Emerson, Lake, and Palmer: Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Atlantic)
I think I bought this at a Jerry's Records dollar sale
I was a prog rock teen. I liked the idea of complexities, and also that I wasn't just listening to top 40 album music. Some of this was the hubris of youth, wanting to feel like I was listening to something "different" and even "weird."
I had a couple of ELP records, dubbed at least one or two others, but they were never among my favorites. I preferred Yes, and even (God help me) at times Kansas. Leftoverture was the first LP I bought for myself, what can I say?* Discovering Wetton/Bruford era King Crimson was a revelation to me though, because the music was tougher and harder-hitting.
I had a copy of this record in high school, which I bought in of all places, a family trip to Mexico City. I later sold it off in one of several record purges I've done, only to repurchase it in what I think was a dollar sale.
This music was well established when I bought it, but must have sounded wildly original when it was released. It's strange to think that this was one of the biggest bands in the world at one time, confirming to me that what we generally think of as "progressive rock" was largely a 1970s phenomenon. I know, there are some variants of progressive rock to this day, but it doesn't nearly have the cultural impact that it once did.
I pulled this out because David Kuzy (Chrome Dinette) commented about ELP's Pictures At an Exhibition on Facebook, essentially saying it should have been scaled back by about half. I guess I had a copy in high school, a yard sale find no doubt, that was also purged. I don't miss it. The topic of "The Barbarian" came up, which is an adaption of a Bartók (uncredited here) piano piece. I have to agree it's successful. It also says something of the band's pretensions though, as in, "see, we can be classical too!"
But what of that? Why not be ambitious? Should rock music be just the stuff of pubs, derived ultimately from blues forms? Of course not, any more than Charles Mingus should be limited from composing a symphonic work such as Epitaph, possibly the single most ambitious of all jazz works. It's easy to call this music pretentious. On the one hand, it's probably somewhat true. There's a lot of flashy technique that Keith Emerson seems to want to constantly show off. On the other, I think the most pretentious thing you can be is bad. Getting on stage and playing poorly, having a shitty band that plays shitty music in a shitty manner. THAT is pretentious.
"Knife-Edge" is based on a theme by Janáček (also uncredited here), which is probably the hardest hitting piece on this album. Except....it turns into a Bach-like prelude sort of thing in the middle, which to me really blunts the impact of the piece. I think the same thing about Yes' "Siberian Khatru" in which Rick Wakeman has a Baroque-ish harpsichord solo break, which I find to be completely unnecessary and breaks the mood.
As I write that last statement, I think two things: who am I to say they shouldn't have included those things? It's their choices, and I have to decided only if I like it or not based on my own tastes only. Also, am I not just going on and on and on here?
I never grow tired of something that's a component of "Knife-Edge" though, and it's a distorted Hammond B3 sound (or whatever electric organ he used). I don't always like Deep Purple's songs, but I love the sound they had, centered on Jon Lord's grungy organ sound. That, to me, is super heavy.
There was alway an essential conflict in this band, of Keith Emerson's classical and jazz-leaning virtuosities, and Greg Lake's more traditional songwriting. This record, as most ELP albums were, is dominated by Emerson, with Lake's contributions largely being "Take a Pebble" and "Lucky Man", the latter a notable AOR radio hit with a significant Moog synth solo.
Greg Lake. Hm. He's not awful, but I never found him to be an especially good vocalist. And his songs? They border on, if not cross over into.....wuss territory. I'm sorry/not sorry. I don't tend to notice lyrics unless they're bad, and Greg sometimes delivers some whoppers. He sings in "Still...You Turn Me On" (on a different album)..."Someone get me a ladder!"...and it's clear the lyric is only there to deliver a rhyme. It's bad.
Still, I don't regret visiting this little piece of history on a Sunday morning. It seems appropriate. It's a time that seems distant and strange now, looking back on it.
*There was a player for the Pittsburgh Pirates named John Vander Wal. He was playing at a time when there was a live organist for the games.** One time when John went up to bat, the organist quoted "The Wall", the second song off of Leftoverture. I was thrilled to have recognized it. Was I the only person in the stands who got the reference?
**All music is canned at Pirates games now, including the recording of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in which the organist doesn't resolve the bass note at the end. Every time I hear it I think, PLEASE resolve to the root! And it never comes.
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