Re: ELP (was: Hiromi)

[mech <mech@m3ch.net>]

At 11:44 AM -0700 6/20/06, Paul Richards wrote:
>
>(I also tossed most of my ELP records out quite some time ago, however)
>
>For me, ELP hasn't held up over time. I've tried listening to their 
>work more than once the past few years, and while some of their 
>stuff is still good, much is overblown, mile-a-minute aimless 
>noodling (as opposed to direction'ed noodling).

Ditto here.  I still vaguely recall a few memorable lines from Tarkus 
or Brain Salad Surgery (Karn Evil 9?).  I was a fan back when I was 
in high school, and used to routinely get into such typical juvenile 
"discussions" about who was the world's greatest rock keyboardist, 
Emerson or Wakeman (um, yeah -- high school...).  Just for the sake 
of nostalgia, I trot those records back out every few years to see if 
there's still anything there.  No luck yet.  :P

Although I'd like to believe that Emerson has to have had a sense of 
humor in there somewhere (oh come on now: a guy dressed in white 
spandex with a cape riding a flaming Hammond B3 twirling in mid-air? 
that's so absurdly overblown it's almost worthy of Zappa, George 
Clinton, or Liberace).  But once you combine that amount of theatre 
with Carl Palmer's pomposity and Greg Lake's HUGELY overblown ego, 
the whole thing just cooks up a recipe for carsickness.  Ugh!

        --m.
-- 
_______
"Snakes, as the great philosophers used to say, on a motherfucking 
plane...."