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This was written by ELP fan Andy Moore a few years ago. THought you guys might like it!
ELP NOT! Portrait of Three Opportunists
[reprinted from Keybored magazine, June 1992, pp. 37-42]
-= INTRODUCTION =-
Many bands, especially progressive or 'art' rock groups of the '70s, have
been accused of being 'pretentious.' But shortly after the breakup of
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, three would-be musicians from Iowa formed a
band that passed 'pretentious,' 'pompous' and 'derivative' and went
straight to 'thieving' without a hint of shame. With the assumed names
Keith Enema, Greg Lame, and Carl Palmsore, they invented Xerox Rock and,
in spite of a total lack of talent or ethics, reached an astonishing and
disgusting level of success by releasing shadow ELP albums. This is
their story.
-= DISCOGRAPHY =-
* Enema, Lame & Palmsore: The Barber Ian / Take A Piss / Nice Hedge /
The Three Fakes: Clover, Loch Ness, Atrocious / Trank / Ucky Man
* Pictures On An X Window: Lemonade / The Little Ugly Fellow / More
Lemonade / The Old Condo / Blues Mutilation / Too Much Lemonade / The
Putz of Baba Wawa / A Bit More Lemonade / The Curse of Baba Wawa /
Enough With The Lemonade / The Great State of Iowa / Ballbasher
* Carcass: Erection / Stoned for Years / Econogas / Massive /
Mantlepiece / W.C. Fields / AquaMan / Bury Me Tender / Bitches Dishes
/ My Only Lay / Really Big Humongous Space / Assigned A New Space /
Are You Dead Yet, Eddy?
* Trickery: The Anus of Smegma (Part 1) / Puke / The Anus of Smegma
(Part 2) / From the Big Inmate / The Deputy / Go Down / Trickery /
Live In Sin / God's Rhumba
* Whip Some Skull On Me: Jerry Lewis 'Em / Toe Caca / Still...You Turn
Me Down / Billy the Kidder / Car Knievel Ate: 1st Indigestion -- Part
1 (The Appetizer), 1st Indigestion -- Part 2 (Soup), 2nd Indigestion
(Raw Fish), 3rd Indigestion (Dessert)
* Hi Again, You Suckers: Another Long Feast of Enema, Lame and Palmsore!:
Go Down / Toe Caca / Carcass (stretched-out-beyond-good-taste
version) / Take a Really Long Piss (including old stuff ripped off
from famous dead musicians, as well as Lame's old band) / Car Knievel
Ate (featuring some of the Lamest electric guitar ever)
* Jerks, Volume 1: Keith Enema -- Piano Thing No. 1: First Payment
(Alleged Gigilo, So?), Second Payment (A Dank, Molting Cannibal),
Third Payment (I Gotta Wrong Fuse, Oh!) // Greg Lame -- Lend Your
Tongue To Me Tonight / Say La What? / Shallow Be Thy Brain / Nobody
Loves Me Like I Do / Closer To Bankruptcy // Carl Palmsore -- The
Badass Boogies with the Homeboys / L.A. Fright / New Oiled Jeans /
Two Part Investment In Trouble / Fuel For Your Soultrain / Trank //
Enema, Lame & Palmsore -- Bus Fare For The Common Dude / Buccaneers
* Jerks, Volume 2: Tabby in the Headlights / When The Parking Tickets
Cover The Windshield Of My Mind, I'll Steal Your Car / Bullsh*t /
Maple Syrup Rag / Barrelheaded Breakdown / Watching Scooby Doo / So Far
To The Mall / Whip Some Skull On Me / I Belong on Father's Hit List /
Close But No Cigar / Choo-Choo Jingle / Show Me The Way To Get Cash
* Love Bitch: All I Want Is Glue / Love Bitch / A Smell of My Glove /
The Mumbler / Canary Oh! / Memoirs Of An Office Whore: (a) Prorate/The
Degradation of An Office Temp, (b) Lust That First Night, (c) Letters
From The Runt, (d) On Her, The Whole Company (a Strip-Tease)
* In Concept: Pewter Gun / Other Stuff You've Heard Before
* The Least Bad of Enema, Lame and Palmsore: Go Down / ...
