second disc: namely, it's actually quite good. Palmer's side is actually really great...it (once again) uses the orchestra, but in a "fun" way. Actually, it sounds like he just hired a bunch of jazz musicians to lay down the jazz! As a result, most everything in here is just that, a bunch of jazz! Probably the best is the excellent jam "L.A. Nights", which features a singer of some sort. But this is still Palmer's show...just listen to him go cr-cr-crazy on the hitting sticks! I mean Lake might have sang his ass off, and Emerson might have composed his ass off, but none of it sounded this good! Just listen to that "Food For the Soul" where Palmer goes all pppfpfpfphphhptttptptpttpppfpfpfphphhptttptptptt even ass the other guys are playing! And what follows? Why, it's a re-do of that one song, "Tank"! And it's way better than the one on Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (by a bunch). The ensemble is playing actual notes in an actual sequence (although they do keep some of the Moog parts - Emerson guested during a lot of this side). And wait until you hear what Palmer does during the drum solo! He skips it (what a nice guy).
So what you're left with is the group side, and for the most point it's a disappointment until you realize that these guys have used all their musical ideas for their solo half-albums already. Of course, this is now ELP (as in E, L, AND P), so it only takes two songs before they fill up the entire side. The first one, "Fanfare for the Common Man", and it's the best song on the side (and probably the album)...hey, I should know, I wrote the song! (-Aaron Copland) It's actually pretty great, showing the band working together again...hey, who am I kidding, this is still just Emerson doing a bunch of stuff while Palmer bashes away in the background and Lake goes a-thumpa-thumpa-thump on his bassamotar. It's also really long...I had been listening to the single version for quite a while before I realized there was a whole seven more minutes to it where it turns into a quasi-blues number (?) that's really grating at times. Still, the band pounds on (haven't I heard this in a stadium somewhere?). The final song on the album is "Pirates" and it's really something. See, ELP was commissioned to do a song about pirates for a movie about pirates, but something fell through, so they put the result here. I like the song a hell of a lot more than these other "reviewers" do, simply because they actually were able to create a piece that justified the bombasity of the band perfectly - it's a purposely hokey Hollywood-type pirates song (actually, it could be several of them, it's 13 minutes long). But damn, is so much of this catchy as hell. It's still not on the level of other works of this type ("Karn Evil 9", "Trilogy"), but I still enjoy it from time to time to time (and why does it have to end on such a sudden note?).
As a result, you've got one bad side, one good side, one disappointing but enjoyable side, and one side of ehhhhhhhh, leaving you with an album that's really tedious at times but has enough good parts to justify buying (at a severely discounted price).
Works, Vol. 2 (1977)
Best Song: Tiger in a Spotlight
You know, you wouldn't think that something called Works Vol.2 that was just a bunch of outtakes from Works Vol.1 would be any good, much less actually better than the album that it was outtakes from. But it is, mainly because this features no piano concerto, no lengthy group pieces, and Lake only gets to contribute two hokey pokeys ("Show Me The Way to Go Home", "So Far to Fall"). Emerson is still using his orchestra, but for good this time, giving us the classics like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "Honkey Tonk Train Blues" from the 20s, as well as the boogies-woogies group piece "Tiger in a Spotlight" that kicks off the album with a kick! It's a great song actually, even if it isn't original at all. Palmer does a few more jazzy/experimental type stuff, albeit a little more playful than before ("Bullfrog", "Close But Not Touching"). The great thing about this record is even if it doesn't sound at all like an ELP album - songs don't ever eclipse five minutes, which means that the guys could actually fit a whole bunch on here (thirteen) (which isn't as much as Tarkus if you count the individual pieces). But the album's real sigh of relief comes in the other two Lake numbers, which surprisingly show that he's still got an ear for songwriting. "Watching Over You" isn't as good as any of the ballads off the first albums (except maybe "The Sage"), but it's the best since then (which isn't saying a hell of a lot). Furthermore, the single "I Believe in Father Christmas" is a much more organized stab at religion (or maybe just Santa) than "The Only Way" was. It's also a great Christmas song, even if it is anti-Christmas. Also included is "Brain Salad Surgery", which sounds like an early "Benny the Bouncer", even though it's obviously unfinished - showing another touch of the old ELP. After the first four (actual) albums, this one's the only other one worth owning.
Love Beach (1978)
Best Song: Canario
I've enlarged the picture here so you can see just how ridiculous the album is. ELP had no reason to exist by this point...a fact they even realized, but the record company said "HOLD IT! You owe us another album." So ELP decided to sit down for a couple of days and write a bunch of songs, mostly using the Works sessions again. Love Beach soon became one of the most constantly bashed albums of all time, regardless of who's heard it. Seriously, just look at that cover! Do you know what this means? With the help of the utterly tasteless Pete Sinfield, the band was able to write songs every bit as lame as the lyrics suggest:
Ohhh, you look so hungry woman
how come you strayed in here with your eyes so bright
on this long hot night.
