What's wrong with ELP?

  You figured that out only now. Very good! On the Victory B.S.S reissure of the 1990s, there are pictures of ELP looking over H.R. Geiger's artwork for the album.

O666 wrote: Keith is wild player and he plays like god. Carl is powerful and he has pretty good technic and Greg balanced keith wild and his voice had commercial potential ( like collins). This combination can make magneficence masterpiece but it never happened. Every prog legends have 1 or more masterpiece but ELP dont have ONE 5 STAR ALBUM. One of friends told " they have many 5 star songs". I agree with that but they dont have 5 star album.

Sorry but I totally disagree. The masterpieces of ELP did happen. Actually quite a few of them, and I don't mean just masterpiece songs but masterpiece albums. A soccer team with 1 or 2 weaker players out of the 11 can still be a superteam if the other 9 or 10 are among the best in the world. Many masterpiece albums by other bands have also their weaker moments and yet they still deserve being called masterpieces.

Gerinski wrote: O666 wrote: Keith is wild player and he plays like god. Carl is powerful and he has pretty good technic and Greg balanced keith wild and his voice had commercial potential ( like collins). This combination can make magneficence masterpiece but it never happened. Every prog legends have 1 or more masterpiece but ELP dont have ONE 5 STAR ALBUM. One of friends told " they have many 5 star songs". I agree with that but they dont have 5 star album. Sorry but I totally disagree. The masterpieces of ELP did happen. Actually quite a few of them, and I don't mean just masterpiece songs but masterpiece albums. A soccer team with 1 or 2 weaker players out of the 11 can still be a superteam if the other 9 or 10 are among the best in the world. Many masterpiece albums by other bands have also their weaker moments and yet they still deserve being called masterpieces. I repeat, to me ELP debut, Pictures, Tarkus, Trilogy, BSS and Welcome Back all qualify as 5-star masterpieces. Obviously it's a matter of taste, but I feel like many people have a strange negative bias against ELP compared to other great prog bands.

Although I do broadly agree with this (after all I'm an ELP fanboy crusty) your post does highlight one of the anomalies re interpretation of the ratings system for album reviews. Of the entire ELP discography, I have rated only Brain Salad Surgery as 5 stars because every single track on that critter IMO is quite brilliant. Trilogy, Pictures, Tarkus and to a lesser extent, the debut are but a small kick in the backside off 5 stars but do contain flaws that force me to mark lower. How many times have you read a fawning review of say Crimson, Yes, Tull or Genesis where the reviewer states something along the lines of:

This track is a bit poppy/boring/silly/simple for me but you cant deny it, the remainder is a masterpiece of progressive rock music *****  ?

There was even one deluded piece of hirsute plankton who rated 2112 by Rush as 5 stars and admitted he thought all of side two of the album sucked ?! (Has he considered suing his parents for malpractice?)

So, are we forced to conclude that all ELP fans try to be honest and as objective as possible with regards their fave band or that the remainder are a disingenuous rabble of barely literate apologists for patchy masterpieces ?


Edited by ExittheLemming - March 20 2010 at 08:57

rogerthat wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: Although I do broadly agree with this (after all I'm an ELP fanboy crusty) your post does highlight one of the anomalies re interpretation of the ratings system for album reviews. Of the entire ELP discography, I have rated only Brain Salad Surgery as 5 stars because every single track on that critter IMO is quite brilliant. Trilogy, Pictures, Tarkus and to a lesser extent, the debut are but a small kick in the backside off 5 stars but do contain flaws that force me to mark lower. How many times have you read a fawning review of say Crimson, Yes, Tull or Genesis where the reviewer states something along the lines of: This track is a bit poppy/boring/silly/simple for me but you cant deny it, the remainder is a masterpiece of progressive rock music *****  ? There was even one deluded piece of hirsute plankton who rated 2112 by Rush as 5 stars and admitted he thought all of side two of the album sucked ?! (Has he considered suing his parents for malpractice?) So, are we forced to conclude that all ELP fans try to be honest and as objective as possible with regards their fave band or that the remainder are a disingenuous rabble of barely literate apologists for patchy masterpieces ? I agree with the poster above you that if a sidelong epic is a masterpiece, it should seal the five star rating for the album.  Based on this, I would give Tarkus five stars but not so to say BSS, because I don't think KE9 is a masterpiece though it is a great track, yes.  The way I see it, you listen to say Foxtrot because it has Supper's Ready and whether you like Timetable or not should be inconsequential to the rating.  Yes, there is a problem if people apply this thinking to say Genesis albums but not to ELP albums (though why people should do so beats me ).

