Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums poll

wow did we really already run out of bands to poll?

I'll never get tired of hyping Love Beach.

Bless you.

S/T for me.

I picked BSS but I think "Welcome Back" is really the ultimate ELP album in many ways. Surprised so many people complained about it given that Yessongs is even longer.

heart says 'love beach,' brain says the mussorgsky thing

Loved these guys '70-'74, sold most of the albums in a big prog purge later in the decade. I have a vinyl copy of Welcome Back on my shelf that I will in all likelihood never play again in my lifetime. Would probably vote for the debut.

Went for "Brain Salad Surgery". Because of "Karn Evil 3".

"Love Beach" does actually contain one really great half side (the suite), which is much more than most critics are willing to give it. But it's still far from their best.

I'll argue that the title track was the predecessor to "Limelight", it really does sound like it to my ears

The only thing I can say about Love Beach is that it's really not half as horrible as you're led to believe, Keith is mostly restrained, the lyrics are cringe-worthy but most of the playing is tasteful. It's better than Works Vol. 1 or any of their 90's stuff.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Smallest total vote, potentially?

Trilogy. It might be a bit more spotty than Brain Salad Surgery but it has stronger material

Trilogy is def my second favorite. While the debut lacks what the later records have in sheer entertainment value, it carries over the best of Crimson's lyricism and the showoff-y playing hasn't pushed aside the songs entirely yet. Plus, "Knife-Edge" is killer.

X-Post: Actually I consider Brain Salad Surgery to be the patchy one, with little of value besides "Karn Evil". But "Karn Evil" takes up half an hour anyway, which makes it my obvious pick nevertheless. I feel that there is a bigger number of stronger tracks on "Trilogy" though, including "From The Beginning" which is their best ever non-prog track.

http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/oval-72-tarkus.jpg

I used to like to air-synthesize to "Lucky Man" back in grade 5.

Although they were arguably the most popular band of the whole prog rock movement (or 2nd to Yes?)

This is interesting. They seem pretty close, which I never realized, actually:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson,_Lake_%26_Palmer_discography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_discography

I have to assume you're not counting Pink Floyd or Queen as prog bands, though.:P

I only have Tarkus, which I don't think I've ever made it all the way through. I enjoy hearing them on the radio well enough. Anything in particular I really need to check out if I really like Yes/Genesis/Crimson/Tull?

Tarkus and BSS are really good.

mark s (markus) otm

greg lake is the actual most irritating singer in the history of rock (and all other music), mind you

^^^ this has never been polled, afaict. Lake irritates me occasionally, but he wouldn't even make my top (bottom?) ten.

Started by frogbs

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9ul9zN2Tf1qdmmiqo1_500.gif

i basically just post this whenever i have an opportunity, sorry

I only have Tarkus, which I don't think I've ever made it all the way through. I enjoy hearing them on the radio well enough. Anything in particular I really need to check out if I really like Yes/Genesis/Crimson/Tull?

― EveningStar (Sund4r)

The best thing about Trilogy (what I'd check out) is "The Endless Enigma (Part One)" and the title track

I voted for Trilogy, but I like everything up through the two volumes of Works. I wrote about these guys for the Voice in 2008, when Shout! Factory reissued their catalog, and then again this year when they put out Live at Nassau Coliseum '78.

Those reviews are pretty inspiring!

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

there might have been things i've missed, but don't be unkind

Regarding ELP's popularity compared to other prog bands, I think they were very huge back then, but it may seem that Yes and Genesis (and King Crimson, but they were partly different and more avant garde, at times slightly closer to krautrock and as such more accepted by people usually not into prog) are more respected in retrospect today, while ELP feel very much of their time.

Watching a video of Asia recently, I was surprised that Carl Palmer was not such a heavy drummer. He has a lot of finesse, I think.

(Haha, fron unperson's first piece linked above: "surprisingly jazzy drums.")

Actually, the most surprising thing about the results is that their usually most critically acclaimed album ("Tarkus") got only 1 vote.

