Take a pebble (Emerson Lake & Palmer) (LP 993 - 995)

Emerson Lake & Palmer  Emerson Lake and Palmer (Vinyl, Atlantic Records, 1970) ***** 

Emerson Lake & Palmer  Tarkus (Vinyl, Atlantic Records, 1971) *** 

Emerson Lake & Palmer  Pictures At An Exhibition (Vinyl, Manticore Records, 1971) ***

Genre: Prog rock 

Places I remember: Lewis Eady Ltd; Real Groovy Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Lucky Man

Gear costume: Take A Pebble

Active compensatory factors: I warned you all about needing an ELP sized deep breath when I last mentioned Keith Emerson in this blog. For some reason I am an ELP completist. I know. Weird right.

I much prefer guitars to keyboards, but here I am anyway. Prog rock will do that to you, I guess.

I'll be doing it in smallish bites, so you can relax a tad.

The first album is a kitchen sink, show-offy classic. It's full of things that shouldn't really work: daft lyrics; abrupt changes in mood and style but it does. It even includes a brilliant pop song with the best moog solo of all time.

You can't really have the drums or the bass as the main soloing instrument so, early on, Keith Emerson is established as the main dude on display. 

Luckily, he plays well alone, but he also plays well with others. First with The Nice and then joining forces with Palmer and Lake.

The debut is breathtaking in its scope and performance. It still sounds fantastic in 2023!

Second album, Tarkus, continues the fun. Side One is the Tarkus concept group of pieces. I have never understood the story line behind it. Yes, it's overblown and pretentious, but it also doesn't include too many memorable chunes. I prefer the madness of side 2. It even has a proto-punk number to end things!

Although it gets a rapturous audience reaction, the live Pictures At An Exhibition is my least favourite early ELP album. I just don't get the whole classical/rock mash up thing, I'm afraid. It's certainly an album they had to get out of their system before the next stage kicked in.

And, wowsers - what a next stage!   

Where do they all belong? A lot more to come as we reach my favourite ELP albums!