BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

BSS is my favorite album, so I'm rating it 5 stars. To me it's the ultimate progressive album of all time. It has everything. The greatest musicians, the greatest voice, and a concept that was extremely viable at the time, along with just enough pretentiousness to be absolutely perfect!

I once read where someone said that Greg Lake's voice provides a calming relief in the midst of Keith's chaos. And yet that's where the ELP genius laid, the balance between Keith Emerson and Greg Lake and the supporting steadiness of Carl Palmer.

The beginning of Jerusalem is quite majestic to me. Brings you into what is regal and yet realistic about England. The song is also a childhood favorite hymn of mine, so now I have an updated rocking version with the voice of an angel.

I prefer Keith when he's a bit self-indulgent. It makes for some very interesting choices in music; for instance, Ginastera's "Toccata". When you come at the music from Keith's point of view, you come on hard and passionate. When I heard the original piece after listening to ELP's version for so long, it bored me, but there is nothing boring about Keith's rendition or Carl's first use of his drum synths. You listen to it, then when its finally over, you think "What the hell was that??"

Then it leads you into a lovely Greg Lake ballad that brings you back to ground and gives you one of the most beautiful vocal performances ever, even with the "Someone get me a ladder" line. You have to hear this on the DVD-Audio though; the first time I heard it on a good system, it gave me goose bumps all over and it actually made me teary eyed. The first few times I heard it live acoustically, I really missed the keyboards, the studio version is just so intricate..

However, Karn Evil 9 is the true masterpiece of the album. Personally even though the second part of the First Impression is the most known, I prefer the Third Impression, which I believe to be the soul of this album. The vocals done by Greg on this piece are awe inspiring, I think it actually caused me to change the way I pronounce specific words. And then there's the cliff hanger. Did man win or did the computer win?? Hey, on tour I saw it sprout wings and the blow up every night. so in my book, the human's won.