TRILOGY

How rabid were we to get our hands on this, back in the day? We had a friend who owned a record store. It was a Friday. Distributor told her he'd have the album to her on Monday. What??? How about we drive 100 miles and pick up her shipment, on Friday. Done deal.

So how good was the album? It was worth everything we went to get it two days early. Now? Still a solid outing from ELP, though, as always with ELP albums, flawed. Endless Enigma, once it finally kicks into gear, is one of ELP's better songs. We also get Hoedown, a concert favorite, and From the Beginning, which deserves special mention because it contains one of Emerson's most succinct and beautiful synth solos. As usual, what was Side 2 of the LP is iffy. The title track is a bit overblown and Living Sin tries but fails to re-create the hard rock of Knife-Edge.

Abaddon's Bolero was jaw-dropping when performed live during this era, which makes the LP version somewhat disappointing. The essence of the song is there, but it fails to capture, probably due to limitations of recording technology at the time, how when performed live the song arose from a whisper -- with each keyboard layer incrementally stacking on top of the previous keyboard layer -- to become a loud and vicious aural (and, in concert, visual) assault that left at least this listener virtually gasping for air. So let's call Trilogy a good 'un; it's still not the great album that was proving to be elusive for ELP.

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