WORKS VOL. 1

After releasing Brain Salad Surgery group has fallen into creative vacuum. During the next four years they did not release a studio album. This double LP has come after this period of time. But it was different in the matter of both format and quality. In the album there were one side for each musician's individual work and one side where three worked together.

Keith Emerson has written and performed a pure classic piano concerto with London Philharmonic Orchestra. Actually, when you buy an album of a progressive rock group you don't expect to hear only classical music. In my personal opinion it was both unnecessary and strange choice. As for Greg Lake he covered a whole side with "sweet love songs " he once wrote for each of the group's albums. Being a big fan of ELP I always felt uncomfortable with his "soap opera" singing. Among the album songs none deserve attention except tremendous C'est La Vie.

On Carl Palmer's side, despite of all of his good intentions, he has failed to create a composition we could enjoy and remember. After so much torture we finally reach the last side of the album and say "yes, now this is ELP"! Here we have two long songs performed by whole group working together. One is "Fanfare for the Common Man" an arrangement from Aaron Copland's work and the other is "Pirates". And both of them are wonderful. I couldn't stop myself thinking that if the album consisted of only these 2 songs and C'est La Vie (you can add 1 or 2 more songs from Works Vol.2 such as "When the apple blossoms....", and "Bullfrog"), it would be pretty enough for it to be remembered as one of the best albums of ELP.