'tarkus' is pretty hard to get through

In what world is Tarkus ELP's "most critically acclaimed album"?

MY WORLD

but i didn't vote for it -- lake is a terrible singer and can fuck off

In what world is Tarkus ELP's "most critically acclaimed album"?

In the world of the critics:
http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/Current/Emerson%20Lake%20&%20Palmer.htm

Where it comes in third?

Oh, never mind - I get it. (Lower numbers equal higher rank.)

Apologies for my ignorance, but what is "acclaimedmusic.net"?

hmmm, so if I did a "best ELP albums past 1974", Love Beach wins in a landslide?

Would Cozy Powell have been invited to the 1986 gig had his last name not started with "P"?

Olatunji was told not to bother.

Do you think Phil Collins got an invite, or did "Emerson, Lake, and Phil" sound too weird?

Did the Love Beach voters go with that one because of the 'Taste Of My Love' lyrics?

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.

god, every line of that is so beautiful

I just heard an album called "Keith Emerson Band featuring Marc Bonilla" and it's actually quite close to classic ELP - there's a 30-minute suite that's kinda like "Tarkus" (not quite as good, but very listenable), a Ginastara cover, a goofball ragtime tune, and a more metal take on the s/t's "Barbarian" as a bonus track. Emerson actually sounds quite good - he can't quite play at the same tempos but what he does works. I think ditching Lake for this one is probably the best thing that he could've done. I'd say it's the best ELP thing post 74, but it kinda wins that by default doesn't it?

i picked up "Tarkus" from a used record bin at Fantasyland Records yesterday for $5. i have always wondered about this album due to the odd cover art. it's pretty good but it suffers from the playing-lots-of-notes trap prog bands often fall into (sometimes never escaping) that i never cared for. i always tune out for these parts of long keyboard solos and everybody doing syncopated noodling of just lots of notes going up and down in a way that is impressive to serious music school-style Musicians. Zappa suffers from this, the Grateful Dead too. herein lies the dinosaur bloat.

i guess i've never band a fan of Math Rock though I can appreciate it as a form. i prefer a Soft Machine-style prog approach that is more based on economy and short repetitive themes. but i digress there is still a lot of cool synth rock and minimalist psychedelia and slow proto metal. Lake is a great singer! best when they let him sing over a riff and leave out the Math Rock. till prefer their first album but "Tarkus" is pretty nice!

ugh the first half of side 2 is pretty bad. really not liking the lyrics for the whole objectivist bit. ELP is trying hard to sound really profound but its all very hollow. its like a much less enjoyably musical The Wall. "Bitches Crystal" was trash. the last song here is kinda cool and sounds a little more like the first album.

The mellow Mimimoog solo on that one is the bees knees.

my dad played Trilogy all the time when I was 6...hearing that solo again on the radio at 13 was a trip

If Leonard Cohen had written these lyrics from The Only Way (off Tarkus) they'd be hailed as mordant genius rather than wittering stupidity:

Can you believe
God makes you breathe?
Why did he lose
Six million Jews?

elp planning reunion tour with e & l on film.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/emerson-lake-palmer-reunion-tour-interview-1247408/

lmao it's footage from the Black Moon tour

THE REUNION'S ON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2pYeyJCykc

I do enjoy the OTTness of their early live stuff but not a big fan of the studio stuff. Do have first couple and they do have a few moments bit think I'd only really listen to them live from first couple of years of the 70s.
Do like The Nice when Davy O'List was still on guitar.

There's a South American hard rock band called Tarkus that are supposed to be pretty good

i saw them in dec. 1973 at the nassau coliseum. admittedly not the first *couple* of years in the 70s and maybe it would have been cooler to have seen them earlier but it was cool nonetheless. in quad! this is, apparently, what we got. any earlier tour and there would have been no karn evil 9.

