BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

Last of the supposedly "great" studio albums from ELP, Brain Salad Surgery is highly overrated and really not that good in my opinion. There is just not that much good music here. The track Karn Evil 9 takes up the majority of the album. What is left ranges from bad to ok. The best track of the first four is Still...You Turn Me On, which people often refer to as the acoustic track from Lake. This time I think that Lake did it right and made the track interesting enough. Jerusalem is ok, nothing special. And I find Tocatta to be to much noise and not enough music. They are trying to hard on this track to sound scary and avant-garde, but it just sounds uninspired. Of course Benny the Bouncer is completely unlistenable.

So all your left with is Karn Evil 9. Is this the suite that brings the album to its legendary status? Is this the track that is up there with Tarkus? Nope. Its not even a coherent package. The three impressions are not related at all. The best part is the first impression part one. This is an amazing track and is up there with the song Trilogy. High musicianship, interesting lyrics, never boring, everything you would want from an ELP song. First impression part two is good, but basically has Emerson reinstating what Lake just did but with different lyrics. It basically sounds like a shortened version of part one. Next is the second impression which is instrumental and about as enjoyable as Tocatta, which is not at all. The last impression is ok, but lacks the excitement of the first impression. Plus this part ends too strangely with robot voices and sound effects.

In closing, this album has been carried up to its status by virtue of its cover, which in my opnion is very unrepresentative of the music, and also by its longer than one side suite, which really isn't a true coherent suite. This album was a complete disappointment for me, expect for a few tracks. So much for the "best" album from the first "supergroup" of prog rock.