IT'S THE ELP EPICS POLL!!!!

Considered voting for "Memoirs..." which is a great track from an otherwise far from great album. But, it's "Karn Evil", really....

Endless Enigma for me because it is moving and fun to sing to. Very dramatic.

Not sure I agree with your logic on Pictures, Geir. If it makes no sense tearing it to bits, it doesn't make any sense not listing Misplaced Childhood, for example, as one track in the Marillion epics poll or The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway as one track on the Genesis poll.

Anyway (they say she comes on a pale horse), I agree with you - its Karn Evil 9 whether Pictures is one track or not.

The thing with Pictures is, the 1993 re-recording is one track, and it would be meaningless to treat the 1971 live album otherwise.

Memoirs..." which is a great track from an otherwise far from great album

I will not stand for any trashing of Love Beach. It remains their high-water mark, particularly A Taste Of My Love, their best song ever.

I'm going with "Tarkus", which for me is more consistently enjoyable throughout. "Karn Evil 9" has moments that are superior, though I think the final "Impression" (ha ha) is weak, save the channel-cycling ending.

If "Toccata" were included, I'd have voted for that.

I guess I put the limit at around 8 minutes just to avoid "Toccata". I hate "Toccata". :)

Considered voting for "Memoirs..." which is a great track from an otherwise far from great album.

Geir, you've given me enough reason to link this shameless plug.

"Take A Pebble" . Because it's pretty.

I think only ONE of these ends with a man-computer battle.
ENT. ER. PROGRAM.
I. AW. YOURSELF.

"But I gave you life!"

WHAT ELSE. DID. YOU DO?

"something something right!"

I'M. PERFECT. ARE YOU?

beepboopbeepbeepbeepboopboopboppbeepbeepbeepbeep

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

What's wrong with me, I immediately thought of Electric Light Parade?

Is that some mixture between ELO and Electric Soft Parade? :)

Who? I don't know anything anymore. Hand me a Dave Matthews CD.

Now that this poll is done,

I've begun to see the rEaSoN WHY I'M....HERE!!!!!
[Moog: doo-REE doo-REE doo-REEEEEEEE!]

trilogy as a song

don't really know what to do with it

ridiculousity

Tarkus is the longest song I can find on most internet-jukeboxes, and is always a good bit of fun to play once or twice in a row at the pizza parlor.

discovering this band rn at my gf's insistence

holy shit :D

the shorter stuff is obviously mostly filigree, humorous dicking-about, no real sense of having to craft a whole-album experience, mostly because the epics, when they come, ARE the whole-album experience

while not written with the same intensity or genius as say VDGG I'd put them far closer to that sonic camp than say Genesis

Emerson's style is always so playful, like he's dicking around at least a little bit all the time. It's thoroughly endearing and not a little exciting - almost Pynchonian - the same dazzling flair and wink, the same supreme confidence of tone and melody while hinting or directly confronting its subversion at the points of stress

they're not really a BAND - they're essentially a brilliant soloist with some decent backing - and they don't attain VDGG's gripping synthesis, but they're lovely & i gotta say the haters are more humourless & square than the music

I thought you were describing ELP's sound as "sonic camp" at first.

lol otm

"This can't be Dokken! There's no metallic pose, nor is there any macho swagger. But it actually is the once-headbangin' Dokken, digging up a 1972 Emerson, Lake & Palmer classic and delivering it with beatnik restraint. Don Dokken comes across as if he's having the time of his life here, shining over a strumming acoustic guitar/bongo arrangement. Can this be the start of a comeback? If the Beavis and Butt-head generation has its say, it very well might. "

Emerson's style is always so playful, like he's dicking around at least a little bit all the time. It's thoroughly endearing and not a little exciting - almost Pynchonian - the same dazzling flair and wink, the same supreme confidence of tone and melody while hinting or directly confronting its subversion at the points of stress

they're not really a BAND - they're essentially a brilliant soloist with some decent backing - and they don't attain VDGG's gripping synthesis, but they're lovely & i gotta say the haters are more humourless & square than the music

imago FTW

Emerson, Lake & Pynchon

Imago - you ever hear of The Nice? That really is "essentially a brilliant soloist with some decent backing" - L&P felt more than decent, but also more liable to get in the way. The Nice on the other hand had plenty of ambition but needed Emerson to pretty much do all the work. Their '68 LP Ars Longa Vita Brevis is awesome, probably the first album that was really prog rock as we know it today, complete with a 4-movement "suite" which is real hit-and-miss but was to my knowledge the first time a band ever attempted something like that.

ELP I can't help but love - it's so awesome and over-the-top at times, and it seemed like neither L or P had the ability to tell Emerson 'no' to anything which meant the band was constantly indulging in their wildest impulses. You can argue their musical merit all day but to me ELP knows their role as entertainers and in their prime they never lost sight of that fact.

Still hard to believe how hard they hit the wall. Apparently Emerson's hand surgeries were botched numerous times and he simply can't play anymore today. Lake's voice went from golden to hokey to inexplicably dropping an octave and losing any sort of tunefulness. Hearing them on Regis in '92 or whatever playing "From the Beginning" - which, in the studio, was one of the richest and most beautiful ballads ever - was just incredibly sad, they clearly didn't have it anymore. That '93 studio run-through of "Pictures" is much much worse. And they were only like 40 at the time! Certainly Yes weren't composing the same level of material in the 90's but Keys to Ascension showed at least they could still play 95% as well. ELP couldn't write, couldn't play, couldn't do anything but tour as a nostalgia act.

That said I did think the Keith Emerson Band with Marc Bonilla that formed in '08 was alright - it's better than anything he's done since, christ, Brain Salad Surgery, Emerson's hampered a bit but at least resembles what he used to sound like. Sadly I don't think Emerson can even play like that anymore. Oh well.

Didn't ELP perform in recent years?

I've found them an extremely mixed bag (from listening to 3 albums and a few live videos). I've always thought that the second segment (the "roll up and see the show" part) of Karn Evil 9 was astonishing with its fantastic absurdity but the rest of it highly uneven.

The last one I got was Tarkus and although it has short flashes of good stuff, I didn't think any of the tracks were particularly great, seems a bit plain for such a famous album.

"Take A Pebble" is really lovely.

This is pretty great : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMd95IIexHo

I've heard The Nice's version of America and it rules, yeah.

To be clear, my praise up there is directed more or less exclusively at Tarkus (song), Karn Evil Nine and Toccata, but these, at least, are pieces of great substance

Didn't ELP perform in recent years?

Yeah - their last performance was at the High Voltage festival in 2010, and it was awful. Emerson played like he was wearing mittens. Lake blew nearly all his cues. Palmer was constantly a quarter-beat behind. Furthermore, the CD that was released of it was mistakenly pressed as a "greatest hits" set. Their 90's shows weren't much better but they at least had their moments.

Must be terrible for a virtuoso to wear out their hands, scary that it is fairly common.