Jurgen , Rick and the rest thought they could 'out ELP' ELP .. and they probably could and did!

My vote is for Refugee.

Other is for those I forgot because I'm getting old.

Triumvirat-the best there is, or was, to be more precise. ELP are great, but T'rat do more than any other band for me, musically.

       The thing is that I think the members of ELP have/had more true faith and belief in the music they made, versus all the members of Triumvirat out there, who could give two you know what's about the group they were in. Except for Helmut Koellen, former lead vocalist/bass and six string guitarist who was the glue that held Triumvirat together, died so long ago. Bummer.

     

I see things differently ... for example, if Keith had made an album of piano, strictly piano, like Rachel Flowers did of some of his material, I think that everyone would have looked at ELP VERY DIFFERENTLY than they do and did then, as a band with a little too much of this and that ... 

IF, his music had been shown to be as well composed and deserving of a classical appreciation, then the only two bands that he might be worried about would be BANCO and maybe TRIUMVIRAT, though, for my tastes, only BANCO fits within a classical mode in its complete piece of work, and the work they did was not about a solo vignette that sounds classical amidst everything else, as is the case with RW. To me, RW is not classical ... he is the ultimate modern famous musician that does bits and pieces, and has not done a complete piece since the day he was born, because he thinks all the pieces he has heard or looked at are boring, compared to his own music, whose only difference is a different instrument ... like Bill Bruford's example on his cymbals ... sounding completely different ... and then he says ... they are exactly the same thing!

None of those keyboard players are as classic minded and strong as, for example, Eberhard Schoenner, and many other folks out there that have been classical and experimental with keyboards since their first day ... but we won't give them an ear ... and some of those bands, in my book, would never be in my choices at all. Even folks like Peter Michael Hamel deserve the mention, although some would suggest that his material is more meditative and weird, than it is anything else, and he IS the professor and scholar in music compared to many of the others here, who just play in a band!

Another example, ANGE deserves to be there a lot more than half those bands, as their design in many pieces, is almost totally classical, and not rock song/hit oriented. I would even add LE ORME, however, it only really applies to a lot of their very early material and ends with FELONA E SERONA.

REFUGEE has been from day one, a favorite of mine, but I do not consider them "classical" even though they did two long pieces, which was more of a comment on THE NICE than it was anything else ... in the end, when Patrick Moraz went in a different direction, classically minded material was not what he did, which suggested that it had been someone else's idea in the first place. Thus, I do not really consider him in that club. I can not speak for his later material as I have not heard anything of his for the past 25 or 30 years.

From Le Orme I feel that Contrappunti is more ELP-like than Felona e Sorona.

and I think Contrappunti is their weakest album

but I have...I know a lot of people rate Contrappunti very highly but I couldn't get into it.  Smogmagica isn't great but I didn't mind it as much

2 stars for Contrappunti ??? 

Some not mentioned yet

The Trip-Atlantide and Time Of Change

Triade-La Storia di Sabazio

The Pink Mice-In Action

Quatermass-Quatermass

well, I'll give it another try!

now, cmon, Smogmagica is worth another try by you, since just the title alone is brilliant 

yes Frutto is awesome

Hmm for me the title "The best album ELP never made" goes to CHIMERA from 1974 by DUNCAN MACKAY.

This is a very rich, intensive album full of keyboard virtuosity and dynamic drums.

There are countless types of keyboards they used, which brings to mind the splendor of Karn Evil.

And of those mentioned it's definitely Trace. Rick van der Linden does amazing things on it - in the spirit of Bach (and so Emerson). Album from 1974 is also great - if not even better.

Great to see Mackay's Chimera and Trace mentioned. I prefer Trace's Birds (second album). Rick van der Linden is no Keith wannabe, either. They're equals.

For the "best album ELP never made," there would have to be a strong vocalist and great SONGS, dynamic and powerful drumming, and the requisite monster keyboard talent.

From this poll, the obvious answer for me is Danger Money. U.K. certainly stepped up to fill the void left by ELP after the latter hung their collective hats with Love Beach.

