Magnificent Excess: The Story of ELP

They were still a hot live band even in 1978. I have the 2 CD set of them playing Wheeling, West Virginia and highly recommend it. So much better than the Works tour in all honest truth although Montreal 1977 was a great event. When they got back to the studio in 1978 they should have taken that energy and put it into a great album. The demos for Love Beach were promising espcially Canario and Memoir's but they were too intent on pushing a radio style album. That said I've always maintained that with decent production it could have been something. The album cover is now legendary for all the wrong reasons but to be fair they were good looking boys (for a prog band) so it wasn't totally an insane idea! I saw them play Top Of The Pops in 1978 (alongside the likes of Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip) and it was all very surreal. They even had the Yamaha GX1 wheeled into the studio although Palmer's kit was very pared down if I remember right. 

Hi,

There are some things, in the arts, that are a once in a lifetime thing. You will never get another chance to see it, and RW redoing The Wall, completely distilled to nothing but a boring show, in the end, The original WALL was probably the last of the big must see things, but when you saw the film, the concert was no longer necessary and the film seemed better all around.

It was the same in the 60's. You were not going to get a 2nd chance to see Nureyev, and also later to see Misha and you had to grab your chance when it was there. The only bad thing is that you had to travel to the big city to catch these things ... because they would never be in a smaller place where the ability to even break even simply was not there.

A very sad, and disappointing comment by David_D ... and kinda denying an artist his/her work that deserves better respect, than being thought of as inconsequential and bad as so many in this commercial generation look at music from 60/50 years ago. It's OK to not like something, but it is very ___________ to say something like that.