Greg Lake underrated as a bass player!!!

moshkito wrote: JeanFrame wrote: Underrated? Not by me, I saw him in the early days, when he was in a band called 'The Gods', and he stood out then. The ace bass for me is Jack Bruce (Cream).   Agreed that jack Bruce would be a much "fair'er" comparison than Greg Lake -- although I would still think that Greg's musicianship and scholarly work and singing, is much more visible than Jack's when the music that Cream did was almost strictly rock'n'roll, because that is all Eric Clapton can play!

The paradox here is that it's true Cream are limited in scope but Jack is the more complex player; I think that he could play anything Greg could (within the parameters allowed for pure individuality) whereas I don't think Greg could compete with Jack  to the same extent. Then again, this sort of comparison isn't really fair (er?) because any top player has strengths and weaknesses that may be the opposite of (or complement to) others.

CloseToTheMoon wrote: I think Greg Lake's talent lies not in virtuosity, but how he adapts to playing jazz, classical, hard rock and ballads. Each style has it's own techniques if you're gonna play complementary to them. Plus he's a great songwriter and that helps almost more than anything.

I think there's a lot of truth in what you say about Greg's ability to adapt, though he think he is also a fine musician in his own right. I think he's capable of being a good songwriter (not a great one), but somehow or other that songwriting ability got sidetracked by the ELP experience - because ELP isn't a song band, more of an instrumental experience, he ended up having to construct musical inserts rather than songs per se, which is a shame, as he has shown that he can indeed write good songs. I would have preferred to see King Crimson develop along the lines of the first album, but without Greg Lake, that was never going to happen.