Hoedown
Jerusalem
Toccata
Tarkus
Benny the Bouncer
Take a Pebble
Still… You Turn Me On
Lucky Man
Piano Improvisation
Karn Evil 9
Pictures at an Exhibition

playing now on bass, there is Greg with younger face

(not my comment by the way but it makes me laugh)

I saw Carl Palmer with Asia on their first tour. He is indeed a monster. The other two were talentless douchebags.

i know it's not exactly groundbreaking as composed music but i still genuinely like piano concert no.1 -- it has a nice bony momentum

someone shd actually write up their approach to rescoring the classical classics (i once had a discussion with chris cutler at a bar where he made a p good case for pictures at an exhibition as a genuine contribution to whatchamacallit)

maybe someone already wrote this

nice bony momentum and no greg lake 🥰

the way Pictures opens - Greg saying "we're gonna give you Pictures at an Exhibition" and then a huge crowd immediately going nuts - is really one of my favorite rock n' roll moments. my whole life prog has been kind of a niche thing for nerds like myself but back then people were fucking bananas for it.

I first heard that here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBpjCGo7y8

My roommate in boarding school was a fan of New Order and the like while I was going through my dorky prog phase. And he was simply aghast at the sheer amount of closing applause they included before they played “Nutrocker” as an encore. Listening now, it is apparently only 54 seconds but in fairness it does feel more like 54 minutes.

Sorry, Chris.

DO YA WANT to hear some more MUSIC???

**proceeds to play the worst thing you've ever heard in your life**

Can-Can was apparently a bridge too far.

I will hand it to Pictures at an Exhibition though it's one of the all-time goofiest prog LPs and it came when the genre was really at its peak, there's really something admirable about that

Guilty pleasure of mine - a big one - is the first four songs off the Emerson, Lake, Powell album. The bombast is especially cartoony and yet still potent and Emerson carries it on his shoulders. He really shone on this thing. Have to bless their hearts for keepin' it real and covering Holst in 1986. The likes of "90125" but a mosquito on the ass of Tarkus.

emerson >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> rick wakeman
chris squire & jon anderson >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>greg lake lol

I meant to write "For them the likes of "90125"..."

That's not my personal opinion on "90125".

yeah the Powell album is quite good, first of all if you listen on a decent system it actually sounds pretty amazing, secondly I love how ridiculous a lot of it is, from Emerson just hammering these goofy digital synths to basically all of Lake's lyrics. I think both sides are good too, "Love Blind" is a pretty catchy little tune, "Step Aside" is one of Keith's prettier jazz tunes, and as you mention the cover of "Mars" is a pretty wild thing to do in 1986 (plus don't it sound exactly like the Super Mario 3 airship music in the beginning?)

Lake's voice was starting to deepen a bit but he could still really sing - crazy to compare this to Black Moon, only 6 years later. outside of Gordon Lightfoot I can't think of anyone whose voice went that fast.

It really does sound great. The '80s verb worked in their favor and I like Powell's style of drumming behind the other two. I didn't care for anything else Lake and Emerson did after this until the posthumous "Live from Manticore Hall" album that popped up in '22.

The album by 3 (which is Emerson, Robert Berry, and Palmer) kinda sucks but the live recordings are pretty good, they play a bunch of ELP instrumental stuff, the crowd sounds really greased up, and Emerson actually sounds really good which means his hand problems must've started shortly after.

the Keith Emerson Band album from 2008 is pretty decent too, miles ahead of the actual ELP reunion albums at least. Lake is the one who really seemed to go downhill, everything he did since those Works songs feels real half-assed and disengaged to me

I could never get into Berry's voice. Too far into the Richard Marx school for my taste.

I hear Emerson's love of Aaron Copeland in many of the melodies throughout ELPowell as well. Adds to the endearment factor.

I always wondered why Lake didn't produce others. He did a decent job on Pete Sinfield's album and he seemed to steer the ELP albums to success for a while as well.

I’m a huge fan of the Powell record’s version of Mars. The climactic synth run that Emerson does is probably a top 5, maybe 3, ELP moment for me.

