Hey,

This sunday, i saw Greg live in my hometown of Swansea. He definitely benefitted from the small venue and I've gotta say, that (at 17 years old) as this is probably the closest i will get to seeing ELP live, i''m not really dissapointed. He was great! His voice was admittedly lower, but he was still extremely powerful and in tune. The backing vocalists were understated ( 2 girls) and the guitarist Florian Ophale was excellent (he's toured with Ian Anderson i think) and gave some stuff a cool metalish feel. Other band members were good, and greg mainly played guitar (strat/ les paul) doing most of the melodies himself. Heres what he did,

Started with ITCOTCK! PLayed the little tootly dance of the puppets on tape first before they came on and i was the only person who went " YEAH IN THE COURT!" Needless to say, i felt a bit of a dickhead, and was a little disappointed that the rest of the crowd didnt know a lot aboot KC and it turned out that they didnt know much else apart from lucky man!

Then power of money
From the beginning was excellent with predicably greg on guitar as well as vocal
Then Touch and Go from ELPowell  lol
Take a pebble was excellent with ophale having his own 5 min flamenco style solo which was excellent
Hang on to a dream (?????!!!!)
A few other cheesy generic rockers followed that greg had written
21st century schizoid man- really good and almost like metal (!) complete with ultra fast bit played even faster by florian opahle
Interval

I was certain that KE9 pt 2 would be the start the second half, but nope, it was the fantastic Fanfare for the common man, which was absolutely great. Keyboard sounded just right and was close to the original 9 min version
I believe in father christmas (!!!!!??????)
Lucky man was great, as expected
The focal point of the night was pictures. He even said "we're gonna give you pictures at an exhibition!" like the record. The gnome was excellent and the sage (without cool acoustic bridge in original between verses 2 + 3) were excellent as was promenade (no old castle, blues variation or nutrocker) in this abridged but theatrical version which was the best part of the set.
Then after a fake stage exit, and a standing ovation (led by me!) they all came back on (as they always do in these things) and played KE9 pt 2 which was really awesome (slightly metal tinged) and then finiished.

The set was great, the only dissappointments being some crappy rockers of lake's solo career (80s stuff) and lack of audience knowledge, i was on my own singing the sage, KE9, TAP, Schizoid and other stuff

Maybe im just sad.

But he was good, seriously, go see him. Anyone else seen him live?

Yeah, I have to agree, people (mainly critics) seem to like to dump on Lake in particular and ELP (and prog) in general. I just ignore them.

Thanks for the review

I'm going to the Dartford show in just over a week. 

Damn, just turned down chance to see him in Birmingham this Sunday. Its good to hear he can still cut the mustard.

I just noticed that Keith Emerson band is starting a tour in Nov, so now we have Emerson, Lake and Palmer all on the road at the same time touring with their bands. Just a shame they are not on the same stage together...someday maybe.

richardh wrote: Thanks for the review I'm going to the Dartford show in just over a week.

Me too, looking forward to it.