WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS

Like Seconds Out is the essential Genesis live outing, this is the essential ELP live outing. Recorded during the Brain Salad Surgery tour, this album features their best live offerings. Opening with the Aaron Copland track Hoedown, from the beginning the listener is taken on a bombastic journey of sound. This album features the two seminal ELP epics, Tarkus and Karn Evil 9, each extended with great jams in the middle (the latter featuring a great Palmer percussion solo).

The highlights beside these two behemoths are Take a Pebble parts one and two, the first part featuring excerpts from Lucky Man and Still... You Turn me On. The frightening, exaggerated cacaphony of Tocatta, and their rendition of Jerusalem. All of those are played with precision (although at times it sounds like Keith is playing with boxing gloves) and are excellent adaptations of their studio counterparts.

The only things I dislike on the album are the sound quality, which is sub-par, and the Piano Improvisations gets boring in the middle. Otherwise, this is a good live album that no ELP fan should be without. 3.5/5.