WORKING LIVE VOLUME 1

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So the question is 'Do You Want ELP music played by a guitar based band and no keyboards?'. If so then this is the place to be. After ELP's last split in 1999 Carl decided to form his own band and went off to play (mostly) small venues around England.Dave Marks (bass) and Shaun Baxter(guitar) were recruited, both (I think) coming from a music teaching background.Very skilled players and they needed to be.I've seen this line up on both tours and have to say that the CD's don't really capture their power for some reason.Either the sound is too clean or perhaps the recorded peformances were'nt their best..or perhaps its difficult to translate the live experience onto record.Shame really but that said both discs are perfectly listenable and would certainly be of interest to ELP/Carl Palmer fans. However I would recommend saving your money instead for the DVD 'Live In Europe' which is more enjoyable..and you have visuals!

OK. So this is an interesting idea ELP with no vocals or keyboards and a guitar with synthesizers. Sometimes it works really well and others it leaves it a bit empty sounding. If fact having seen this done live it works better seeing it than hearing a recording of it. I just think Carl was seeing if he could cut expenses by recording a gig he was already being paid to play. This might have worked better for audio in the studio.

Still there are many things to like here. Carl is still a top notch drummer maybe even better than he was in ELP which is the reason you would probably be attracted to this in the first place. Second there some excellent songs that you have heard on ELP albums. The songs this format really work on are Toccata, LA Nights (which was originally recorded with Joe Walsh), The Barbarian and Bullfrog.

Where it doesn't work are the more orchestrated pieces like Canario, Tank and The Enemy Dances With the Black Spirits. The latter seems to almost come off as some kind of metal crunch which is fine for some things but not this classical adaptation.

The guitar playing of Shuan Baxter and the Bass guitar playing of Dave Marks work well with Carl's flashy and technical parts. I think though that hearing the guitar so much with no other sound color wears on you a bit after a while. Not an everyday listen for me to be sure. Still it is good enough to pull out once in awhile, though and it is bit of a change of pace as to how you would listen to ELP's music. 3 Stars

Carl already committed a studio album prior (some twenty + years) to this live recording. The least I could say about it was that it was quite an average remembering.

This one is far much worse to tell the truth. Some heavy and uninspired stuff like ''The Enemy.'', some classic ELP tracks revisited without keyboards (something like a Hendrix tune without guitar.) and of course none of the song of his earlier solo work (thank god!).

There are hardly one correct song featured in here. Some cacophony (''L'') and of course a traditional drum solo is included as well (but this one is probably the best out of this live set even if the fade out at the end is not the best idea). Tracks as ''Barbarian'' or ''Tank'' have very little to share with their original counterparts to say the least.

There is nothing to say about the musicians: they play their parts very well, but their interpretation has nothing to do with ELP whatsoever. The people that attended these concerts must have felt quite desperate and fooled to listen to this type of music. Fortunately, I escaped this ''adventure''.

The best thing to do, is to avoid this album.

One thing this album proves is that after all those years in Asia, and those disappointing ELP reunion albums, Carl Palmer can still be a great drummer if he wants to. Another thing this album proves is that ELP songs really need Keith Emerson.

I don't discount the talent of this group. It does take quite a bit of skill for a guitarist to even show a semblance of keeping up with Emerson's amazing keyboard work. And Shaun Baxter does a fair job of it. Also, Dave Marks plays some fine bass lines, sometime even outdoing Greg Lake's work on the same songs, although his solos tend to always lead to generic slap and pop licks.

On this live set, Palmer sticks primarily to the ELP tracks that he had a larger hand in, like Tocatta (without the now-cheesy drum synths) and Tank, and songs from his side of Works. And on it's own, for what it is, it's not bad. But the guitar tone tends to give every song a similar timbre. And that is the main problem with the album.

But at least it shows that Palmer still has a desire to play this type of music.