Classic Rock - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Brain Salad Surgury - Emerson, Lake and Palmer

as ever, manouvering themselves well through all the complex rhythms, which keep the listener interested. The next song is "Still...You Turn Me On", a nice little Greg Lake song which begins as a sort of acoustic ballad, but then the more dramatic sound of Lake's wah-wah guitar enters at every chorus. To me, this is one of the better short songs on the album, and shows the other side to ELP's sound. The second last piece is a tongue-in-cheek song called "Benny the Bouncer" which, behind the amusing lyrics, has Keith Emerson playing some honkey-tonk piano, which adds to the humour. The last piece on the album is the epic "Karn ...

Brain Salad Surgury - Emerson, Lake and Palmer

The best starter, before the main course, is however yet to come and enters in the form of ‘Still…you turn me on’. This is classic Greg Lake in the style of early King Crimson or ‘Lucky Man’ from ELP’s first album and a great love song. Forget ‘Benny the Bouncer’, a filler, before we have the main set of the album ‘Karn Evil 9’ in two parts. Interestingly (and worryingly) the sleeve notes state that vocals are courtesy of Emerson with Lyrics by Lake. Fortunately they are incorrect as Lake takes both parts as move into the first part of this epic piece. Basically ‘Karn Evil 9’ is about a ...

Tarkus - Emerson Lake & Palmer

evocative of the death and destruction conjured up by that crazy armadillo picture. Greg Lake sings beautiful vocals in the slower passagesand the lyrics to this, a little nonsensical as per most of the genre, are still effective and very rhythmic; but it s Emerson s wild and frenetic keyboard jams that really feel as if they can do anything that always excite me and keep me coming back for more 20+ stunning minutes. By contrast the second side of the record has almost nothing worthwhile to listen to - as is so often the way with ELP they didn t seem capable of writing a complete album and my interest tends to wane after the rather boring jeremy ...