So your goalposts appear to be not just shifting but actually on wheels then ? i.e. if 50% of an album is brilliant and the rest is mediocre you would presumably rate this 5 stars. Are you therefore basing your review score on the longest track ? What about prog bands who have albums with 10 tracks roughly  the same length and 5 of them suck - does this get 5 stars also ? Wake up to yourself son.

rogerthat wrote: My goalposts aren't shifting, I have said this before when the same topic came up.  Yes, indeed, I would rate an album with one or more masterpiece tracks as masterpiece because that's my way of saying people should listen to the album for the masterpieces.  What would I do with an album full of decent songs but all lacking in lustre?

I am just listening to Barbarian and I have to wonder again, how is this not rock enough ...this is Sabbath heavy, just listen to that riff...sick!  

rogerthat wrote: I am just listening to Barbarian and I have to wonder again, how is this not rock enough ...this is Sabbath heavy, just listen to that riff...sick!

Both BlacK Sabbath and ELP begin their debut albums with heavy pieces featuring the flattened fifth interval. This gives such music that lovely evil feel.

It's what got young Johann S. Bach into trouble when he were a lad. He's play some organ pieces during funerals; then begin improvising on these sort of dark themes and... upsetting the hell out of the poor funeral goers.

Now if you can get such music onto reactionary conservative rock radio and away from the forward thinking classical stations then we'd be getting somewhere.

Incidentally The Australian Symphony Orchestra once (at least) played Emerson's Piano Concerto 1. They also played Pictures at the same gig but not a word from the commentators (I have it on CD) on how Emerson used to perform recitals of Pictures in his hot rockin' combo of the same music. An obvious connection but no one joined the dots.

 Almost barbaric..

rogerthat wrote: Gerinski wrote: I quite agree, I'd rate higher an album with several true masterpieces but some flaw, than a consistently good album but with no real highlight in it. Of course we need some sense of measure, a masterpice of 10 min in an otherwise full of sh*t album of 50 min is not enough to rate the album 5 stars, this is common sense. I love the song Lifeline in Neal Morse's same titled album but I rated it 2 stars because most of the rest sucks. And yet I rate any of the first albums of ELP until Welcome Back (included) with 5 stars without hesitation.  Yes of course, we have to use our discretion to decide which track tilts the scales if at all and by how much.  Tarkus is so obviously the highlight of the album that the question of whether or not you like the other tracks seems irrelevant to me.  This business by the way of focusing too much on the bad tracks is how an album like Tarkus winds up with a lower average than Moonmadness, which at least imo lacks masterpiece tracks though it's overall very solid.  Or Trick of the tail for another example.

With all due respect this is Grade 'A' spurious bollocks - you are rating the ALBUM not just a long title track.

rogerthat wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: With all due respect this is Grade 'A' spurious bollocks - you are rating the ALBUM not just a long title track. Indeed, and every song on the album therefore cannot have the same weight because the masterpiece sidelong epic would make a much bigger impression than a two minute filler that would go practically unnoticed.  It simply involves using your discretion and deciding whether that big track tilts the scales enough to call the album a masterpiece or not.  If you say that you would rate an album with say one 45 minute masterpiece and one awful 5 minute track as four and not five, that doesn't make sense to me at all because it's music and not math.

How can a musical masterpiece have 'filler' ?
Are Bach's fugues considered horrid girly bubblegum pop because they are shorter than his concertos ?
I agree it certainly ain't math(s) but neither is it weighing bananas either
Your holistic view of appraisal i.e. the whole can be more than the sum of its parts, is fine for the visual arts but falls down when employed in the musical realm i.e. music is a stubbornly linear critter (go on, tell me you can anticipate the next track on an album you're hearing for the first time )
A 'masterpiece' in modern parlance if applied strictly should indicate that you consider the entire work the best ever created by that artist. e.g there cannot be two 'master' tapes. (I think this pedantic but you get the drift)
For me, I have to like every track on an album before I give it 5 stars and yes, some tracks will be better than others and yes, I am more forgiving of short good (but not great) than long good (but not great)
Sorry I came across as a bit snarky before, it's just because I am a bit snarky at the best of times.



Edited by ExittheLemming - March 20 2010 at 21:55

I suppose it depends on how bad music is defined. The usual tracks from ELP to take flak are the funny ones, Benny and Eddie etc. These are less serious than KE9 and Tarkus and fun (mind you that bit about seven virgins and a mule had me wondering about hotel rooms and rock stars on tour...). The flip side is that ELP get s accused of being humourless and too full of itself. Nothing wrong with a bit of levity in the right place - just look at FZ's work. On the other hand a comedy track from Black Sabbath is probably not going to fit (Black Sabbath)... anywhere there.

Humour takes courage. Like technology it is going to be one of the first things to become dated.

For me the first albums from ELP are terrific. You get in depth epics or in depth shorter tracks like Bitches Crystal. Just  'cause a piece does not have a certain length does not make it a poor track. Besides, Tarkus is broken up into pieces so top 20 oriented Prog fans can get to grips with it.

Unless my memory fails me Karn Evil 9 does contain a huge top 20 type radio hit. WBMFTTSTNE.