VOTD 3/21/2023

 Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends - Ladies and Gentlemen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (Manticore)

Purchased at a Jerry's dollar sale

Is there any question why punk rock happened?

I have in my hands a particular artifact of the 1970s: the triple LP live album. Actually, I can only think of one other example, being Yessongs. The three LPs would fit easily onto a double CD set, which doesn't seem so outrageous. Still, a TRIPLE LP LIVE ALBUM. The height of hubris? Even the packaging yells excess, with each LP contained in a die cut sleeve, forming the letters E, L, and P in faux metal printing. 

This period finds them at the crest of their popularity, touring on Brain Salad Surgery and its AOR radio hit "Karn Evil 9 (Second Impression)." I will embarrassingly admit I didn't get the pun in the title for a long time. 

What kind of live band was ELP? Not bad, apart from your opinion of the music. It's not the easiest music in the world to play, and they charge through. Keith Emerson is clearly at the center of things. For a live album, it seems sloppily edited to me, with uninteresting banter and incomplete, spare musical sounds left in. 

From the beginning and at various points in the album, I hear one of the things that bugs me the most about this band, and that is Carl Palmer's sloppy drumming. He's not good with tempos. The opening "Hoedown" starts fast, and Carl enters at a noticeably faster tempo. Later, somewhere in the middle of "Tarkus" he's dragging the tempo down. 

In my previous post about ELP, I stated that I didn't think Greg Lake was an especially good singer. That's on display here, on and off. Sometimes he sounds fine, other times not so much. He doesn't hit the high notes in "Tarkus" especially well. And his bass is noticeably out of tune sometimes, but maybe I can cut him slack on that, considering it might be in the middle of a 20 minute epic piece.

And how do I feel about the middle of this monster, breaking down into solo sections for Greg Lake and Keith Emerson? Greg's songs do well in a solo voice/guitar setting. On the other hand, Emerson's piano solo improvisations (including his quoting of some ragtime) seem like a big flash-fest. A lot of technique, a lot of showing off. Art Tatum did it much better, and he's not even one of my favorites.

The educator in me cries out: do your comments all need to be so negative? Isn't it better to find the positives, even among these negatives? 

It is amazing that this is music that drew such large audiences at one time. These guys, for all the (sometimes deserved) critiques, were taken seriously. People came to see this music, in sometimes admittedly altered states. Currently, hardly anything that could be described as a "rock band" has a chance on the charts. ELP was huge in its time. The monster prog rock was definitely a thing of the 1970s. 

Maybe it's a good thing this triple live document happened, because it's pretty much downhill for the band after this. Three years after this came the Works albums. First a double LP, each member given a side of their own, the fourth as group. What could have indicated excess, or a band in decline, more than that? Follow that with the single second volume, which included pieces rejected from Brain Salad Surgery. And they probably should have remained on the cutting room floor. 

Fast forward another year, and it's Love Beach. It's interesting to read some of the review responses on discogs.com, some people will defend anything. One person writes, "Best Album Ever released." In response, another writes, "Surely, you jest. This isn't simply ELP's worst release, it's one of the worst rock albums in history."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the correct response.

That brings us to 1978, and the time is turning. ELP has past its heyday, prog rock in general would no longer be the popular idiom it once was. Which is not to say there isn't life in the idea of "progressive." While not specifically the definition of progressive rock, Robert Fripp's Exposure was released in 1979, an occasionally flawed but interesting (at times exciting) album. 1981, King Crimson's Discipline was released, broadly a prog statement but far more lean and stripped back than earlier examples. 

I suppose I could try to define what "prog rock" even means, but I'll skip it for now.

I remember a review Love Beach I read in Creem at the time of its release. Rather than criticize it directly, the writer created a brief short story of a teen who would bought that album but stole a punk rock record to hide in its sleeve, so his record reviewer father wouldn't know what he was actually listening to. A three word review such as "This is GARBAGE" would have said enough, but I have to admit I remember that review. 

And so, is it any wonder that punk rock happened? In part as a response to bands and albums such as this? But not just punk, a more stripped down band such as Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers had their first album in 1976, and the tide was already turning. Yes' Tormato was released in 1978. Their best days clearly had come and gone. 

I never owned this particular album as a teen. Listening to it now (the first time to completion) I feel a bit of wistfulness between my moments of annoyance. As I've written before, ELP were never one of my favorites, but I did like them. Picturing myself, all of sixteen, headphones on in my living room, listening to Trilogy and feeling like I was in another place. I turn 60 in four weeks. Where has that kid gone? Is it still me?