BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

Brain Salad Surgery is not simply the best album of the year of prog 1973, nor is it just the best ELP album. It is the pinnacle of an entire decade. No album that I've ever heard has matched the sheer energy of First Impression, the awe-filled reverence of Jerusalem, the playfulness of Toccata, the tenderness of Still... You Turn Me On, or, most importantly, the message of Third Impression.

Yeah, a message.

Remember back in the '60s? When music had a message? Well, a lot of the music in the '70s lost that message. Karn Evil 9, like Tarkus before it, has a message. You need to listen to it to hear it. You need to do more than have it playing in the background during your morning commute. Karn Evil 9 is the pinnacle of an entire style of music, and I think it's terrible that it's been put down as inaccessible and therefore crappy. Good art is not accessible; it takes a little while to digest. Most people are too preoccupied with other things to digest any track over 8 minutes, and this 29- minute "monstrosity" must be a large mental task indeed. But if this 18-year-old mind can comprehend the true beauty of this masterpiece and the message it exists to convey, then certainly perhaps you can all sit down and wipe your minds clean of the notion that this is simply an excuse to play guitars fast and throw some crazy sounds into pompous music. Karn Evil 9 is more than that, and for me shows that not every song that changes time signatures once or twice per track is qualified to be "progressive".

[I'm not insulting Yes here, because I also like Yes. But I would recommend to anyone that thinks Brain Salad Surgery is overblown and pompous to listen to Tales from Topographic Oceans. It makes ELP sound like Bob Dylan.]

I can't let this one pass: Benny the Bouncer is the single worst ELP song ever. Hands down. I don't know why they kept putting songs like that in their albums.