Emerson, Lake &
Palmer – Then & Now CD Concert
set
Sound: C+
Concert Music Then: B Now: C+
Without any doubt, in their prime, Keith Emerson, Greg
Lake & Carl Palmer were capable of putting on some of the most powerful,
stunning, almost cinematic concert presentations. This remained so, even when the late, great Cozy Powell stepped
in for Palmer when he was not in the line-up.
Every concert they gave was an event and could mow down anything and
everything this side of Tina Turner!
Before music illiterates reduced the Progressive Rock movement to “Prog
Rock” (which sounds too much like “frog rock” to us, which is likely the point
of the defamation), the idea of taking the energy and power of Rock and
combining it with the power and energy of Classical was not a way to negate
what Rock had accomplished, despite the accusation of often well-meaning Rock
purists.
Note how much more subversive and powerful the music form
such bands is versus the talentlessness of 1980s “hair bands” and other Corporate
Rock entities. Bands like ELP, Yes,
King Crimson, The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and U.S. answers Kansas and Styx
created one of the greatest subgenres of Rock.
Even when other bands came along in the 1980s to be watered-down
versions of them (Asia, GTR), they were far from the worse music around, though
it was a fall form grace for the subgenre that brought on the Prog Rock
moniker.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Then & Now is yet
another concert compilation of the band that helped make H.R. Giger’s groundbreaking
art work popular on their memorable vinyl record album covers. The music always had equal merit. Giger later designed the killing machine
that still is Ridley Scott’s Alien, one of the most influential
character designs of the late 20th century.
The original concert is from the 1974 CalJam, where they
did Toccata, excerpts from Take A Pebble with Still… You Turn
Me On, Lucky Man, Piano Improvisations and Take A Pebble
itself, and the infamous Karn Evil 9 (“carnival” – get it?). This is the band in good form, even if the
recording is not top rate, at least it was recorded.
The new concert is a combination of performances form 1997
& 1998 that are hugely disappointing and were personally painful for me to
listen to. Lake sounds like he is in
pain and just going through the motions.
All three still have the technique and skill to play their respective
instruments, but it all also seems pained.
The spark is gone and dread is offset by the slowness and even muddiness
at times of the performances? What
happened? Many will say it is because
of age, but that never hurt Tina Turner.
What it is has more to do with just not rocking enough than anything
else, making me want to pull them aside and make them watch Richard Linklater’s
recent School Of Rock so they’d get their spark back. As great as they are, it would not take much
more than that, I hope.
The PCM 2.0 Stereo on both concerts is not as dynamic as
expected, with the older one showing its age and the newer one being too
compressed for its own good. The older
one has an edge and neither one decodes particularly well in Dolby Pro
Logic. Sometimes, their material does
so, even when not credited as such, but this is not one of those cases. Better sound would not have saved the latter
concert, however, so only get this set for what the earlier concert covers of
CD 1. Otherwise, try another ELP
title. Plenty are out there.
- Nicholas Sheffo
