Recommend some Emerson, Lake, & Palmer for me

Cafe Society
1

Ever since I was a kid listening to classic rock radio in the car with my parents, I’ve heard “Karn Evil 9” in snippets here and there. When I was little, I just knew it as the song that started with “Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends” and got all loud and exciting and didn’t make a lot of sense. Years later, as an adult, I actually learned what it was called, and I had enough of an understanding of rock history to be able to appreciate it as an early forebear of synth-rock, but I still didn’t understand a lick of it aside from a general idea that it was about some sort of weird circus.

In the last few weeks, I learned that it was just a snippet of a 29-minute-long rock opera about a dystopian future, and I decided to hunt down and listen to the full song, and I discovered it was an epic story about the fall of mankind and the rise of the machines, with some absolutely stellar keyboards, generally all-around amazing technical mastery, and a third act that could easily have been the soundtrack to a Flash Gordon movie. And it blew my mind.

I tried to read about the band’s history on Wikipedia to get an idea of where I should go from there as far as hearing more of their music, but found it pretty impenetrable. Aside from the stuff of theirs that gets played on the radio, I don’t know much at all about their catalogue, but I’d love to hear more of it; can anyone out there who happens to be a fan of the group make some recommendations as to what else they did that’s worth listening to?

2

Never been a huge ELP fan, but I’ll give a shout-out to their version of Aaron Copeland’s “Hoedown”.

3

Ditto, plus “Fanfare for the Common Man.”

4

ELP made five terrific albums: their first five. Everything after that ranges from patchy to godawful. Brain Salad Surgery, the album that contains “Karn Evil 9,” is widely considered their peak. It was preceded by:

Emerson, Lake & Palmer (1970) - Extremely strong debut, showing off the band’s heavy classical influence (“The Barbarian” and “Knife-Edge” are based on themes by Bartok and Janacek, with a little Bach thrown in ), Emerson’s virtuoso keyboards, Palmer’s hyperactive drums, and Lake’s velvety voice. Includes the hit “Lucky Man,” a haunting ballad with a spooky, improvised Moog synthesizer coda.

Tarkus (1971) - The title track is one of the first side-long prog-rock epics, and it’s a mind-blower, with great themes and lots of amazing organ and synthesizer work from Emerson. The second half of the album contains the first examples of the band’s penchant for throwing in a “comic relief” song here and there, with the goofy “Jeremy Bender” and “Are You Ready, Eddie?” plus a couple of cool shorter songs and the mini-epic “The Only Way/Infinite Space.”

Pictures at an Exhibition (1971) - Live recording based on themes from Mussorgsky’s suite, but incorporating some original material along the way. A little dated, as the freaky electronic sounds are no longer so novel, but still an exciting document. The silly track this time is a cover of “Nutrocker” by B. Bumble & the Stingers, based on the “March” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet.

Trilogy (1972) - Another great classical adaptation in “Hoedown,” the best of their “silly” tracks in “The Sheriff,” a couple of mini-epics in the title track and the “The Endless Enigma” suite, and a bit of padding in the repetitious “Abaddon’s Bolero.” The acoustic ballad “From the Beginning” (as with “Lucky Man,” Emerson appears only for a synthesizer solo at the end) was the band’s biggest hit single.

After the brilliant Brain Salad Surgery, the band issued a fine triple-LP live album, Welcome Back My Friends to the Show That Never Ends, which mostly just recapitulated material from the previous studio albums, but with some nice jams tossed in. After a break, they came back in 1977 with* Works Vol. 1*, a double LP with each member given one side for solo projects, and only two actual ELP tracks: an adaptation of Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” padded out with an uncharacteristically tedious extended jam, and the excellent orchestrated epic “Pirates.” The follow-up, Works Vol. 2, was a ragbag of solo tracks, b-sides, leftovers and floor sweepings. Love Beach is generally considered the band’s nadir, and the first five songs are indeed dreadful, but the remainder of the album is actually quite good.

After that the band broke up. There was a 2/3 reunion in 1986 that resulted in Emerson, Lake & Powell, which is pretty good, then a full reunion in the '90s that gave us the poor *Black Moon *and the horrendous In the Hot Seat, which makes Love Beach look like a masterpiece. There were also some okay live albums along the way, but basically stick with the first five.

5

My wife was a big fan back in the day, she recommends “Pictures at an Exhibition”

6

Get the triple album set, Welcome Back my Friends, to the Show that Never Ends. They were an excellent live band.

7

Tarkus was the one that cemented their reputation in the UK; it was in the album charts for months and got to #1.

8

Despite what you hear from radio DJs, it’s pronounced more like “Carnival Nine,” like Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Mak’er” is pronounced “Jer-maker,” like a cross between “Jamaica” with a Cockney accent and a slurred “Did you make her?” and most emphatically NOT “Dire Maker.” Or worse, “Dye-er Maker.”

9

It’s really just Greg Lake, but Still You Turn Me On from ELP at 1974’s California Jam.

10

I saw them in 1974 at the San Francisco Civic. Fantastic show with “surrond sound” used with very good effect at the end of KE9.

11

Biffy gives a good summary. If it were me, I would go with Pictures at an Exhibition next…it’s impossible to go wrong with that.

12

Pictures at an Exhibition.

I could never get into ELP back in the day, but have long been a fan of Mussorgsky’s original score and owned several versions of it, including ELP’s. Listening to it in my head right now. :slight_smile:

13

Biffy’s pretty much got it all covered.

Trilogy was my introduction to ELP and was my favorite album until I heard Brain Salad Surgery, but it remains my 2nd fav (i.e. ELP album). Only thing missing from Biffy’s post is a mention of the title track “Trilogy” which I think is just brilliantly beautiful, especially the first section which is just acoustic piano (mostly) and voice. The lyrics are kinda silly, but the harmonies and melodies are really nice.

14

I’d say HALF of Works Volume 1 is excellent and half is awful. Everything they did after that is utter junk.

Thing is, that was not so much a group effort as it was three solo albums stuck together. By 1977, Greg, Carl and Keith couldn’t stand each other and were trying hard to avoid each other.

I liked their self-titled debut album and ***Tarkus ***better than anything else.