CARL PALMER

On "Working Live Volume 1", Carl Palmer used up all of the best ELP songs that he was particularly associated with, like Tank and Tocatta. Here on Volume 2 he goes after othe ELP classics.

The big problem (besides not having Keith Emerson) is that he cuts down the pieces to something playable by his singerless band. Trilogy skips right over the soft vocal start of the song, and goes right to the heavy instrumental section. Now, I love that part of the song, but without the intro, it loses much of it's power. And Tarkus is absolutely maimed.

If you want to hear a guitar-centric version of Hoedown, I would direct you to The Jon Finn Group for a better rendition than this one. And the jazzy jam J Section never quite takes off.

On the plus side, they do a version of Carmina Burana (yeah, I know how over used that piece is that really rocks. And their version of Fanfare For The Common Man is better than the one chord jam ELP always turned it into.

I'd say this one is for ELP completists only.

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.

How can I judge and album full with ELP music without comparing it to ELP? That's impossible but I think some reviewers tend to show a strange predilection for hearing an ELP-cover band (Palmer plus singer-bassist plus keyboard wizard) than to this strange but unique adventure.

Yes, the guitar player is fillig what would-be Emerson parts with his axe but his job's great! He tries to do this impossible feature by letting the guitar sound like a guitar and this is the high point of his performance. The bassist is good too, although the "Message in a bottle" cover sounds uncomfortable here. But the main event is Palmer's brilliant job on the drums, not only playng his trademark drumming in his classic songs but even improvising a little bit just to sound fresh and alive. He puts in his pack all rock drummers alive today, from his generation or newcomers. He has the fluidness an taste that lacks in Bonham's and the classical training that could make Paice bigger than he stil is. Comparisons with Peart are unnecessary: although the last is member of a band that still has something to say (differently from ELP) he doens't have the balance between technique and soul that makes Palmer unique. Only Andy Ward mixes this extremes as good as him, but Palmer's work and career are far more representative than Ward's.

Actually I never saw this dvd; a friend just send me an audio-only copy from this show and makes me more happy to hear how fresh and youthful Palmer's playing sounds today. Any rock drummer should listen to this album attentively and feel if he's capable of showing the pleasure of playin like Palmer's.

Easy 4 stars. And thanks to the web friends that made this audition possible.

There were some prior attempts to fool the fans with the ''great'' suite of ''Works'' affairs from ELP which were very questionable recordings IMHHO.

This one is not shy of course. If noise and heaviness is your cup of tea, you might taste this one with joy. But you are warned: this is totally indigestible stuff. Some classics of the trio are revisited (as you know already with no keyboards, what a great idea!).

Frankly, we could have missed this one. The ''Working Live, Volume I'' was already a poor performance, and honestly this one is just some carbon copy. I was almost glad to have an emasculated version of ''Tarkus''. A seven minutes disaster to tell the truth.

To provide you with the full picture, I will only add that the closing track ''Fanfare And Drum Solo'' lasts for about sixteen minutes.

I have an enormous respect for Carl as a drummer of the ones you might know about (I even witnessed their ''Welcome Back My Friends.'' tour in '74), but this is really something I can't cope with.

One star. Painful.

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.

This album is pretty much precursory of what ''Asia'' would release a little later. Pure AOR music with very, very little accent of prog added. I am not convinced at all (to say the least) while I'm reading why this artist should be added into the PROG archive: ''because he is simply the god. the true god of prog drumming hhahhahah.'.

This sounds almost as a nonsense to me. Carl is indeed a fabulous drummer (I witnessed an ELP concert in 1974), but this ''1 PM'' album is quite flat and uninteresting. Fortunately should I say, there won't be any other studio album from this band.

There is no question of prog throughout this short of work. Nor even drumming maestria, as Carl didn't want to play a prominent role here. What's left are just a bunch of straight forward pop-rock songs at best. But the global mood is seriously AOR oriented. And it is not my cup of tea.

I guess that the very few reviews of these albums (studio or live) are a good indicator of how you should absorb the music. It is painful to say, and it is best avoided. There is really no interest to describe this album track by track. It is unfortunately weak from start to finish.

Maybe that the Devo oriented ''Do You Go All The Way'' is a little better.But that's it, really. Some other average new wave tunes are ''Go For It'' and ''You're Too Much''. But did we expect this type of music from Carl Palmer? Probably not.

I am quite embarrassed in terms of rating: one or two stars? The best out of it starts after the middle of the album. The fresh and funny ''Madeleine'' is not too bad. Let's be generous this time. Two stars.

Progressive Rock without keyboards?

