There are two main schools of thought regarding ’70s progressive
\nrock superstars Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In this corner, we have
\nthose who believe that the group was years ahead of its time and
\nremains cutting-edge to this day. In the opposite corner, we have
\nthose who believe that ELP represented the bloated, overbearing
\nside of prog-rock and epitomized its excesses in the worst way.<\/p>\n
Me? I’m just Mills Lane standing in the middle of the ring,
\nwaiting for the blood to start spurting. There have been some
\nefforts of ELP over the years that I’ve absolutely loved, while
\nthere have been others that I’ve wanted to take outside and beat to
\ndeath with an axe.<\/p>\n
Whatever your opinions of ELP are, there is no denying that they
\ndid blaze a trail for progressive rock that is still being carved
\ntoday. Hundreds of groups would not have had the chances they do
\ntoday had it not been for Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer
\ntaking musical chances at a time when record companies weren’t
\nafraid of pouring money into such experimental groups.<\/p>\n
Their “children” – the bands that carry the progressive rock
\ntorch today – now have paid tribute with
\nEncores, Legends & Paradox: A Tribute To The Music Of
\nELP<\/i>. While there are some interesting takes on the music here,
\nthe disc itself is hampered by the fact that it is a “for the fans”
\nrelease. While there may be some people who would check out the
\ndisc because of the long list of guest musicians (inluding Jethro
\nTull’s Martin Barre, Dream Theater’s James LaBrie, Mike Portnoy and
\nnow ex-member Derek Sherinian, Geoff Downes and John Wetton), I
\ndon’t see many people getting into ELP thanks to the new spins on
\ntheir music.<\/p>\n
Some of the arrangements are very interesting, and are enough to
\nmake me go back to the orignal albums to give them another listen.
\n“Knife Edge” (featuring Glenn Hughes, Simon Phillips, Marc Bonilla
\nand Robert Berry) is one such track, one that captures the essence
\nof the original’s plodding tempo while giving the sound a kick into
\noverdrive. Likewise, “The Endless Enigma” (a track I wasn’t
\npreviously familiar with) is a winner, with Portnoy, Downes, Trent
\nGardner and Wayne Gardner sending this track through the roof.
\n(Another track I liked that I wasn’t too familiar with was
\n“Tarkus,” featuring Phillips, LaBrie, Bonilla, Sherinian and
\nBerry.)<\/p>\n
A few other tracks fall a little flat – surprisingly, this
\nincludes “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression,” quite possibly the
\nbest-known ELP song in their catalog. Berry, Phillips, Mark Wood
\nand Jordan Rudess (now with Dream Theater) do their best to put a
\nunique spin on the song, and it does get better with repeated
\nlistens, but in this case, this song is an example of why you don’t
\nwant to mess with the classics.<\/p>\n
A few other tracks, like “Toccata” and “Bitches Crystal,” were
\nsongs I just couldn’t build up enough excitement for to really get
\ninto. Likewise, “Hoedown” (featuring violinist Jerry Goodman) was a
\nmajor disappointment, though I think we’re at the point where
\nanything but the original version by Aaron Copeland will
\ndisappoint.<\/p>\n
However, all the artists should be commended for tackling such a
\ndifficult subject for a tribute album as ELP. Any tribute album is
\na difficult task to put together, as you don’t want to mimic the
\noriginal note-for-note, but you don’t want to distance the
\nlong-time fans by radically altering the song.
\nEncores, Legends & Paradox<\/i> tries to walk the line, and
\nin many cases, does so admirably. Unfortunately, unless you’re
\nreally into Emerson, Lake & Palmer, this disc might not do very
\nmuch for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5827],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-38896","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-various-artists","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38896"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38896"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}