:D 

Great album. 

Great comments and interesting to see Triumvirate leading the race although maybe not surprising as its such a complete and well thought out album. Near perfect. I should have included Triade in the list but as I mentioned I can easily forget stuff nowadays. I did think of Par Lindh as he is a massive ELP fan but the only album of his that feels like a 'lost ELP album' is Time Mirror and that is a bit weak compared to his mighty other efforts. This only came about because Magda Berg had sadly left the world so he decided that the time (no pun intended) was right for it. Mastermind - yep I have the debut album and it does have some obvious ELP references but not enough for inclusion imo. Good album though. I never checked out anything else by them though and I'm guessing their CD's are probably deleted and very rare.

I need to check out the 'other' suggestions . Thanks. 

I disagree. I like all their early stuff, and while SMOGMAGICA is different, first time with an electric guitar on it, not quite used as a lead, but adding something else to the band ... and the album has a lot of nice, and FUN things in it. It's a shame that we have to think that ... it's not a prog album, so we can consider it less than the other albums.

For me, LE ORME did not slide down for at least 3 or 4 more albums!

This is, for me, a strange topic ... I never thought that Keith set out to be outlandish with his music, but at the time, aside from things like Procol Harum, there were no bands that really stood out for having keyboards at the front, and I think that Keith probably thought something like ... I'LL WAKE THEM UP! Heck, all you had to do was see a Moody Blues concert, so you could fall asleep in the first 20 minutes!

Many of these, were all classically trained, and their concentration within the bands they were in, was the MUSIC, not the SOUND, and I think that sometimes we confuse the two. And some of them are quite clearly classical sounding in their work and approach, which, ELP WAS NOT .... which is the marked difference between them and most others ... including Triumvirat, that was very well written, and put together with a lot of attention to the detail of the work to make it better, and not have someone say that they were an ELP cover ... which I do not think they were.

At the time, when MANTICORE released two of their first albums, PFM and BANCO, the first things we heard was ... they don't even sound like ELP, and they did not have to ... they were well defined and put together bands already, and Manticore/Elp did not have anything to add to their work, or more than likely Keith thought it would be a shame to interfere with the incredible work they had already done!

I just think that the "keyboard" madness died down a lot by 1975 or so, specially when bands like PF made it really big, and all of a sudden the sound of a set of instruments aside from the rest of the band, just was not as cool, and agreeable to most listeners as it had been before when we took keyboards for granted, even though saying that some keyboard players were not musically educated ... you gotta be kidding me, right? How about Manfred Mann ... just another idiot with keyboards? I don't think so, but for a long period his keyboards dominated the sound, until that whole thing faded some.

It is my thought, however, that the development of the synthesizers into a much more extensive and usable keyboard, than previously, made a heck of a difference and all of a sudden you could do a lot more than you did before ... and by the time TD had developed SEQUENCERS to an art form, popular music was about to take a turn, and this may have been one of the things that bothered ELP some ... if they had been about the brashness of the sound, all of a sudden ... what are they gonna do? And I'm not sure it materialized at all ... and Kaith, even though wrote a lot of classically oriented material privately, some of which we never saw until way later, which in my estimation would have given ELP a much needed infusion of music and ability to play it.

I don't consider, any of these folks listed, a "copy" ... I just find it strange that we think that any of these could/would have been ELP ... I would rather they had played one of Keith's Piano Concerto's or the many pieces that he was sitting on, and probably killed himself over them ... no one wanted to hear them ... and it took someone like Rachel Flowers many years later, to show us ... however, we only think of Keith as a rock player and not a composer ... so, sadly, all that is left is thinking of the stuff that we think Keith could have done (or ELP) that did not get done, but someone else did.

Keith is one of the great composers of the 20th century ... it just so happens that he was in the rock area of things ... and many of the others would have loved to have that ability, but I don't see many of them extending it. Almost exclusively, they all stuck to songs and music that has a very limited appeal compared to classical works. Keith's ELP stuff is very strong, within the classical element, and specially within a compositional element ... that means that at least one other in that list should get more credit for it (Triumvirat's the story of which is well known of the fights with the record company about the music!), than some of the rest in my book.

