EMERSON LAKE & PALMER

Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends. Released as a triple LP. Oh, how I wanted to watch these guys at this point. This is my favorite prog live album. Well, it's incredible the Emerson, Lake & Palmer monstrosity live. I have been impressed before with Pictures at an Exhibition, and with Welcome Back My Friends... I could feel the living power of the trio. My favorite point about this live performance is the totally out of control version of Tarkus, including Epitaph. The ultimate improvisations are amazing. A masterpiece of live albums.

This is not just another live album, this is totally new. Not at all, it was an adaptation from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (you know the name). But Mussorgsky would be proud of this guys. It's full of self-ideas and improvisations, that ELP improvisations! You can feel at the very beginning, The Gnome, these guys are playing with fun, they're music masters and are joking. At The Sage, you will taste the beautiful voice and acoustic song from Greg Lake, and if you like From The Beginning, you will love this song too. It's incredible to see how Keith can (and always) improvise and experiment without mistakes, and Carl Palmer's drums easily follow his notes at any speed.

Try the DVD, if you are a prog or a classical musica fan, this is a must-watch. And if you aren't, you will probably be impressed.

Here ends the hardcore prog era for Emerson, Lake and Palmer. It's an underrated album. But I have to admit that I love the way Keith Emerson plays, and he's the most creative keyboard player in my opinion. The album sounds strange at the first time, but it's already good. Some of the songs have that saloon feel (Barrelhouse Shake-Down, Maple Leaf Rag, Honky Tonk Train Blues), and I like this. However, the songs from this second Wokds volume are short, no song longer than five minutes. But it's permanently the worst ELP album until 77. But it's sort of material for ELP true fans.

This was the first non-masterpiece from Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It's divided into 4 sides (2 LPs). 1st side is Keith Emerson songs. The 2nd, Greg Lake. The 3rd is Carl Palmer and the 4th and last, Emerson, Lake and Palmer together. Keith Emerson side is a Piano Concerto, a classical song. It's good. Greg Lake side isn't bad at all, but the only song I can remember clearly is Cest la Vie. Carl Palmer side is the best, with my favorite track here, The Enemy God Dances With The Black Spirits. The ELP side was filled with Fanfare for A Common Man and Pirates, two great songs, but not masterpieces. It's a good album at all. But I can't compare with any early release from the band.

BSS was the last ELP effort.

The main song here it's Karn Evil 9, about a futuristic carnival and a war between humans and machines. I love sci-fi, and Keith's keys effect really works here. It was a song full of unique stuff, and the main phrase "welcome back my friends to the show that never ends" is a hymn for every prog listener. The Toccata is another fuse of classical and experimentalism, and it couldn't went wrong at this point. Benny the Bouncer it some kind of Jeremy Bender or The Sheriff, a very funny humouristic songwriting there.

What really shows the awesomeness of a band who creates a masterpiece, it's a great new album.

Sometimes you listen to a wonderful album and you wonder if the next release will sounds like heaven too. Symphony X's masterpiece The Odyssey was followed by Paradise Lost, and it was amazing. But sometimes, some band makes some album, a real awesome album, but can't follow the same skills at the next release. Trilogy is another masterpiece from ELP, right after Tarkus, which is the best album of all times IMO. Trilogy begins at some kind of "Pictures at an exhibition" aura, but trying to focus in their own songwriting way. Keith's free hand solos always takes the listener to another state of mind. I could say that I love every track here, even some tracks that I spend some time listening carefully to start to aprecciate. ELP is awesome and nothing could beat them at this stage.

This is my favorite album ever, so don't mind, I will praise it. I will not explain the Tarkus "plot", because you could find it here or anywhere eles at the web, and the most of the plot involves you stare at the paintings, listen to the song, and let your mind do the rest.

This was the album that stuckd me into the real oldschool ProgRock. I was looking for technical death metal bands, but I reached a point that I can't found something really "new" at all. So I found Tarkus album cover somewhere. At first, look at the album cover too. Could you feel it? There's something more than simple music. After their great progressive debut, Keith Emerson guides the band to another musical level, a sort of technical rock, hardcore tempo changes, fast amount of notes and humouristic experimentalism . An avant-classical opera. Greg was afraid and refused to play the Tarkus suit at first. Thanks god, he's accepted the challenge and included "Battlefield" at the Tarkus side of the album. Yeah, Battlefield shows Greg feelings at max, you could really dive into the guitar solo and his soft vocals, but critical lyrics. And Palmer epic free-jazz drums blows everything out of your mind.

When you play Eruption you think: LOL, sounds like a SNES boss theme. But it's 71'. There's no hardcore videogames OSTs and boss themes. There's only Keith Emerson and his amazing moog, his epic keybords.

Every track here is a masterpiece. I'll not recc you any song, just download, buy it, and you'll get. I really can't understand how many people use to get bored at Tarkus and thumbs up for Brain Salad. In my point of view, ELP was Prog-gods until Love Beach. People use to hate the New-Wave and the 80s, but I'm a very fan of post-punk, ebm, and many stuff there. But the progressive bands should be progressive bands. Tarkus is unique. The kind of stuff you heard and try to find something like that, but you just can't find. Never. Even the same band could do it again. And all chances gone at 78' band course.

Tarkus was a Masterpiece, and it's still a masterpiece. Even if you hate this album, you couldn't deny the genius behind this work. I could frenchkiss' ELP for that.

This is the beginning. From The Nice, King Crimson and Atomic Rooster, it rises. And it was beautiful. Since this, These guys were famous by the madness at stage, hardcore improvisations, stabbing keyboards and more. Here you'll find the first technical rock references. I know the Lucky Man was a pop hard rock, but it's a soft and cool song too. Yeah, from the bands they have came, it could not went wrong at all. But they did rock, and very well. I haven't heard anything so schizophrenic and dissonant at times before. This is not their magnum opus, but everyone in this world should try their debut.

