Customer Reviews

Essential Emerson Lake & Palmer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Something is horribly wrong with the mixing of the Brain Salad Surgery tracks on disc two. They sound atrocious. I don't understand how this was missed by Shout Factory. If these songs were the right mixes, I would have given a higher rating, but this foul up is unforgivable. You may be better off to search for the older Rhino releases. I don't know if this will be remedied when Shout Factory re-releases Brain Salad Surgery later this year. I for one will wait to read reviews on whether the proper mixes are on there or not.

Dittos on what everyone says about the collection- I am a BIG fan, but... The mastering on Karn Evil 9 is diasterous! The kick drum is brought up way too far in the mix and has a distracting tubby sound that is noticeable even in the Amazon demo stream. This is not the band's fault, but my favorite song has been rendered very irritating now!

They used the wrong version of "Jerusalem." It's the same bizarro remix with extra percussion and a different lead vocal from Greg that Sanctuary used on their reissue of "Brain Salad Surgery." Same with "Toccata," "Still You Turn Me On, and "Karn Evil 9 First Impression." Hopefully, once Shout! Factory reissues the full ELP catalog, they'll use the correct masters.

I bought ELP's self-titled debut when I was in college. And despite the near universal bashing of the band in the rock press, they became one of my favorite bands and I continued to buy each new release through 1978's last studio album LOVE BEACH. [Yes, they did regroup in 1992 for BLACK MOON, but it wasn't up to the standards of their seminal work of the Seventies.] I didn't upgrade any of their individual albums to CD, but in 1993 I purchased the 4-disc THE RETURN OF THE MANTICORE. With that box set now out of print, Shout! Factory's THE ESSENTIAL EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER makes for an excellent introduction to one of the great prog rock bands of the Seventies. [Note: Another great ELP anthology is 1992's THE ATLANTIC YEARS (which I have on two cassettes), but it also is out of print.]

Essentially, this new release is a distillation of MANTICORE. The only tracks not on the previous box set are "Canario" from LOVE BEACH and the previously unreleased live medley: "Jeremy Bender/The Sheriff." Other differences include ESSENTIAL using a 5:43 edit of "Fanfare for the Common Man" (instead of the 9:40 version from the album WORKS VOLUME 1 used on MANTICORE). Also, ESSENTIALS uses the studio version of "Take a Pebble," where MANTICORE used the live version from WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS....

Overall, this two-disc collection contains two-and-a-half hours of music over 28 remastered tracks, containing nearly all of the essentials like "Knife-Edge," "Lucky Man," "From the Beginning," "Still...You Turn Me On" and "Karn Evil 9." If you can't afford to spring for their first four studio albums (EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER; TARKUS; TRILOGY and BRAIN SALAD SURGERY), this is an excellent introduction to one of the Seventies' more progressive bands. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

As previously noted, the usage of the wrong masters on the "Brain Salad Surgery" material. Oy vey. Also, "Fanfare For the Common Man" was butchered during the edit. If the lackluster "Canario" had been cut, the full "Fanfare" could have been squeezed in.

Additionally, the booklet's essay completely overlooks Emerson and Lake's short-lived trio with Cozy Powell, as well as the group "3", which Emerson and Palmer formed with Robert Berry for an even briefer period.

Otherwise, the music is magnificent. Of course.

Warning! Do not buy this new "remastering" unless you really want this particular collection! They've botched the job and the audio is worse than any of the previous releases. I'm seriously disappointed in Shout Factory.
I have been an audiophile for 30 years and my current system is Krell Evolution electronics and B&W 802D speakers.

Despite the fact that some found the mixing on this double disc complilation to be horrible and all that, I found the music here fantastic. A terrific introduction to an amazing group. It is true perhaps, a song or two has been left off. That seems to be always the case. There's even the editted version of "Fanfare For The Common Man". But the two discs are full (79 & 78 min.) So if something else would have been added, something would have to come off. The bottom line: this is a awesome collection. If you are on the fence about purchasing it, by all means buy it. I'm sure you'll find it excellent, too.

Just at first sight, this anthology contains some of the most interesting music material of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, covering all the spectrum of their music in seventies from the easy listening songs of the first albums "Lucky Man" to their most experimental progressive side like "Toccata". But with a double look, we can observe this:

1. the soft Country-folk side with "Lucky Man", "From the Beginning", "Still... You Turn Me On" and "C'est La Vie".
2. the dynamic Western side with "Jeremy Bender", "Hoedown" and "The Sheriff".
3. The most progressive side with the long tracks "Tarkus", "Take a Pebble", "Trilogy", "Toccata" or "Black Moon"
4. The Classic covers like "Peter Gun", "Nutrocker", "Fanfare For The Common Man" or "Hoedown"
5. The absence of the great experimental track "Infinite Space", and "Karn Evil 9" Third Impression that is better than the first part.
6. Maybe some diferences in vocal lines like "Jerusalem", but a curious object of collection.
7. The commercial side with "Knife Edge", "I Believe In Father Christmas" or "Paper blood"...

And with a great remastered recording, this anthology maybe is the most complete and representative anthology of the band!... so Good Luck!

This the best ELP collection by far. A great intro to this overlooked band. Can't quibble the song selection here. The cover is pretty awesome too!

From previous reviews, you can glean that remasters don't always satisfy the hardcore fan. Being a somewhat tepid fan of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, this collection gives me everything I need and more. It's been said that the recent Beatle remasters were favorable to Ringo Starr. I think that this particular ELP collection pushes Greg Lake to the forefront.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer, as all the fan base knows, was born from the ashes of the Nice, King Crimson, and Atomic Rooster. The essential difference between the Nice and ELP can be stated like this: with Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Keith Emerson began relying on synthesizer instead of organ or piano. ELP's albums were produced with a perfectionist's touch, and the group veered from the approach of the Nice into a much more Romanticized type of classical rock. Those qualities can be traced directly to Greg Lake.

ELP's best albums--that is to say, the least pompous--are well represented here. There are roughly five cuts apiece from "Emerson, Lake and Palmer", and "Trilogy". "Take a Pebble", "The Endless Enigma", and "Trilogy" are particularly well arranged, and the piano interludes are the source of many a "New Age" performance.

It doesn't bother me much that there's a "drop-out" at a point in "Karn-Evil 9", because I never cared that much for that business in the first place. It was when "Brain Salad Surgery" came out that ELP was increasingly labeled as "bombastic", and Greg Lake was tagged as a "megaphone voice."

In reality, Lake had one of the more pleasurable voices in Rock, and his ballads were a major reason that ELP gained Top Forty status. Virtually all of the hits are included here.

As a bonus, there is the full version of the "Tarkus Suite" and "Bitches' Crystal", so you can frisbee your old copy of the Tarkus album into the garbage can if you wish. There could have been more of "Pictures at an Exhibition", and much less of "Black Moon", but with "Still, You Turn Me On", "Jerusalem" and "Toccata", the best of "Brain Salad Surgery" is included.

I still find it ironic that this group was vilified so much when Punk music broke wide in the late Seventies. If you listen to "Endless Enigma", you'll find Keith Emerson quoting some vintage suspense television scoring in the intro, and with "Peter Gunn", ELP anticipated the reworked movie score music of the hyper-hip jazzman John Zorn and his group Naked City.

So there.