* Buffoon: Buffoon / Paper Dud / A Fair Sub For Art / Running Over
Juliet / Farewell to Limbs / Changing Pants / Yearning Midgets /
Closet Home / Better Yet / Pissholes in the Snow
-= INTERVIEW =-
KEYBORED: Don't you feel that your perversion of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's
work is insulting and demeaning?
ENEMA: Oh, no, not at all! They say imitation is the sincerest form of
flattery, but we feel that parody is an even higher form of praise.
PALMSORE: We revere the guys, they're like gods to us! They're the tops!
LAME: We want to honor them with our music. We want to be as much like
them as we can; if not artistically, then at least financially!
KEYBORED: How did you get started as a 'band'?
LAME: Well, we were all three good pals, and we've liked ELP from the
very first album. And so when they broke up, we were left with this
great, aching void. And so since we were all amateur musicians, we
decided to try to play some of their songs. Which was a bit tricky,
since we were all three electric guitar players, and none of us knew
anything at all about music...
ENEMA: We had to start from scratch, as it were...
LAME: Anyway, after a few months...
PALMSORE: Years, actually...
LAME: ...and several times trading instruments, and finally finding some
studio musicians who would do most of the actual playing if we paid them
enough and kept their names secret, then, well, we had a pretty good
start on an ELP catalog of songs.
KEYBORED: But your songs aren't really ELP songs, they're twisted
shadows...
PALMSORE: It was easy to change the songs from the originals. At first
we were trying to do straight covers, but, well, most of their songs have
too many notes and chords in them!
LAME: Besides, there was no way we'd get performance rights!
ENEMA: We see our role as one of simplifying their music. Keith Emerson
likes to arrange classical bits for common people. Well, he doesn't
always go far enough. We like to reduce a song to it's most basic
elements.
LAME: Yeah, two or three chords at the most, and always 4/4 time
signature...
ENEMA: So they always sort of drifted from the true songs. Well,
between that and the way the lyrics always seemed to be wrong on the
liner notes, it wasn't difficult to just "throw it away", as Keith would
say, and just go our own way with the songs. Eventually we threw it all
away.
KEYBORED: Perhaps you go too far in simplifying some of the classical
works. After hearing your version of "Toe Caca," Alberto Veeofive is
quoted as saying, "Enema has totally missed the idea behind my music."
ENEMA: But Alberto isn't one of the masses, is he? I can't help it if
he lacks that pop sensibility, that accessibility that we value. I mean,
how many albums has HE sold?!
KEYBORED: How did you choose the names 'Enema, Lame and Palmsore'?
PALMSORE: We've noticed that many record stores abbreviate 'Emerson,
Lake & Palmer' as 'ELP' in the bins, and so it occurred to us that if we
played our cards right, our albums would get shuffled in with theirs.
You see, the average rock music buyer is in a hurry, and not really
making full use of his or her senses anyway, so in the rush to grab an
ELP album, they sometimes grab one of ours by accident.
KEYBORED: Well, the album and song titles and album covers appear to be
intentionally similar to the real ELP items.
LAME: That's right, it's a pure marketing decision. At first we
estimated that a good 65 percent of our album sales relied on that
effect. So then we cut the prices by a couple of dollars, and now it's
up to 85 percent. For a while in the late eighties we outsold original
ELP albums three to one!
KEYBORED: What are the band's current and future plans?
ENEMA: Well, with the original ELP back with a fantastic new album and a
world tour, we decided it would be best if we just kept a low profile.
LAME: We talked about suing them, since they seem to have taken some of
our ideas of simplification and used them on "Black Moon."
PALMSORE: But we decided that we didn't have the stomach for the legal
fight; lawyers cost money, ya know?
LAME: In fact, to avoid an legal entanglements, we've officially
disbanded. However, we each have solo projects planned. Keith is
working on something, what is it you're calling it?
