It has been one hell of a year in the music world so far. And not in a good way, either. Too many of music's most beloved characters are leaving this earth, and far too early. It really goes back to last summer and the shocking death of Chris Squire. And then we lost Lemmy, at the end of the year. 2016 kicked off and we lost David Bowie, Paul Kantner, Maurice White, Dan Hicks, and Glen Frey, and we learned that it's all but certain that Rush is retiring. And it just doesn't end either, as two days ago we learned of the suicide of the great Keith Emerson. Founder of The Nice as well as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Keith was one of the greatest keyboard players of all time. Even the mighty Rick Wakeman would happily bow to King Emerson. His tragic and senseless demise will haunt the prog world for years to come.
I will admit. I have never been a super huge ELP fan. When I was first getting into prog, back in 8th & 9th grade, I bought all their albums on vinyl (at the Record Mart), because that's what you did. And I listened to them quite a bit. But to this day I have never been able to connect with their music in the same way that I did with King Crimson, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and especially Yes. I've never been able to put my finger on it either. I never hated ELP, never even disliked them, just kind of accepted them as a very casual fan. I guess it always seemed to me that they were more concerned with showing off than with creating something of vast substance. Perhaps it has to do with their sound, specifically the lack of a dedicated guitar player. The rest of the Big Five bands created dense music featuring bonafide guitar gods whereas ELP was driven by Keith Emerson's keyboard skills. There were times when Greg Lake would play guitar, and it is awesome, but those times were few and far between, and his skills came more with his singing and bass playing anyway. Then again, maybe my aversion came to the showmanship. While the other big bands were outlandish in their own ways (Yes with their crazy stage sets, Genesis with Peter Gabriel's outrageous costumes, Pink Floyd with their lasers and flying pigs....King Crimson just stood there and were loud), ELP was the band that turned a show into a circus, with Emerson throwing his organ around, sticking knives into the keys, and playing piano while spinning through the air, high above the stage, and Carl Palmer's massive percussion rig with all the gongs and whatnot. It was performance art, a textbook example of prog excess, I just could never buy it, so I never really paid attention to their music. I take full responsibility for that. They are one of the most important bands of the genre and were massively successful - obviously they have something going on there. And its not like I disliked their music - it just always kinda went in one ear and out the other. Oftentimes their music comes across as gibberish but I love gibberish so I should probably find a way to enjoy this gibberish too. It makes sense, yeah? It's been ages since I've listened to them. Tonight I will give it another go. Not from scratch, oh no. No time for that (it's currently an hour later than it is, if ya dig). So I will go for the good ones.
I can't remember what the first ELP album I had was. Probably the first album, from a 99 cent bin or something. But I remember being totally excited about Tarkus when I bought it ($3.95 at the Mart) because it had a side-long song. I was obsessed with 2112 and Close To The Edge at the time, and both of those albums kicked off with a song that took up the whole first side. The difference here is that, well, this shit is weird. I mean, that other shit is pretty weird too, but ELP's music is truly, purely, 100% certified bonkers. There are no two ways around that. Combine that with the fact that, instrumentally, this is really stripped down trio playing...the antithesis of the rest of the Big Five. I tip my hat to them for being able to compose, learn, and remember this material.
As I mentioned before, This album kicks off with the side-long title track, a perfect example of music going totally mental. Dark, funky verses intermingle with Zappa-esque interludes, overflowing with manic, spastic triplets that roll over you like an armadillo tank. Greg Lake proves his is one of the coolest voices in prog, while even offering up some tasty, Gilmour-inspired guitar solos, amidst his cohorts' bombast. There is a good deal of padding on this track, unnecessary reprises...it goes on and on. It probably did not need to take up a whole side. But it's still cool. I dig a lot of this track.
In contrast, side two is made up of six shorter songs. "Jeremy Bender" kind of comes across like their "Harold The Barrel", an effortlessly cool little song that offers a breather between the sonic assault of side one and the hyper-intense "Bitches Crystal", which comes next. Fusing all the energy from "Tarkus" with a proto-punk vigor, a dash of "Seven And Seven Is", a pinch of Zappa, and a sprig of Vince Guaraldi's classic "Skating" - and played super-fast - "Bitches Crystal" very well may be their best song ever. It has always been the one song from this album that did grab a hold of me. Next up, Greg Lake offers us new sort of hymn with "The Only Way", accompanied by Emerson on pipe organ before the band kicks in and segues into "Infinite Space", laying down a sick Dave Brubeck kind of groove. Heavy organ rock comes next with "Time And A Place", a very "typical" ELP song, if there could ever be one. If they had full-time guitar in the band, this track would surely be the heaviest of metal. After such a heavy and serious album, they cut loose on the silly closing track, "Are You Ready Eddy?", which is a old time, Jerry Lee Lewis type of rocker, sung to Eddy Offord, the engineer. There is nothing at all prog about this track and that's why it was always a favorite, back in the day. You don't often get to hear these serious musicians cutting loose and having a laugh. I really dig that.
