Next up are some of the stupidest records ever made, and they were made by some really smart people. It would be hard to deny that Emerson, Lake and Palmer weren't immensely talented musicians, but like so many of prog's great proponents they took the view that making music was about showing off skill in a context of skill itself. In the end listening to ELP albums is like reading books by authors with vast lexicographical skill who use it only to show off the words they know (ie most shit sci-fi), and the biggest problem with that really is that there's never even the vaguest hint of self-parody or even self-awareness at work. Therefore ELP's 1971 grandstander Tarkus is one of the most bombastically absurd things ever recorded. The side-length title track being surely the apotheosis of prog, as it's stuffed with nonsensical time changes, purposeless atonality, aimless complexity of structure and a mind-bogglingly idiotic theme. Which is basically that there's a war on between some mythical super-beings (Tarkus and Aquatarkus (armadillo tanks, no lie) on one side, a manticore and some other freak out monsters on the other) in the middle of which sit us poor humans, armed only with arrows and God for some reason. Anyway, it's all errant tosh designed solely to allow for some florid and laughably melodramatic uber-noodling on keyboards. Little could poor Keith Emerson have known that has insanely technical flourishes would often end up sounding like a hyperactive version of the music to Jet Set Willy. Anyway, side 2 has some more formal tunes on it but they're all rubbish, including "light-hearted" closer 'Are You Ready, Eddy?'. a blues-rocker which suggests that ELP's idea of humour would have been sitting around with Rick Wakeman and making vicious comments about their wives. Anyway, despite everything that I've said Tarkus is absolutely brilliant. I'll never forget the first time I listened to it, when Patrick and I had finished prog quest day 1 and went back to his place to listen to what we'd picked up. The look on both our faces at the opening stupid frenzied minutes of Tarkus will always remain a cherished memory.
Less genuinely amusing but still utterly laughable is 1971's other ELP album, Pictures at an Exhibition. A live album full of "interpretations" of Mussorgsky, it's one of the most aggressively unpleasant assaults on classical work ever recorded, but what's impressive is that I think they were so totally deluded and self-assured that they actually believed that they were doing full justice to the original compositions, not utterly demolishing them. Anyway, it really is as simple and as awful as the description "prog-rock versions of classical compositions" sounds. Moving from squelchy keyboards that sound like prototype soundtracks for Manimal or something, to grandiose passages of choppy organ and fuzz bass, it's as far from the grace or intellectual rigour of classical as it's possible to get and although I believe Emerson considered himself the heir of the greatest composers, it really does go to prove that in fact he was little more than an everyday nerd with a deft hand at playing a keyboard. Obviously it goes without saying that what I've written here, although absolutely true, I don't really believe because, as with all ELP (a bit like Oldfield) I don't care how appallingly bad or stupid it is, I love it.
1972 saw the release of Trilogy, a more accessible and less abjectly daft record. There are even some tunes on Trilogy and a couple of them are even quite nice to listen to. For the most part Emerson can't help but interject his irritatingly busy and insect like keyboard jabbings into them but Lake gets to show off his surprisingly mild and likeable voice and his occasionally keen sense of melody. There are still a couple of the big, blowsy prog workouts and a disastrous desecration of Aaron Copland's 'Hoedown' kicks the whole thing off, but it's a genuinely inoffensive album which can sometimes be disarmingly charming. Unlike the big album, 1973's Brain Salad Surgery, on which normal service is resumed with a vengeance. Oft cited as the best ELP album, Brain Salad Surgery is a prog affront of epic proportions. As blusteringly over the top as Tarkus, it's also infinitely less endearingly stupid and is instead one of the most po-faced bits of absurd self-aggrandisement going. It's alternately annoying, frustrating, insipid and ham-fisted despite its technical skill. Bearing in mind that the album is essentially a thirty minute epic of sci-fi rock ('Karn Evil 9') and a couple of horrifying interpretations of other people's compositions (the album opens with a ruination of Parry's reading of Blake's 'Jerusalem' which beggars belief, followed by a grotesque mangling of Alberto Ginastera's 'Toccata'). There are a couple of two minute jobs (Lake's gruesomely winsome 'Still...You Turn Me On' and a "joke" song, 'Benny the Bouncer') but they can be effectively ignored. It's really all about 'Karn Evil 9'. And 'Karn Evil 9' is excrutiating. It's like a metal version of electronic prog, and it's pretty brutal. The trouble is it's also total rubbish. Unlike Tarkus' sudden changes of tone, 'Karn Evil 9' marches on and on, stabbing and slashing its way in a totally unforgiving fashion and leaves no opportunity for the listener to have any fun on the way at all. Once again, of course, it's fantastic stuff.
And finally for the mighty ELP it's the absolute zenith of their self-glorification, the sprawling double Works, Vol. 1 (1977). Each of the band members get a side apiece and then side 4 is back to good old Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Clearly things were going awry in the band and they were on the verge of splitting, but as the example of the individual members of Yes' solo album catastrophes demonstrated, the public wouldn't be rushing out in droves for a Carl Palmer solo album so they made their own records and then lumped them together as ELP. Anyway, it's fantastically vainglorious stuff, side 1 being Emerson's revealing 'Piano Concerto No. 1'. That's right, Emerson was so convinced of his skills as a composer that he wrote his own Piano Concerto. And as far as first year music students compositional studies go, this is still total garbage. It's really that bad, it totally honks. There are some nice little passages, but it's the work of a skilled technician and a dismally unimaginative musical creator. Emerson's Copland obsession is worked out to its natural, and flatly uninspiring, conclusion here and the fact that on the cover Emerson is photographed moodily sat at his simply enormous grand piano simply underscores his lunatic delusions of musical grandeur. Side 2 is Greg Lake's insipid little ballads. I'll give Lake this much though, at least he could be bothered to write actual songs. They might have been terrible but at least they weren't just endless tempo changes for the sake of it. It's unchallenging listening and despite some brutally ghastly stuff ('C'est la Vie' is a nightmare of acoustic prog whimsy) it's the least offensive of the individual members sides. Side three is Carl Palmer's percussion showcase. Honestly. Six workouts for the drums and gongs and whatever other absurdly pretentious percussion you can think of. In fact, some of Palmer's side is actually quite enjoyable in a windy rock out kind of way and none of it bangs on for too long. The it's the big ones for side 4. Now this stuff is more soundtrack of my childhood so no-one messes with side 4 of Works, Vol. 1. The absolutely whirlingly nonsensical version of Copland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' is a demonstration of vainglory gone into overdrive and the 15-minute long concept finale 'Pirates' is a the biggest, dumbest, most gloriously overblown piece of concept-prog ever recorded and it is glorious. It is GLORIOUS.
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