I gotta say I still find Brain Salad Surgery to be an astounding record, most other prog bands at the time were focused on getting better or evolving their sound but ELP just said "nah we're good enough, let's just go fuckin nuts with this one", not even really pretending to make 'serious' music. I actually think I can get my 9 year old into prog with this album

also now that I've listened to a hundred revival albums I feel like it's the one classic prog LP that hasn't really been mined for ideas yet, outside of maybe "Jerusalem" introducing the big bombastic hymn into the prog vocabulary. everything else is too weird or wild for other bands to want to try. even Triumvirat must've heard this and gone "okay I guess we're going our own way now"

how have i never heard love beach

the way Pictures opens - Greg saying "we're gonna give you Pictures at an Exhibition" and then a huge crowd immediately going nuts - is really one of my favorite rock n' roll moments. my whole life prog has been kind of a niche thing for nerds like myself but back then people were fucking bananas for it.

This is on Sky Arts just now and it's Keith Emerson who introduces the set not Greg Lake - but maybe the album is different? Anyway, it's a load of nonsense but has a kind of campy entertainment value. Emerson's corny Hammond organ playing sounds like something from the prehistoric period, the moog is pretty corny too when he tries to play a tune on it but much better when he concentrates on making weird noises. It's very hard to believe people took this stuff seriously.

One of my pet projects that I'll never get around to doing is to extract all the free noise parts of those live ELP box sets and collage them into an avant epic, a la Neil Young's "Arc".

it could be Keith! I assumed it wasn't because I thought in this performance he started on the top floor playing the big organ and then ran downstairs, which is why there's that little drum solo in the beginning? maybe he had a mic up there.

I think it's cool that there was an era where this stuff really sold. as ridiculous as ELP were I actually don't find them as pretentious as the other prog groups because their music is so silly. they're the one prog band a child could get into.

it's STUNT MUSIC (complimentary)! it's liked saying the circus is lah-di-dah pretentious because there's a knife-thrower and a fire eater

sadly greg lake remains the worst singer in rock (derogatory)

I liked the bit where Emerson was twirling his Hammond around extracting all sorts of cool feedback noise.

There was a Genesis concert film on before it but there didn't seem to be much music and instead far too much of the two most boring (and poshest) men in the history of rock music, Banks and Rutherford, droning on about mixing their lastest album or sumthin'. Phil Collins sat between them looking as bored as I felt.

ive probably posted abt this before but when i was at school (the 1970s) there was a small but excitable ELP fandom -- and one of them once relayed to me that modernist argentine composer alberto ginastera had announced that emerson's er novelty cover version of ginastera's 1st piano concerto was "the only guy who truly got me" (or similar phrasing anyway, this is very nearly 50 years ago)

the cut in question is "toccata" off of BRAIN SALAD SURGERY, 1973 = a riot of silly synth settings and percussive farty-bleepy noises

neither of us knew anything abt ginastera, tho as a diligent A level music student i probably had gone and looked him up in the school music library (one shelf of books in a faraway little-used room w/a piano in it) (there was a big grove's music dictionary there. a resource frusttatingly barren of classical music after like 1940ish)

meanwhile the ELP fan (no one's idea of an insightful cultural maven even when discussing prog) (i thought he was a twerp at the time and doubt he grew out of this) was simply incredulous: "ginastera can't possibly mean that!"

my conclusion i suppose (anecdata from the era) is that even fans who tremendously admired this strand in rock did not in any plausible sense think it was rooted on some official classicalised foundation or drew its authority from a reverencing of the traditions. they liked it bcz of the airhorns and the explosions! rick wakeman was an amusing drunk in a cape who could more or less fat-finger his way thru a limited selection of fast keyboard runs!

ELP were awesome (in the "Dude, that was awesome" sense). When their catalog was reissued by Shout! Factory in 2008, I wrote about them for the Village Voice.

