[hirsute_biped]

Keith Emerson stabs knives in his Hammond-1971

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggFz...eature=related

I think this link will solve all our problems on this thread

[demonrail666]

I can appreciate The Watcher's bid to present ELP as more than just excess but almost everything I'm seeing in this thread reinforces the idea that excess remains pretty much the only thing about them that's worth mentioning. The difference is that when people talk about Can, nobody bothers to mention the onstage juggler.

[The Watcher]

Awesome!! Read the comments, full of limp wristed sissies getting bent out of shape because he's "damaging the organ" ha ha ha.......

Who gets upset because someone is treating an organ roughly........ don't go there it's a totally obvious joke people..... organ ha ha oh year real mature........

Just got the live Nassau '78 concert double CD in the mail, 13 bucks from amazon - going to really piss my wife off tonight........

[The Watcher]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I can appreciate The Watcher's bid to present ELP as more than just excess but almost everything I'm seeing in this thread reinforces the idea that excess remains pretty much the only thing about them that's worth mentioning. The difference is that when people talk about Can, nobody bothers to mention the onstage juggler.

You forget that they were exceptional musicians!! I think that almost goes without saying though, but I find their records totally captivating and exciting!! Like say you didn't know all about the capes and flying pianos and whatnot and took a record like the s/t at face value - I mean you might draw a different conclusion than the status quo. They just had a live show at the time that is comparable to a Lady Gaga show now. It's show business, but with classical songs getting the rock and roll treatment!!

How come no one can talk about Hawkwind without mentioning Stacias gigantic breasts?

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by The Watcher

You forget that they were exceptional musicians!! I think that almost goes without saying though, but I find their records totally captivating and exciting!! Like say you didn't know all about the capes and flying pianos and whatnot and took a record like the s/t at face value - I mean you might draw a different conclusion than the status quo. They just had a live show at the time that is comparable to a Lady Gaga show now. It's show business, but with classical songs getting the rock and roll treatment!!

How come no one can talk about Hawkwind without mentioning Stacias gigantic breasts?

There's no need to doubt they were good musicians from a technical standpoint but the fact that their achievments are so overwhelmingly eclipsed by the spectacle surrounding them has to say something about the poverty of their musical creativity.

And while it may just be me, I'm a big Hawkwind fan and have almost never mentioned Stacia. She may get a mention on a tv documentary or by those for whom she's all they know about them (aslthough I've yet to meet such a person) but either way I really don't think she's had any significant impact on their enduring legacy. A sideshow to ELP's main event.

[The Watcher]

I dunno - I don't think they lacked anything in the creative department, but that's just me. I mean they sold 40 million albums, I'm not saying that indicative of their creativity in any way but they could enthrall a crowd playing reworked Mussorgosky or AOR songs like Lucky Man. I think at a certain point people started writing them off without really listening to what they were doing and their excess became yet another rock cliche (same as "xxxxxx band were the first to use the studio as an instrument" or decide what band coined punk 20 years before it was coined as such) - and I think it goes without saying that there's a complexity to most of their work that can't really be appreciated (or absorbed) with just a casual listen and in this day and age where people don't have the same time to devote to albums that's perchance why no one ever speaks about their music - no one ever speaks about what's bad about their music either, just that it's over the top.

But either way you either like it or you don't....... it's just seeming to me that it's become almost a cliche in itself to be a fan of prog and write them off despite their influence - that's like liking heavy metal and not liking Iron Maiden.......

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by The Watcher

I dunno - I don't think they lacked anything in the creative department, but that's just me. I mean they sold 40 million albums, I'm not saying that indicative of their creativity in any way but they could enthrall a crowd playing reworked Mussorgosky or AOR songs like Lucky Man. I think at a certain point people started writing them off without really listening to what they were doing and their excess became yet another rock cliche (same as "xxxxxx band were the first to use the studio as an instrument" or decide what band coined punk 20 years before it was coined as such) - and I think it goes without saying that there's a complexity to most of their work that can't really be appreciated (or absorbed) with just a casual listen and in this day and age where people don't have the same time to devote to albums that's perchance why no one ever speaks about their music - no one ever speaks about what's bad about their music either, just that it's over the top.