Agreed ... and he is a good enough player to know when to jump out and when not to, but even on stage, he is not the show off player, and he told me (1999 SF Progressive Music Festival) that he would prefer that the music they put together be remembered, which in my estimation the band LANA LANE AND THE ROCKET SCIENTISTS, put on, one of the most professional, clean and well done sets I have ever seen on a stage, compared to a couple of other bands that went on like they were some godsend to the music!

Erik's work is excellent, but in concert, he's not about being a showman ... he's about the band standing out and doing a great job with the music. And they did on that night and then some! Shamefully, one of the comments I got was ... it has a bit too much metal in it!

That just says that someone wanted to hear only one thing ... and their thinking was not even progressive at that! The only other band in the two day affair that came close to their professionalism and quality? MAGMA ... plain and simple!

There. I said it.

Gerinski wrote: Another keyboardist quite influenced by Keith is Erik Norlander. He also uses a big modular Moog in his concerts.

 

I had the pleasure of seeing Erik and his complete synth rig, from the giant modular all the way down to the (borrowed) Mellotron, live, way back in '01.

I find that their most ELP-like album is their debut, Misteriose Voci.

I just thought it would be a fun thing to do. I tend to suffer a lot with sleepness nights so stuff just starts going round my brain. It seemed like an interesting idea to try and round up artists who were influenced by ELP and perhaps ELP might even have had a little sideways glance at and thought 'yep that is good'. They were a pretty arrogant bunch though so probably didn't really notice anything else and that was maybe one of the things that brought their downfall.

I really wish Emerson had done more with the classical thing. His Piano Concerto is inspired and personally I love Pirates which was apparently taken from an unused film soundtrack score. I think he was a very insecure person and probably the massive punk backlash of the seventies took it's toll on him. I do like his solo albums and its sad that they tend to be ignored . The soundtrack Inferno has some brilliant stuff imo.

BTW Have you read Kevin Gilbert's thoughts on Emerson? He was another incredibly talented guy who appreciated genius when he heard it. Both of course now very sadly missed.

Haven't checked into Kevin Gilbert yet, but will.

My biggest sadness within the scope of "popular music" and it's sick obsession with some kind of "top ten" so people know what to listen to and like, is that in the middle of all this, almost everyone, from fans to musicologists, fail to find any musicality worth discussing and appreciating ... thus, a lot of contemporary musicians will never, if EVER, be appreciated in their lifetime, or after.

I guess you could say, that my part in all this is to make sure that some of this does not get ignored, like it does so much ... and a lot of "admins" not having the ability to create such thought provoking threads ... that challenge your mind into expanding, the appreciation of the music ... but I have only one reservation, and it is a bit of a sick one ... I sincerely doubt that half the posters here have heard, listening style - not sampled ... that most of these folks have not heard half of these things in their entirety in order to make a "subjective" comment and choice.

I, personally, have not heard 2 things in that list ... and it is one of the reasons why I am afraid to comment on them, but I have no problem discussing Keith and his abilities, and how it was the ELP fans that killed him, for not appreciating his classical material more, which probably helped record companies tell him that he was just a rock'n'roll'er ... and that was not the case. 

Works Volume One was a very tricky album and yes the record company were dictating the terms very obviously. Money Talks! The fans certainly wanted Brain Salad Surgery Part Two not Works. I was one of those but all three of them were on a different page and that was in the past. I remember Greg Lake saying that he point blank refused to do another 'electronic album' as he called it.

None of the albums are really. I probably should have done a narrower poll with just with Trace , Triumvirat and the UK album. They are the closest to the ELP template. If I could pick any track from any of those albums it would be Carrying No Cross . Jobson was probably the real 'heir apparent' to Keith Emerson but perhaps UK mirrored ELP a bit with John Wetton not being keen on overdoing the symphonic thing ( as Greg Lake was in ELP).

Archival recordins from this album prove that: