PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

I remember asking a fellow Marine who had this live album what he thought of it. His reply was that it sounded pretty good if you're loaded. Greg Lake was quoted as saying he did not consider this album a part of their collection. Evidently he was not too happy with the finished product.

I went ahead and bought it anyway, because it was one long song that was nearly 40 minutes in length. This release was what I would consider to be a landmark for any band. ELP were blazing new musical paths and this is where I believed progressive music should be going. At that time I didn't know this kind of music had a name, but it seemed like the logical thing to do for the serious musician. Unfortunately the material sounds much better played by an orchestra than by ELP.

Don't get me wrong, this has some good moments and Greg Lake does some wonderful acoustic stuff, but it just isn't that interesting overall. This is probably why they never ever did another song that covered two or more sides. They were more than likely dogged for doing it by no less than their own record company. The feedback was not a positive thing.

Nutrocker was mildly sucessful, but it was old school rock and roll. Anyone can do that kind of junk and it didn't impress me at all.

If they would have written something like "Tarkus" here and not have covered someone else's music, I believe this would be a major record worthy of 5 stars. It would have been the album of the century. As it is, this piece of music has never really found a place in my heart and I can't recommend it to anyone. I will only go for 1 star because even the fans didn't care for this at that time.