BEYOND THE BEGINNING

This is a great collection and shows ELP changing through the 70's; from looking young, hungry and mean, setting off canons at the IOW festival through to them becoming - at least musically - rather tired and middle aged with "Pirates" and "Tiger in the Spotlight". No wonder punk pushed them aside! But as they say in the excellent documentary, Beyond the Beginning, the packed an awful lot into their first few years. The first disc is mainly a chronologocal run-through of their history - IOW; some footage from Brussels (which is great - if you want to see it all, get" ELP-Masters from the Vault") - through 73, 74 with excerpts from Cal Jam; footage of Carl Palmer on "Aquarious" and Ketih Emerson on the Oscar Peterson show; the video of "Fanfare". Disc 2 is mostly Cal Jam including a brief clip of the much talked about spinning piano, which looked a bit wobbly to start with but hey, it spun and boy, he played!

Great stuff, great music, film quality variable in places but nothing too awful, a wonderful collection and a reminder that ELP were about putting on a stage show as much as the music they played. A few niggles - nothing much of "Pictures" and some of the clips were too brief - but a must if you're an ELP fan, and even if you're not, chances are you will enjoy this.