BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

You can have progressive rock with ideas.You can have progressive rock with great playing.You can have progressive rock with a sense of fun.Ladies and Gentleman I give you Emerson,Lake and Palmer.It's flashy for sure and pompous and Ok while I'm at it,it's also Pretentious.Yes the dreaded 'P' word.A band that refuses to recognise its own limits will always go too far.And ELP did.BUT not before producing this bundle of eclectic brilliance.Put simply you have the world's greatest prog keyboardist and the world's greatest drummer going through their paces and at the peak of their enormous powers.It could have all gone horribly wrong (and actually it did eventually) but Greg Lake maintains the steadying influence that keeps the juggernaut on the road.But admittedly the signs of future strife between the members of this celebrated trio was already apparent and this was ,sadly , to be their last great album before the decline set in.Oh well.ELP were a comet that burnt brighly in the prog constellation for a short time and 'Surgery is the evidence of that.