DO YA WANNA PLAY CARL?

Carl Palmer has had quite a career in music as this compilation shows.Of the compilations available by ELP ex members this is by far the most interesting covering a number of different artists and including previously unreleased rarities as well.The best of the lot has to be the 22minute Percussion Concerto which was originally ear marked for Works Volume One.Composed by Joseph Horowitz it allows Carl to play and demonstrate his skills on various tuned percussion as well as some trademark nifty snare work!

Elswhere there are songs from sixties groups The Craig,The Chants and of course Atomic Rooster (Decline and Fall).The only track from classic era ELP is Toccata ,a fabulous peice of instrumental prog that brought the drum synthesisier to the worlds attention.The rest of the ELP stuff is from Works including the Buddy Rich inspired Close But Not Touching as well as the updated version of Tank (much better than the original 1970 version IMO).Then there a couple of tracks from one off 1980 band PM which are okay AORish type songs.

Carl even worked with Mike Oldfield briefly playing on Mount Teidi and also a previously unreleased track called Ready Mix.Just imagine ''what if??!''

Desda La Vide from '3' is well worth including and fans who have decided not to purchase that album will be glad to have it included here.Superb stuff featuring Keith Emerson on keyboards.From that album is also their version of 'Eight Miles High'.I quite like this version.

After that the album is rounded off with three of the better tracks from Asia's debut album, a live version of Hoedown from the short lived prog supergroup that included John Wetton as well as Palmer and most proudly Carl playing with the Buddy Rich Orchestra from the early seventies. He became firm friends with the great drumming legend and at a gig Rich shouted 'Do You Wanna Play Carl?' . Bit of a no brainer that!! , and here is the recording of that performance( Shawnee).

All in all this is a fitting tribute to one of the greatest drummers in prog.Detailed sleeve notes and packaging top it off nicely.I give it the highest marks I'm prepared to give for a compilation.