"Trilogy" one of the best known progressive rock masterpieces, and the most popular album of Emerson Lake & Palmer. The album was released at 1972, and the cover art which shows the shirtless Emerson, Lake and Palmer, it was designed by Hipgnosis which designed a lot of prog rock cover arts for bands like: Genesis, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes and more...

The album starts with some heart beats which are created using Palmer's bass drum, with some strange and creepy sound that come right from Emerson's brilliant Moog. It creates a very strange atmosphere especially when the percussion enters along. Greg Lake plays a single note over some Keyboard playing by Keith Emerson, after some pretty heavy part comes a fast break to a quiet verse. "Why do you stare,do you think that I care? you've been misled by the thoughts in your head." is singed quietly by Lake, a drum passage to the chorus "Your words waste and decay nothing you say reaches my ears anyway" gets to a very powerful point especially when Lake is like shouting the words "You never spoke a word of truth!" which gets to an instrumental passage back to the verse.

"Please, please, please open their eyes! please, please, please don't give me lies!" is a very powerful passage back to the verse, the song is structured perfectly and it includes three parts: - The Endless Enigma Part I - Fugue by Keith Emerson - The Endless Enigma Part II

A nice instrumental part gets us to the second part: The "Fugue" which starts with a strange chord then proceeds to a very mellow, emotional music. The bass guitar enters at some stage which sounds a lot like J.S Bach that gets us to the end of the song with some guitar harmonic playing along to the piano.

The third part which is actually the second part of the song starts right after the fugue with some loud piano and drum playing that enters to a Christmas-like bells part of the song along to some moog and bass guitar playing. This is only the passage back to the verse that we already heard before, the fantastic mellow but very powerful verse with some kinda vibrating singing of Greg Lake is exactly what we can expect only from ELP.

"From The Beginning" is the next track, it starts with some acoustic guitar playing, that enters a beautiful verse, it is very soft and acoustic only with some percussion alongside to the singing of Greg Lake, the song became a kind of a hit, at least compared to progressive rock. A very emotional guitar solo that enters a moog solo are getting us to the end of the fantastic piece.

"The Sheriff" starts with some bar-like atmosphere with some conversations that can be quietly heard in the background, at some point you can hear Carl Palmer saying "[&*!#]" because he hit the rim of the tom tom. A song about cowboys and the wild west is pretty strange especially for ELP but it still matches the album very good. The song is very melodic with some really wild west atmosphere, some fast honky tonky style piano playing is a very nice end to the song.

"Hoedown" a song by Aaron Copland is a wild west instrumental piece, it is very fast and the beat is very nice and it ends the wild west atmosphere part in this album in a very good way, especially because of the beautiful drums by Carl Palmer which are matching a piece like this perfectly and because of the keyboard and moog playing by Keith Emerson.

The title track is the next one "Trilogy" starts with some classical music atmosphere, it enters a very very beautiful and soft verse with piano only, it creates a dreamy atmosphere which is sad but happy at the same time. The bass guitar enters at some point which is the more fast part of the song that is instrumental and includes Moog, heavy drumming, bass guitar and a keyboard. Greg Lake sings again along to the instrumental part which continues playing, the song ends with some rock n roll styled ending when the band starts playing slower and then hits two chords and breaks.

"Living Sin" starts with a hard rock-like riff and gets to a very low-pitched singing that creates a spooky and heavy atmosphere. The vocal is switched on a regular basis between very low-pitched vocal to some simple Greg Lake singing. The drums in the song are very heavy and are matching the song just perfectly, passage to the end which ends with a break of drums, keyboard, guitar and bass comes next and, well, ends the song.

"Abbadon's Bolero" starts with a camping anthem along to some snare drumming which is played again and again, now played with some bass and on other scale. The whole song starts very quietly and proceeds to a very powerful and heavy point at the end of the song with a lot of instrumental playing, without singing at all, and it all breaks in one pure second that ends this masterpiece album. The whole song is pretty homogeneous and it is just the same riff played again and again at the background along to some building of the strength of the song.

The album reached the fifth place at the Billboard 200 which is a list that shows the 200 best sellers in the United States Of America only, and reached the second place on the UK best selling albums for a while. It was a very successful album, it is very well-though and very well-structured, and in my opinion it is a masterpiece of progressive rock music. The album includes two wild west atmosphere tracks, one hard rock atmospheric song and one drone like song.

I liked the first three tracks the best because I think that they are just brilliant, all of it, the drums, the guitar, the moog, just everything. When I first listened to those three tracks, I couldn't stop listening to it again and again for weeks. The title track created a lot of fun time for me too, and I enjoyed it a lot and listened to it again and again too, but you still can't compare them, at least in my opinion.

I would give this album 99/100 A true masterpiece of progressive rock music.

The eponymous debut is the album that started the legacy of the first prog rock super-group. Surely with this much talent the instrumentation should be impeccably sharp. But this is where the problem lies. Much of this album relies on excessive noodling and showmanship.

The perfect example of this is on songs like 'Take a Pebble' and 'Tank.' The former is kind of messy and doesn't really go anywhere, while the latter also has some noodling, especially in the drum solo.

Three Fates' exhibits a similar problem, while 'Lucky Man' is just a throwaway track they added at the last minute.

'The Barbarian' and 'Knife Edge' show what the band is capable of when they concentrate and write a shorter, more concise song. The result is a complex, yet interesting and fun song.

Overall, despite the problems this album has with over-zealous instrumentation, it's still an enjoyable listen from beginning to end and certainly doesn't deserve just two stars.

5/10