Well, THE CARL PALMER BAND proves us it's possible, but I don't believe it's the right music for this kind of experiments, ELP compositions NEED keyboards, it's their essence, there's no way a guitar and base can provide the pomp required to play Toccata for example, which sounds even weirder than originally is, but weird is not always good, and in this case it's a disappointment.

With this I'm not saying Paul Bielatowicz is a bad guitar player, by the contrary, the kid is outstanding, to the point that my favorite track is the Guitar Medley, in which Paul is able to give all he has without being compared with Emerson and enjoys it.

Dave Marks is also a great musician, not only supporting the rhythm section, but also adding interesting touches to the melody, what a shame that they are so limited in this DVD. Carl's performance is impeccable as always, but still this is not the way to listen Emerson Lake & Palmer's music.

I bought the DVD, mostly because it's a new and original way of listening ELP's music and I enjoyed it because the songs are classics, but honestly at the end was a bit disappointed, like something was missing, lets hope Mr Palmer gets a keyboardist and then we'll see.

The music is well known, for this reason there's little to talk about it, so I will go directly to the rating that will be no higher than 3 stars, maybe 2.5, good for ELP diehard fans.

Excellent performances, but this music requires at least an organ and a Moog.

The seemingly endless enigma

The ELP focused set list here entices the inquisitive to enter in the hope of hearing Carl's take on some of the band's classic material. With titles such as Tarkus, Toccata, The Barbarian, Hoedown etc., only the most disciplined of ELP fans could resist the temptation to give this DVD a try.

I have to say up-front though, I was very disappointed. Firstly, a quick look at the line up reveals that Carl Palmer's band consists of himself plus a bassist and a lead guitarist; that's it! No keyboards, no vocals, no acoustic guitar, and so forth, every song has an identical instrumental composition (except for the solo spots of course). Very occasionally, when keyboards are deemed essential for the introductions to Tarkus and Fanfare for the common man, recordings are used.

Now, Paul Bielatowicz is unquestionably a highly gifted guitarist. His fret work is blisteringly fast, and he can shred with the best of them. The problem is that every song features the same tone of lead guitar playing the keyboard and/or the guitar parts. This quickly becomes very tedious and frankly dull. In addition, the guitar sound has not been captured well here. It lacks depth or character, leaving an impression of coldness. This is made apparent by the studio rendition of Trilogy by the band, which backs the closing credits. The guitar sound here is far richer and much more satisfactory.

The bass-work of Dave Marks is equally proficient his capabilities being highlighted during his solo spot.

Carl is in fine form of course, with as much energy as ever. His eternal youthful enthusiasm endears the partisan audience, and as ever he gives every last ounce of energy. For this who hoped to witness an exhibition of drumming virtuosity though, this may perhaps also be a bit of a disappointment. The principal instrument virtually throughout is the ubiquitous lead guitar, Carl only delivering one solo spot as such, at the end of the gig.

Presentation wise, the DVD is poor in terms of modern standards. No information is given about the location or date of the gig, which lasts for less than 90 minutes. There are no DVD extras such as interviews or behind the scenes featurettes.

It is always great to witness Carl giving his all in concert. This DVD however will only truly satisfy a limited audience. Others, like myself, will be puzzled as to what Carl was intending to achive here.

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

Having listened to Keith Emerson & The Nice's "Vivacitas" CD, which has lots of guitar on it (and in my opinion is extremely good) and seen Greg Lake's live DVD, again with an additional guitarist, I wanted to see Carl Palmer's band without any keyboards. Well, I think it's pretty good. On the whole, the guitarist, Paul Bielatowicz, does a really good job playing Emerson's parts.

One gripe I have is that, like some ELP DVD's, when you see the track "Tarkus" you expect the whole lot. Unfortunately, on this DVD, the track "Tarkus" is in fact "Eruption" merging into "Aquatarkus". And it really is "unfortunately", because they do them so well that I'm left wanting to see (and hear) them doing all of it. Emerson did all of "Tarkus" on "Vivacitas" (and did it really well, but then he would, wouldn't he!), and I feel this band could do all of it too. The other gripe is that "Trilogy" isn't complete either, it's only blasting along during the end credits, again such a shame as it sounds like a cracking version.

The bass player, Dave Marks, is pretty good. If you like the Police (they're not my "cup of tea"), you'll love his solo spot. If you are the Police, you'll be worried that one bass player is better than your whole 3 piece band!

Having seen this DVD, Lake's DVD and heard Emerson & The Nice's CD (not to mention the ELP "Albert Hall" DVD), I really want to see all of these bands and ELP, preferably at the same venue one after another (or even all together!). That would be a "festival" gig worth going to, eh! Perhaps I'll just have to hang on to that dream!