But either way you either like it or you don't....... it's just seeming to me that it's become almost a cliche in itself to be a fan of prog and write them off despite their influence - that's like liking heavy metal and not liking Iron Maiden.......

Can't really disagree with anything there. As you say, it ultimately comes down to either liking them or not. Although I do still think that in lab conditions it would be possible to prove that ELP are crap. Until then though, I've got to agree with you.

[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by The Watcher

Well great man happy to hear all that stuff about you...... Next time you can even tell me about these trillion bands I've never heard of, we'll make like a fun day out of it..........

Do you like watersports?

[The Watcher]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Do you like watersports?

What an inappropriate question to ask......

[Genteel Death]

You know, I don't normally care much about what people listen to for as long as they don't rattle my cage for me to air personal opinions with a more antagonistic attitude. You use adjectives to describe my posts such as ''inappropriate''. This on a thread about ELP where you claim them tobe possibly the best band ever. Either you don't take the time to listen to enough ''prog'' (at least here you could have a go with imagining what might constitute a band deserving such tag), or you're totally unaware that you're suggesting such thing on the SY forum. Either way, you sound to me like you can't tell the difference between good and bad rock music, let alone pop. Anyway, you seem like a nice guy, so peace and well being to you.

[The Watcher]

So anyway I ordered a copy of the Live At Nassau Colosseum '78 disc the other day and finally got a chance to spin it last night and this morning, what an awesome sounding album! For my money, it's as tight and well played as Welcome Back My Friends live album although you can tell they're sort of racing through their earlier tunes, especially Tarkus (skipping Battlefield entirely - and nothing from Brain Salad Surgery) - at this point they had sort of lost me - their Works albums are still pretty good, however it wasn't as captivating to me as their first four albums. But this is a great document of that era - amazing how great the sound is for what is essentially a bootleg with the master tapes cleaned up!

And really, I absolutely adore Yes too from Time And A Word all the way to Going For The One, but ELP live was a totally different proposition than Yes live from what I can gauge from their triple LPs - these albums are absolutely fantastic where Yessongs doesn't live up to their studio records for me - that's preference however but what can you do. I mean however not to say that Yessongs is bad because it's two hours of Yes......

[Mortte Jousimo]

I have now listend Tarkus few times. And at first I say I have listened music so long and specially prog music so I can say very correct opinion about it just a few time listening, my opinion nowdays changes very little after more listening, but I will listening it more and tell here if it changes radically.

Well, it is good as most of the first seventies years prog albums are but...I think the main problem in ELP is that they seem to have need to make music that shows how incredible talented musicians they are rather to create strong atmospheres, beautiful melodies and also raw moods and riffs to balance the beaty and make music more interesting like many other prog bands do that time. I think Greg lake is the only one who do not have need to show all the time how talented he is (there´s very good guitar playing in the battlefield, it remains me Dave Gilmour). Stones of Years and the Battlefield in Tarkus, the Only Way and a Time and a Place are great, but rest of the album is much more mediocre than many great prog albums. Many other bands could also make better long entities, Tarkus (I mean the whole a-side) sounds to me as if they´ve put together quite different parts without any clue. As a matter of fact I have always thought Rush is a kind of father of Neoprog-style, but I think it is ELP. Well ELP is not of course as bad as for example Dream Theater.

It´s very hard to say what´s best band ever, but definitely in my opinion it isn´t ELP. At the moment I think it´s Sonic Youth (some moments it´s Joy Division). If it was prog band, I think it would be Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Wigwam or Jethro Tull. The problem is that like all other prog bands also these bands after seventies material is kind of banal if you compare it to their great years. Of course there is differences in bands after seventies material, some are better than someone else. But I think SY have kept freshness into their records altough it´s also kind "old" band.