I always love to listen to old things with new ears. Whether it's something I know by heart or an album that went sorely neglected for decades, there is always something fresh with each listen. While I will not profess to being, all of a sudden, an ELP devotee, I will say that I enjoyed this immensely. They are still as pompous as I always accuse them to be. However, at closer listen, it is clear that there is some serious shit going on there. I can't help but respect that.
This inspired me to pull 1973's Brain Salad Surgery from the shelf. It actually hasn't been that long since I've listened to this, but it's been years since I've really paid really close attention to it. This is already proving to be interesting. Everything I said before about them being bonkers, well...shit, what the hell comes after bonkers? Stark raving mad? That's about right.
Kicking off with a tremendous arrangement of "Jerusalem" - you know, William Blake, "green and pleasant land" and all that - a very stately beginning to the madness that is to come, in their frantic arrangement of Ginostera's "Toccata" - seven minutes of moog synthesizers, staccato blasts, free jazz, fusion, and deep psychedelic swirls. This is music that will send you right to the brink. I don't think even King Crimson ever got this nuts. It raises my blood pressure but I sure do appreciate the hell out of it. Clever music is clever music. Even more clever is the way that it dissolves into Greg Lake's classic, the mostly-acoustic "Still...You Turn Me On". I've always loved the detached, spaced-out quality of this recording. A rare ELP song to be credited solely to Lake, it makes me think I should explore his solo work. Next up is "Benny The Bouncer", which is a really goofy, ragtime-inspired number that follows in the footsteps of "Are You Ready Eddy". Kind of an end-of-session track, just to blow off steam and have fun.
Which they might as well do because the rest of side one and the entirety of side two is devoted to the 39-minute opus, "Karn Evil #9", which tells the story of a futuristic world that is run by computers, where all evil and decadence have been eradicated, preserved only as carnival attractions....the show that never ends....of course eventually there's a war with the computers and a number of different scenarios play out. A couple of extracts from this piece were released as singles, the most famous of which ("First Impression: Part 2") kicks off side two with the familiar greeting - "welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends". Ironic, given the length of this track. An edit from "First Impression: Part One" is also played on classic rock radio a fair bit. Unlike much of their work, Greg Lake plays a great deal of guitar on this track, proving himself to be one hell of a player. Keith Emerson totally takes charge here, running organ leads, synth effects, and bass pedals, all at the same time. And then, with 'Second Impression", he shows that sometimes all you need is a piano. And a percussionist that can totally hang with your oddball changes, which Carl Palmer does, ably. The final section, "Third Impression", finds the band going back into bonkers mode, Emerson throwing down mad Moog loops, Greg Lake carrying on a dialog with a computer, and the aural equivalent of a war. Nonsense, I tell you! But compelling nonetheless.
One last gasp before I wrap this up....I can't celebrate Keith Emerson without mentioning The Nice. Before ELP, there was The Nice. Assembled by Emerson, initially to serve as PP Arnold's backing band, it wasn't long before they realized they had something there and they split off to do their own thing. As he did later in ELP, Emerson arranged classical pieces to fit the construct of a rock band, as well as appropriating bits and pieces from all over, to create their own, whimsical psychedelic sound. To be honest, I've paid more attention to The Nice over the years than ELP. Taken on their own, had there never been an ELP or anything like that, this band would still be remembered for their five groundbreaking albums. While Emerson's influence was the one that tended to dominate, this was still a band, and the contributions of bassist Lee Jackson, drummer Brian Davison, and (on this album only) guitarist David O'List cannot be understated. Their first album,The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack came in 1967 and easily holds its own against the most ambitious albums from that year. Their arrangement of Brubeck's "Blue Rondo A La Turk" is among the most wicked of psych tracks to come out that year, or any year. I think I will do a thing on The Nice later, so I won't go into detail about this album other than it's awesome, it's Keith Emerson's introduction to the world, and I am listening to it right now.
That's the beauty of records....the player may be long gone but the song lives on. Rest in peace, Keith Emerson. I sure do hope you found your peace.
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