What's wrong with ELP?

ExittheLemming wrote: Trilogy is very close to that status but for me The Endless Enigma is less than the sum of its three parts.

As usual, kudos to Iain for his post. I'd like to be even more potentially inflammatory, and say that I've never understood why people put down ELP for being pretentious, bombastic, self-indulgent, yadda yadda, and then wax lyrical about Dream Theater. In my humble opinion, there is more self-indulgence and such in most DT songs that in the whole ELP output. Something like Scenes from a Memory makes "Karn Evil 9" sound like a simple pop song...

However, nowadays it's fashionable to say ELP were bad, that other bands were much more influential (which ones), that they destroyed prog, and I don't know what else. I say, enough already! What about trying to be objective for once, and listen to the damned music with an open mind?

Even though I'm a massive ELP fanboy it's only Brain Salad Surgery that got 5 stars from me. Trilogy is very close to that status but for me The Endless Enigma is less than the sum of its three parts. Similarly, Tarkus is sullied by Are You Ready Eddy ? (If only the answer had been... No ?) Pictures at an Exhibition is also damn close to 5 sparklies but Keith's whinge that the classics are bowdlerised by Rock is shot to flames by the inclusion of Nutrocker. The debut album is very patchy i.e. Take a Pebble outstays its welcome and the guitar solo is padding, the Three Fates appears to be just Emerson (until the end when percussion appears) and Lucky man is Greg fluff. (notwithstanding the famous Moog solo which Emerson is on record as stating he thinks is sh*t)

I agree that it's practically impossible to imagine Prog's lineage without ELP (who were the genre's biggest draw for many years and a template for much of RPI) They were a band that had a healthy respect for the past wedded to an insatiable desire to take rock into areas it had never hitherto dared to set a Beatle boot. Their avowed inspiration was not american i.e. the blues/rock'n'roll, but the western European classical tradition. Blimey guvnor ! is there a parochial aesthetic agenda afoot ?

Conclusion: ELP are deemed to embody all the negative aspects of prog (pompous, long winded, pretentious, decadent, self-indulgent, ostentatious show-offs etc) and given that the biggest targets are the easiest ones, it takes the heat off most of their contemporaries whose crimes in this area dwarf that of ELP)

It must be only a matter of time before some half-wit intellectual starts a thread poll (with venn diagrams and pie charts of course) that posits 'Were ELP Really Progressive Rock ?

The three headed dog that everyone loves to kick ?.

Apologies (I'm really grumpy tonight for reasons as yet unknown)


Edited by ExittheLemming - March 13 2010 at 06:41

Fully agree, they became erratic after 'Welcome Back my friends', that's why I restricted my point to their first 4 studio records.  By the way 'Pictures' and 'Welcome Back' both deserve 5 stars in my opinion too and they only reach 4 in PA, but I thought restricting the discussion to the 4 studio albums would keep things easier.

Good morning Gerinski !    Well, I've been an ELP fan since 1974, and believe that they do have probably two 5 star Albums, Brain Salad Surgery, and their self titled debut . Both were groundbreaking and extremely well played. Trilogy comes in a close second with 4 stars.  I think a lot of people berate them simply because their over-all portfolio is pretty spotty and has a couple of glaring blunders later on with Love Beach and In The Hot Seat.  I agree though that Greg Lake can't write a decent lyric to save his life, but some of their work did benefit with the help of Pete Sinfield.