If someone wants to get to know prog music, I won´t recommend him Tarkus, because I think there are lots of stereotypes of prog many people hates. Instead I will recommed to him Pink Floyd Dark Side, Genesis Selling England, Yes the Yes Album, King Crimson in the Court of, Jethro Tull Aqualung or Wigwam Fairyport.

[The Watcher]

I would give the first ELP a spin as well, Tarkus is a great song, yet it's unrepresentative of ELP as a whole - I think the first album represents them at their peak in terms of musicianship and before they went a little crazy with the over the top stuff...... Still I think you make an interesting point when you reference ELP is "full of prog stereotypes people hate", it's funny because ELP was what progressive rock represented at the time to most people - same with bands like Genesis with the costume changes and such (Genesis are obviously excellent, I just don't care about costumes) - there were a lot of preposterous elements yet thats what prog was...... That excess was what made prog so unique, regardless if it was Spring having THREE mellotron players or ELP or whatnot........

[Mortte Jousimo]

Originally Posted by The Watcher

I would give the first ELP a spin as well, Tarkus is a great song, yet it's unrepresentative of ELP as a whole - I think the first album represents them at their peak in terms of musicianship and before they went a little crazy with the over the top stuff...... Still I think you make an interesting point when you reference ELP is "full of prog stereotypes people hate", it's funny because ELP was what progressive rock represented at the time to most people - same with bands like Genesis with the costume changes and such (Genesis are obviously excellent, I just don't care about costumes) - there were a lot of preposterous elements yet thats what prog was...... That excess was what made prog so unique, regardless if it was Spring having THREE mellotron players or ELP or whatnot........

I think that there is something unique specially the first seventies years prog. I don´t think it´s excess altough the music was mostly very powerful. It´s very hard to explain what it is, of course those albums sound so good, much better than most of the music after seventies, but I don´t think it´s just that. Maybe it´s that the prog musicians wanted to go to the very different worlds than this ours and I think many of them succeeded! It´s quite amazing also that almost every prog bands albums started to weaken in the end of decade (of course there´s exceptions: King Crimson´s Red is maybe their best album!).

Altough I don´t think Tarkus is one of the greatest prog albums, I still enjoy to listen it a lot. Yeah, I´m going to listen also that first album, because I like a lot The Nice and I´ve heard it´s something in the middle of The Nice and later ELP.

The Peter Gabriel time Genesis is just great, to me it is quite the same what they did on stage because the music is just great! But I think there is some differences for example in Genesis and ELP. Genesis musicians were also technically talented, but I think the important think to them was to create great music, not show the skills almost all the time like ELP do in Tarkus (I haven´t listened Gentle Giant a lot, but I think that band has also many same problems as ELP in it´s music). And so did all the other bands that I mentioned. I think also it was quite typical that time that people wanted to hear long songs and improvisations and they were fascinated about the skills of the musicians (It has also said here in Finland that you couldn´t see the fingers of Wigwam´s Jukka Gustavson and Pekka Pohjola when they played). But what I think it´s great of the seventies prog there were so many bands who instead of skills showing made so good music!

I don´t know have you listened Procol Harum, but I picked also from the library their album "Exotic Birds and Fruit" and it is very very great, as good as the earlier "Shine on brightly", "a Salty Dog" "Home" and "Grand Hotel".

[Keeping It Simple]

I prefer Crosby, Stills and Nash.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by aselfishimpulse

What about Young?

He wasn't always in the band.

[Glice]

Are they exceptional musicians, or just adequate ones playing in a field of not-adequate musicians?

What's the piece that shows me they're amazing composers? The organist seems to reference the melody from classical composers but doesn't do much with his left hand. It's all octaves on the tonic, on the beat with his left hand, as far as I can see. Which makes him 2/3rds of a triad worse than Elton John.

NB I'm not saying they're shit or anything. Ok, now I'm saying it - they are a bit shit, you realise that, right?

I'm off to stick on the new Avril album again.

[The Watcher]

Thanks for that amazing insight, Glice......

[Glice]

Which one? The one where I pointed out they're not much cop, or the one where I discretely suggested that I'd rather listen to something with an actual tune?