PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

This is a live album, and I wasn't planning on reviewing ELP's live albums, but I have to talk about Pictures At An Exhibition, because it's an oddball in the band's catalogue. Not only has its material never been released on any studio album, but the entire album is a cover of a 19th century classical suite with the same name by Modest Mussorgsky, recreated in ELP's own style. In other words, talking about the compositional strengths of these songs doesn't make much sense here because none of the material on this release was actually written by Emerson, Lake or Palmer (well, they did add some lyrics of their own, but the less said about lines such as "There's no end to my life! No beginning to my death! Death is life!", the better?). Instead, this album mostly serves as a testament of ELP's musical skills in a live setting, which are as impressive as in the studio, as well as Keith Emerson's stage antics, which includes him stabbing a knife into his organ (not as awesome without the visuals but still fun) and fiddling around with his massive synthesizer, wowing the audience with what must have been amazing futuristic sounds at the time. Today, these bits sound more like the mating calls of an electronic starling who's had one cup of coffee too many. Still, all of these things are part of the package, so you'll have to accept them, and it does make the album more quirky, if anything.

Now, the performances are about on the same level as on the last two albums, but the songs are generally more complex and demanding. "The Gnome" and "The Hut Of Baba-Yaga" continue the tradition of "Eruption" and "The Barbarian" as intricate instrumental monster tracks that zip by at lightning speed, while the "Promenade" theme serves as a gentle interlude at different points on the album, and "The Great Gates Of Kiev" ends the suite on a joyful, bombastic note. My favourite is the band's interpretation of Mussorgsky's "The Old Castle". It's preceded by a ballad called "The Sage", which is essentially a solo spot for Greg Lake. While the verses may make it appear to be a not particularly memorable acoustic guitar ballad, Lake gets to shine on his instrument during the bridge, which shows that he was capable of more than just strumming around some basic chords. The real treat comes right afterwards though, when Emerson leads the band into a high-energy synthesizer workout that seamlessly transitions into a great organ-based blues jam, proving that Keith could still throw out some tasty chops in a blues context. Another highlight is a cover of an instrumental rock classic called "Nut Rocker" which the boys perform at the end. It has no relation to the rest of the material but it's good fun nonetheless.

According to the liner notes (which tend to exaggerate things a bit, admittedly), classical music snobs fumed when this album hit the market, proclaiming that the band was ruining Mussorgsky's original suite, but I think that's silly. The point of this album is not really to replace the original or even to "update" it for a modern audience. Rather, this is just one extreme example of ELP's efforts to combine the traditions of classical and rock music, and should be seen as a new interpretation of the suite, that ought to peacefully coexist with the original and can even be seen as loose from it. More importantly than that however is the album's function as a historical document, showing that these guys really were capable of playing such challenging material just as fast and with as much of an aural presence as in the studio.