ARS LONGA VITA BREVIS

David O'List quit the Nice after their first album, and whilst Keith Emerson would eventually make the drummer/keyboard/bass-and-guitars power trio format work magic in ELP, the results here are somewhat more mixed. Daddy Where Did I Come From, Little Arabella, and Happy Freuds are basically psychedelic goof-offs bordering on novelty songs; I enjoy them more than ELP's attempts at humour, but that just means I get a little wry amusement out of them, not that I actively enjoy them, and it's hard not to see them as warm-ups for what's to come.

Meatier fare comes in with the classically-inspired pieces, with an interpretation of the Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite whetting our appetites for the side-long title track, which along with Procol Harum's In Held 'Twas In I marked the beginning of a prog tradition. Annoyingly, it also incorporates the misguided rock tradition of an overlong drum solo - Brian Davidson seems a capable enough sort, but a lot of these things end up being deeply tedious and same-y and he's not one of the few drummers who can break out of that rut.

Then again, the lacklustre nature of the rest of the suite suggests that the band were short on ideas at this stage. Tarkus this ain't - hell, it isn't even Karn Evil 9, a piece which is intensely goofy but is at least well-produced and packed with memorable moments. By comparison, this suffers from a lacklustre production and a somewhat muddled performance. Keith Emerson was clearly developing his talent by leaps and bounds at this point in time, but the rest of the band just don't seem to have been keeping pace, and the result is this. Historically significant to the genre's development, but unlike the Procol Harum piece not really compelling to revisit.