Bo Eder
Platinum Member
Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved Emerson, Lake, & Palmer. I haven’t listened to them in years but a friend gave me a live compilation of them the other day and I’ve been able to re-visit some of my fav ELP tunes played live.
Now this isn’t a dig on Carl Palmer, I still think he’s a great player with some formidable chops. But maybe it’s a band issue - I just don’t feel a lot of groove going on. Granted, they came together as notable players from other famous bands so everybody was interested in what they would come up with. And a lot of the stuff they did was truly inspiring, but now at my age I’m either no longer digging how they groove, or I’ve discovered they never really grooved?
I liked what Abe Laboriel Jr. said about some of the current crop of YouTube drummers and how a lot of what those guys do is “masterbatory”. I think the same thing can be said about ELP. On this live album, they played the hits, but each member had at least a couple of spots where they played solo. I mean Keith Emerson does TWO piano improvisations and then plays “Maple Leaf Rag”, Greg Lake does a couple of solo acoustic guitar ballads and Carl gets two solos - that stuff alone is about 70 minutes of the course of the show before the band tunes. So yeah, very masterbatory.
Part of me wishes ELP hit big later in the 80s when studio technology could make easier the recording of bigger drum sounds - I think he would’ve played less notes and not been so disruptive during “Lucky Man”.
But I’m sure it’s just me. I still think they’re great, I just can’t listen to it now? Same thing happened when I watched some old Bugs Bunny cartoons - a lot of that is just no longer funny. Maybe I’m crazy. I blame 2020.
Now this isn’t a dig on Carl Palmer, I still think he’s a great player with some formidable chops. But maybe it’s a band issue - I just don’t feel a lot of groove going on. Granted, they came together as notable players from other famous bands so everybody was interested in what they would come up with. And a lot of the stuff they did was truly inspiring, but now at my age I’m either no longer digging how they groove, or I’ve discovered they never really grooved?
I liked what Abe Laboriel Jr. said about some of the current crop of YouTube drummers and how a lot of what those guys do is “masterbatory”. I think the same thing can be said about ELP. On this live album, they played the hits, but each member had at least a couple of spots where they played solo. I mean Keith Emerson does TWO piano improvisations and then plays “Maple Leaf Rag”, Greg Lake does a couple of solo acoustic guitar ballads and Carl gets two solos - that stuff alone is about 70 minutes of the course of the show before the band tunes. So yeah, very masterbatory.
Part of me wishes ELP hit big later in the 80s when studio technology could make easier the recording of bigger drum sounds - I think he would’ve played less notes and not been so disruptive during “Lucky Man”.
But I’m sure it’s just me. I still think they’re great, I just can’t listen to it now? Same thing happened when I watched some old Bugs Bunny cartoons - a lot of that is just no longer funny. Maybe I’m crazy. I blame 2020.