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From: "mech" <mech@m3ch.net>
>
> At 11:44 AM -0700 6/20/06, Paul Richards wrote:
>>
>>(I also tossed most of my ELP records out quite some time ago, however)
>>
>>For me, ELP hasn't held up over time. I've tried listening to their work
>>more than once the past few years, and while some of their stuff is
>still
>>good, much is overblown, mile-a-minute aimless noodling (as opposed to
>>direction'ed noodling).
>
> Ditto here. I still vaguely recall a few memorable lines from Tarkus or
> Brain Salad Surgery (Karn Evil 9?). I was a fan back when I was in high
> school, and used to routinely get into such typical juvenile
>"discussions"
> about who was the world's greatest rock keyboardist, Emerson or Wakeman
> (um, yeah -- high school...). Just for the sake of nostalgia, I trot
> those records back out every few years to see if there's still anything
> there. No luck yet. :P
>
> Although I'd like to believe that Emerson has to have had a sense of
>humor
> in there somewhere (oh come on now: a guy dressed in white spandex with
>a
> cape riding a flaming Hammond B3 twirling in mid-air? that's so absurdly
> overblown it's almost worthy of Zappa, George Clinton, or Liberace).
>But
> once you combine that amount of theatre with Carl Palmer's pomposity and
> Greg Lake's HUGELY overblown ego, the whole thing just cooks up a recipe
> for carsickness. Ugh!
I never bought "Tarkus" for two reasons: The cover art was the kind of
thing
I saw in fellow junior-high students, something done quickly in magic
marker, ink and colored pencils with a ruler; and the music comes across
as
"look what I can do with a synthesizer, folks!", combined with possibly
pompous or self-effacing martial themes.
Only two things stick out for me with ELP:
"Pictures at an Exhibition" is one which ELP-haters tend to really hate
("How dare they present classical" with more than a dash of "What a bunch
of
pretentious c*nts"). This album is pretty much a common point-of-attack
for
anyone who hates "progressive rock".
I LIKED PaaE because I was also listening to the great Tomita at the time
("Snowflakes are Dancing" is a masterpiece), and was interested in where
synthesizer music would have a relationship with the classical music world
-
during the same period I remember an article in National Geographic about
this very thing, which prematurely predicted the idea of entire marching
bands using synths instead of conventional instruments. When I eventually
saw the film that the record provided a soundtrack to, I was really
disappointed. But then I hadn't been introduced to certain psychotropics
at
the time as yet. :)
"Brain Salad Surgery" caught me at a point when I was experimenting with
drawing sci-fi comics. The imagery in "Karn Evil #9" is quite like that
depicted in Ellison's "A Boy and his Dog": "Leave your hammers at the
box".
Sinfield at his best I think. I think this was ELP at their best, and
everything afterwards is beyond awful ("Love Beach"??? "LOVE BEACH"???
As
Alice Cooper put it in the live version of "Welcome to My Nightmare",
"SOMEBODY MAKE IT STOP!!!")
Lastly the theatre aspect shouldn't be ignored. I was primarily sorry to
not make ELP's '75 tour because of that great rotating-speaker synth thing
at the end of "KE9" - I'd heard the Quad 8-track of it, which was probably
the best mix of the album, no pause between KE9 pts 1 and 2, where there
was
a fade-out on the LP and cassette. I'd hoped for a more fleshed-out
version
of the three-part piece, but alas! This mix doesn't seem to have survived
the transition to digital CDs...
Double-lastly I have not been able to believe the level of hatred the
British Tabloid/"Music" Magazine industry has for what they call "prog
rock", but I suspect it's because there's no "Spice Girl" element to it,
nor
scandal to exploit... or their tiny minds can't handle anything the music
biz doesn't know how to sell for them.
Hm, time for more coffee.
Stephen Goodman
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