TARKUS

Tarkus, the song, is one of the most iconic pieces in all of prog rock history and associated genres. One has only to take a listen to an orchestral rendition of the music to see how sophisticated this composition is. The trio of course performs it to perfection too.

The problem is that the album is not only Tarkus, side B. Most of those songs are forgetable, probably the most forgetable from their entire classic period. The only exception being Infinite Space, which is also a classic to my ears.

Jeremy Bender is horrendous. Bitches Crystal is uninspired fooling around.

The Only Way is musically cute (and borrowed), but the lyrics are distracting and sounds out of place in the album.

Inifite Space, as said, is great.

A time and a place is ok, but sounds almost like a rehash of Tarkus, or an earlier piece from which ideas were taken from. Maybe it would have made sense at the beginning of side B, but not now.

But then, we are treated to one of the most unintentionally stupid pieces of music ever written: Are you ready Eddy.

Some musicians can be funny with their music, without compromising the music or the humor, Zappa, Canterbury bands, but not ELP. This is their worst song, and I am including everything on the later albums as well.

Album organization was always a problem for ELP, which suggests to me their compositions resemble more the format of earlier composers, especially with Tarkus. In the modern album format, they were forced to add stuff to fill the time - Side B is, unfortunately, just that something.

Because of side B alone, this album does not take 5 stars. That's testament to the greatness of that one piece which gives the album its title.