ENEMA: For now it's just "The Arbor Day Album"...
PALMSORE: We can also do joint projects, as long as it's only two of us
at a time. Greg and I plan to form a band called "Antarctica." Another
possibility is forming a band called '2', which actually works pretty
well, because albums from '3' and '2' would all be in the 'T' bins in
record stores.
ENEMA: I'm looking into a quasi-retrospective band called 'The Heist'.
But our long-term hopes are for Emerson, Lake and Palmer to break up
again. Based on their personalities and past patterns, we aren't very
worried about it...
KEYBORED: Let's talk about instrumentation, especially yours, Keith.
Why don't you use a Hammond organ? That would seem to be a prequisite
for covering Keith Emerson's sound.
ENEMA: No, I don't think it is, although I have given that an honest
try. I once reserved a MIDI'd Hammond C-3 for the studio. When I went
to plug in my sequencer, I noticed there was no MIDI IN jack! So the
Hammond technicians come out and say something about being unreasonable.
I sit around for about two months while they work on it...
KEYBORED: What about Emerson's classic Moog sound?
ENEMA: I got this Paia Gnome at a garage sale, but I just couldn't get
that fat Moog sound out of it like Emerson uses a lot. Eventually I
settled on the Casio VL-Tone as my main axe, 'cause it had a cute demo
tune built into it.
Since I don't have the fancy, expensive stuff that the other Keith has, I
have to get creative, look around for unusual sources of sounds. The
first time I heard a Hoover vacuum cleaner, I knew it was a sound I could
use. Sounds like a motor, y'know? It goes up, and it goes down. That's
how 'Go Down' was inspired...
KEYBORED: Keith, it appears that you do very little actual playing of
keyboards; you just do most of the sequencing...
ENEMA: That's totally wrong. Fiction. I don't do ANY playing, and I do
as little sequencing as I can get away with. That's what I hire session
musicians for...
KEYBORED: Greg, is it true you collaborated with Spinal Tap on a song?
LAME: After hearing the beauty of 'Lick My Love Pump,' I wanted to work
with Nigel Tufnel, do a collaboration. But he refused to have anything
to do with me. So we sequenced every third note of 'Lick...', inverted
it, printed it out, and gave it to an anonymous friend who teaches a
beginning music appreciation class as an arrangement exercise. Most of
the students gave it an honest effort, and failed completely...
ENEMA: After all, it was a totally unworkable piece of music...
LAME: But one enterprising young student replaced whole sections with
stuff copied out of a beginner's piano exercise book, and that formed the
basis for 'A Smell of My Glove'..."
KEYBORED: Carl, you've made some attempts to outdo everyone else for
outlandish stunts.
PALMSORE: Yes, well, I liked Palmer's bell, the big one he had hanging
over his kit, so I had a custom 15 foot cowbell made for me. It has a
really deep, 'clangy' sound to it. Something I have planned is the
construction of a special drum kit that will be lifted into the air and
rotated, while I'm still playing! It should make for great drum solos.
The only problem is, I have to glue the sticks to my hands with Crazy
Glue...
KEYBORED: Yes, I can see that they're still glued on. Doesn't that
make it difficult to eat?
PALMSORE: Well, I do a lot of Chinese food...
KEYBORED: How about you, Keith? Do you have any on-stage antics to
mimic Emerson?
ENEMA: Sure, yeah. You know how he jams a knife into his Hammond and
then beats up on it? Well, I jam bubble gum in the keys of my Casio.
Then I wrestle with my Baldwin grand. Unfortunately, it's quite heavy and
usually wins...
LAME: Keith was severely injured during our last tour...
PALMSORE: He also drinks a lot of wine. I mean a LOT! And then goes
'hurling' into the audience...
ENEMA: (smiles) They just love that...
KEYBORED: You've also been accused of poor taste, specifically for some
rather digusting acts on stage with a dead chicken...
ENEMA: A rubber chicken, actually. Digusting is in the eye of the
beholder, isn't it?
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THIS IS ELP
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