THE RETURN OF THE MANTICORE

ELP have been real slackers about remastering their best albums and have instead made a really bad habit doing compilations that include their crappier stuff mixed in with their classic stuff instead. I'm not entirely sure why, maybe the record company is to blame.

This four disc set does have the advantage of being released in 1993, so it has more of their best stuff from the '70's and less of the material from their drift into the commercial music area.

It gets off to a fairly bad start with Touch and Go in a new recording (why? god why?). Hang on to a Dream, is of course a Nice song, and a good version, and starts to make up for the first one. I could do without the remake of 21st Century Schizoid Man, but it still beats TaG. Next comes a nice version of Fire, which was a song from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown album. It's here because Carl Palmer toured with Arthur Brown's band in their heyday. A new version of ELP's version of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition follows, which is the highlight of the entire collection. The last new recording is I Believe In Father Christmas, which is as unremarkable as the first track, but hey, if you need something kind of progressive to play during that season, why not?

The rest of the set is a really nice collection of the best of ELP from a progressive standpoint, which altogether spans four CDs. It has a nice box and booklet and is out of print, probably permanently. They should re-release the new recordings from it though.