Could it be for a taste of my love
Down on your knees with your face to the wall
Saying please please please
My friend said I should call
well I do feel lonely woman
And to tell the truth , I could use some company
to come closer to me.
Help yourself to a taste of my love.
Call up room service, order peaches and cream
I like my desert first - if you know what I mean.
Yeah, taste it , taste it, taste it
Around the maze of pleasure to the gates of pain,
you're driving me insane.
Take all you need from the taste of my love
I want to love you like nobody ever loved you
Get on my stallion and we'll ride.
I want to hold you and enfold you beyond reason
I want to dynamite your mind with love tonight.
Go down gently with your face to the east
The sun may be rising but we haven't finished the beast.
Ohhh, you still look hungry woman
I'm glad your came in here with your eyes so bright,
on this long hot night
You need love - I need love, here it comes , the taste of my love.
I'm gonna love you like nobody ever loved you
climb on my rocket and we'll fly.
Over the moon past the sun till we find
the gates of heaven open wide for lovers
I'm gonna love you like nobody ever loved you
climb on my rocket and we'll fly.
Yep, this is where you go for lyrical statements as deep as "we'll make love on love beach!" As for actual music...it's really not terrible like they'd have
you believe, but it's still surprisingly shallow. The first track "All I Want is You" shows Lake just ripping off his "Pirates" technique of shouting without any
real backing music involved. "Love Beach" is sort of an okay rock song, I guess. And "The Gambler" is a little fun (but I can't see why they used those
female backing vocals...they're terrible). Actually, the reason why this gets two stars and not only one and a half is because of the classical cover,
"Canario", which, as far as I'm concerned, is the only reason to pick up this album. It's fun, playful, strangely Scottish sounding...but it's damn
enjoyable, in fact, I'd almost so as far to say that it's almost as good as "Hoedown" (just not as impressive). Best of all, Lake doesn't get a chance to ruin
it (even though Emerson was the problem factor in the early years, with Lake being sadly downplayed, from Works on out it was definitely the other way
around).
The second side is - get this - a sidelong, called "Memoirs of an Officer and Gentleman". It's (as you probably guessed) much more lightweight than
say, "Tarkus" was, with all the bombast coming from Lake's voice. It stars out with him doing "Pirates" again...and from there just keeps going.
Unfortunately, it's not a whole lot different than some of the other stuff on this record...Emerson is brought a little more to the front but still isn't really
doing anything. At least it's not totally unlistenable...there's good passages here and there, but the lack of any real hooks at all (which is why it was
silly to compare it to "Tarkus") makes it totally unmemorable.
And so ends the reign of ELP. And with three bad albums in a row, who knew? I mean, the band didn't even want to do Love Beach, but their contract said they had to. Emerson goes off and studies classical music (whoa surprise), Lake forms something called "The Greg Lake Band" (which lasts about 3 weeks and 2 albums), and Palmer joins Asia. Meanwhile Emerson and Lake start getting bored, so they do something called a "glorious comeback". Here it is in all it's glory:
Emerson, Lake, and Powell (1986)
Best Song: Touch and Go
I’m guessing that for every 26 drummers that tried out to replace Palmer, 25
of them got turned away because then it wouldn’t be ELP.
Particularly nobody would ever get in if their last name started with an
O. This left a guy by the name of
Cozy Powell. He’s actually a
heavy metal drummer that played in Black Sabbath or something like that.
Don't worry all you ELPurists, it’s not really as if he gets to
influence this album a hell of a lot.
What you get when you buy this album is a bunch of
crappy synth-pop songs. Starting
with the excruciatingly 9-minute “The Score”, Lake asks the ultimate
question, “Do you know the score?” Well,
considering the success that Asia was having, I’d say it’s Palmer 1, Emerson
and Lake 0. Hell, the lyrics here
are pretty damn bad as a whole…check out “Touch and Go” if you don’t
believe me. This is actually one of
the better songs too, apparently they even had a hit with this one.
It’s just a weird, underdeveloped anthem really, but I must say I
don’t like these lyrics, where Lake tries to sing as many broad and general
statements as possible without any underlying meaning.
It still cracks me up when he yells out, “All systems go!”
That part’s great.
Other than that, we get a pretty fierce
“Mars, the Bringer of War”, which is much better than King Crimson’s
attempt just two years ago, but not quite on par with King Crimson’s attempt
just sixteen years ago. And besides
that, what? We actually get a
couple of hokey piano songs at the end, just to prove that Emerson didn’t have
to drench everything in synths, yet somehow they’re just as annoying as
everything else. Luckily, the bad
songs are generally short. Except
for “The Score”, of course, but I can stand that one.
Except that they incorporate that whole “Welcome Back my Friends…”
line. I mean, it’s already the
most recognizable line in one of your most famous songs, the title of a
triple-live album, but in case you haven’t heard this decent rhyme, they say
it again!
