Magnificent Excess: The Story of ELP

  1988: 3 (Emerson, Berry & Palmer) - To the Power of Three - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoIDt_C5y1LvwwylCrJEuChC68BBpb9pt

COZY POWELL    A legendary drummer who's been in more bands than you can shake a drumstick at. On the rainy evening of 5 April 1998, Cozy Powell danced with the devil one too many times when, having had a few drinks and not wearing a seat-belt, he drove his Saab 9000 at over 100mph on the M4 motorway with a defective tyre in appalling weather at night-time, whilst chatting with his girlfriend on a mobile phone. Somewhat inevitably, one of the defective tyres blew out and Cozy's last words (reported by his girlfriend) were "Oh s**t!" followed by a loud bang.  

  1986: Emerson, Lake & Powell - Emerson, Lake & Powell - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoIDt_C5y1LtKb2sKbN9e7RqzfFtnb3k0

All I Want is You

Burning Bridges

Fanfare for the Common Man

The Great Gates of Kiev

I Believe in Father Christmas

Jerusalem

Lucky Man

Piano Concerto No. 1

Romeo and Juliet

Take a Pebble

The timing of the album couldn't have been much worse coming in the Summer of Punk. A double album called "Works Volume 1" featuring a piano concerto gave plenty of ammo for the prevailing narrative about "pretentious dinosaurs". It was just asking for a kicking from the Punk-fixated music press and that's what it got, even though the quality of the music is really good IMHO and it deserves better than the three-star rating it has on Progarchives.

And yeah they looked much cooler than Johnny Rotten or Joe Strummer in the Fanfare promo! 

Psychedelic Paul wrote: ^ Okay, I had no idea it was filmed at a baseball stadium in Montreal. I'll hand in my prog card at the door on my way out.

From Wikipedia...August 1977 show at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal that was attended by an estimated 78,000 people, the highest attended Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert as a solo act.

*This is also a record for attendance at the Big O that stands to this day.

I just watched this again ... and I still have a tremendous amount of respect for their music and work. And, as Keith stated, the idiot that made the comment about him not being a composer, is just a rock groupie that has no idea what music is for him other than toilet paper. Keith did not deserve that criticism, but like all of us, he was also sensitive to it all, because even though ELP had a lot of "show" in the end, combined with the music it was an incredible experience that you will never see today with bands faking it out in badly designed lights and smoke bombs, and a casual explosion here and there to make it look like a wow. These light shows are meaningless and have no sense of anything ... except, supposedly, trying to excite you into thinking that what they are doing is valuable and important ... and in the GREAT BANDS? A line by itself is better and sometimes more important than the lights or the show itself!

While I could say that I miss the "quality" of the music in the time it was done, in the last 30 years I have not seen anything half as good or as strong ... other than maybe MAGMA, but perhaps they belong into another sphere of experience, which is a lot more than just the music itself.

I have said hundreds of times, you only have to hear Rachel Flowers do TARKUS in its entirety on the piano, to realize what a massive composition it is, but sadly, as much as DD appreciates it, he won't say that Keith put together a massive piano concerto ... which he should have to help bridge the gap between rock music and classical music ... those differences need to die.

ELP combined everything, and made it work. Maybe a synthesizer helped folks tune in to something new ... but in the end, it was the quality of the music that woke us up to it ... not an idiot saying Keith had no talent to be a composer.