Their self-titled studio debut, from 1970, was a collection of stuff each member wrote individually, except for “The Barbarian,” which was cribbed from Bartók, and another cut, “Knife Edge,” that’s based on Janácek but also includes a healthy chunk of Bach. (In fine British rock tradition—see “Zeppelin, Led”—the songwriting credits didn’t reflect these appropriations until years later.) But the pattern— brain-blastingly loud organ and Moog lines, thundering yet surprisingly jazzy drums, almost mellow vocals, and songs that cribbed openly and shamelessly from classical—had been set. It continued on the band’s second and third discs (both released in 1971), Tarkus, and a live run through Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Trilogy was relatively pop-friendly by comparison, and featured “From the Beginning,” ELP’s second big single after “Lucky Man,” from the debut. But then came their studio masterpiece, the album that made them gods to stoned high-school students across America. Brain Salad Surgery, the 1973 album that got them selling out arenas (and the only one of these Shout! Factory reissues to come in a digipak, the better to reproduce its foldout H.R. Giger artwork), is a stone killer from beginning (their recasting of William Blake’s hymn “Jerusalem” as an epic call to prog-rock battle) to end (the hilariously cynical “Karn Evil 9” suite).

Revisiting this catalog 35 (!) years later, it’s amazing how little music has “progressed.” Snip 20 random seconds of Emersonian Moog-frenzy from the live album and play it for a Wolf Eyes fan—see if he can tell the difference. Another quality that leaps out is the propulsive rhythm work. What happened to all the great British drummers? In the early ’70s, English boys could actually wail—Carl Palmer, John Bonham, Bill Bruford, Alan White, and even Phil Collins were kicking ass behind the kit. This allowed ELP to dip into honky-tonk and even swing rhythms when the mood struck them—which it did with almost distressing frequency (“Benny the Bouncer,” “Are You Ready Eddy,” “Barrelhouse Shake-Down”). For prog-rockers, they sure liked to look backward. Listeners interested in sonic surprise should do the same. These six studio albums and two live discs are the gateways to a world of balls-out craziness the likes of which is nowhere to be found in rock circa 2008.

greg lake remains the worst singer in rock

He's not even the worst singer to perform in a band with Keith Emerson! I give you Mr. Lee Jackson of the Nice.

Another quality that leaps out is the propulsive rhythm work.

I always felt Carl Palmer somehow managed to play drums as fast as possible without actually building any momentum, although ELP was possibly the ideal situation where this stiffness could actually reinforce the general aesthetic.

i saw their brain salad surgery show at the nassau coliseum on (looks it up) 12/13/73 so i was 15. i think i fell into the "dude that was awesome" camp. i'm pretty sure it was in quad, with speakers at the stage and also in the far corners of the arena, with emerson making ample use of them. i'm not sure whether carl palmer's kit turned upside-down during the solo. you'd think that would be something i'd remember. i was more of a trilogy devotee than bss.

wow it looks like they encored with "pictures at an exhibition." cool!

i think my prog friends back then really did have a classical bias. they'd try to convince me that greg lake was a better singer than mick jagger because he had a purity of tone and could hit the notes. they also couldn't listen to anything involving slide guitar or pedal steel because it "always sounds out of tune."

don't really get the hatred towards Lake as a singer. most modern prog bands would kill for a voice like that. I agree there's something to how pure his voice is, similar to Justin Hayward I guess, admittedly I don't think he ever topped what he did on that first King Crimson album. it is funny that he's often given credit for grounding the band, or making them "listenable", imo he was way more pretentious than the other two. Emerson and Palmer at least looked like they were having loads of fun. I actually kinda question how much Lake was really into the stuff ELP was doing.

Lake had that choirboy quality to his voice that unfortunately reminds me of how big an influence Anglican hymns were on prog. Everyone of that era would have grown up singing them at school/church and the influence seems to have seeped in unbidden.

don't really get the hatred towards Lake as a singer. most modern prog bands would kill for a voice like that.

Agree 100%; I think he was a great singer.

dude you hate singers

No, I hate lyrics, and thus hate most clean vocals in English. Lake's lyrics (or whoever's) were jabbering nonsense, but he delivered them exactly right. I enjoy the vocal performance while ignoring the actual words.

lol ok dude

Your words waste and decay
Nothing you say
Reaches my ears anyway

I will say as a lyricist Lake is almost impressively bad, the way he comes up with ridiculous lines just to make something rhyme is often hilarious actually