So anyways, this one’s got all the bombast of some of their previous glories, yet nobody, especially not Emerson (whose synth tones went from simply "pretentious" to "fucking stupid" real fast), really seems to be trying. And what’s with the Scattergories cover art? Anyways, from what I've heard this is a hell of a lot better than "To the power of 3" which was Emerson and Palmer's side project while Lake was in Asia.
Black Moon (1992)
Best Song: Changing States
Not as if it matters, but Palmer’s
back. Maybe he had enough of this
whole “making money” thing that Emerson and Lake
weren’t doing, which is why they had to make this.
It’s really just a novelty record for the ELP fan, because it’s
really nothing new, but at least
this time the songs are distinctive and actually wouldn’t stand out in a
normal live set. As opposed to
ELPowell, this sounds like they actually put a bit of work into it.
But it’s still not as if Palmer’s making his presence known at all,
it really just sounds like if the Powell band had recorded a follow-up album and
tried caring about the result.
Unfortunately, the boys have to try for a
more softer sound, or just do power-rock, because they’ve lost it a bit.
Emerson’s got carpal tunnel pretty badly (any guesses why?) and Lake
has not only put on some pounds but also has had years and years of smoking take
their toll on his voice, resulting in a deeper, dryer, and less silkier (what a
faggot I am) Mr. Lake.
At least the songs are mostly decent.
Lake actually gets a bit of time on this album, resulting in at least two
neat ballads, “Affairs of the Heart” and closer “Footprints in the
Snow”. “Farewell to Arms” is
primarily Lake as well, but it’s not quite as good.
Emerson gets his time in too, resulting in the only song that actually
sounds like it could have been on a good ELP album (“Changing States”).
Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that I can actually detect
that Palmer’s a pretty good drummer on this one.
He also does the much less remarkable Prokofiev cover “Romeo and
Juliet” which really doesn’t do anything for me at all.
We get a solo piano piece “Close to Home” which is quite pleasant as
well.
Oh well, it’s all just nostalgia anyways, particularly the title track which tries real hard to rock and really gets nowhere. But I actually like the instrumental jamming in the end even though I know it’s atrocious. And I kinda like “Paper Blood” as well even though it’s just a bad blues song. Do they think the harmonica is fooling anyone? Still, even though I can bring myself to like many of the songs on this, the fact is that it really just sounds like a toned down ELP, and when the entire appeal of ELP was how toned-up they were, this comes as sort of a disappointment. It's not too bad while it's on, but after that only the title track and "Paper Blood" stick with me for any period of time.
They did do one more album in '94, called "In the Hot Seat", which includes a studio "Pictures at an Exhibition". I don't have it yet but will sometime soon. Also, I have a bunch of other live albums to update with, mostly recent stuff.
Best Song: Hand of Truth
I didn't mind Black Moon a whole lot, but this record really irks me. This is ELP's final album, a weird one to take such a strange direction on - this is strictly power-pop, that weak kind of AOR stuff that's better left to Phil Collins or Kansas or the Doobie Brothers. This isn't even a nostalgia trip - this is just the band fulfilling another contractual obligation and trying to sell a record to as many people as possible. No keyboard solos, no pretty Lake ballads or piano parts, no impressive drumming (although the 4/4 beat on "Street War" is at least fast...and there's a small guitar(?) solo too!), and no interesting lyrics. Sure, "Daddy", the tale of a father losing a daughter at random is a little haunting (using a little girls voice to say "Daddy, take me home" was a mistake and I want to vomit) but the lyrics are mostly generic, although still not as stupid as they were on Emerson, Lake, and Powell. Oh, and the band is in bad shape - Lake has improved a little since Black Moon, not trying to hit the same notes as he did in the 70's, but apparently Palmer's got carpal tunnel this time around and Emerson broke his arm. The playing, however, doesn't suffer any more than the last couple of albums, so who really cares? Actually, the opening number "Hand of Truth" opens with a menacing instrumental section, reminiscent of something like...well, "Changing States" I guess. But still, it doesn't sound like ELP, particularly since the old sound is so gone by now that they don't even attempt to bring it back, even when they're reworking old pieces - they've rerecorded about fifteen minutes of "Pictures at an Exhibition" as a bunch of bonus tracks and it turns out to actually be one of the best things on here. Loses a lot of its personality however, exchanging the organs for stupidly modern sounding keyboards, making it sound like Emerson was merely trying out all of the various noises his $400 keyboard can make. And Lake's voice is nowhere near what it was, sounding like he's got a cold or something, but at least they cut out a lot of the fat (on the song, not Greg). Oh, and "The Great Gates of Kiev" loses a LOT. No power whatsoever, showing him unfortunately trying to re-create the "death is life" lines which ultimately end up being painful to listen to. I mean, Lake may not be trying as hard anymore (which is actually good), but he still sounds downright terrible. Avoid like the plaque.
Hey! I've still got several live albums to cover. Check back in a couple years.
In
The Hot Seat (1994)