Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Emerson, Lake & Palmer were never a band I knew a lot about. Like most people I could name at least one song, maybe two depending on the season. It would be either, "Lucky Man" or "I Believe in Father Christmas" but other than that I was more aware of a couple of their album covers. Tarkus was cool and Brain Salad Surgery was mind melting.

The first couple of times through ELP all I could think was "Man, this is different." Not bad, just different. Challenging in a good way, and when I sit and play this I start on one side and go through to the payoff that concludes the record, "Lucky Man."

While I am not an aficionado of all things progressive rock, I have more than a passing appreciation for complex well thought out musical passages. The early '70s was a strange and wonderful incubator for a lot of really odd ball bands who managed to find an audience that was moving past the psychedelic meandering jam bands and was looking for musical meat and potatoes. Yeah I know, back in 1970 (1971 for the rest of us in North America who apparently had to wait and see if we were ready for this stuff) I was all of seven years old, and had no idea what was going on unless it was on AM radio. So for me to sit hear and wax all pseudo intellectual about a scene I grew up through by wasn't part of is pretty presumptuous.

To be honest this album was about as far away from stuff I was listening to as you can get. Still, being able to move backward through time is a lot of fun. So here I am after about a half dozen plays and I'm really getting into this one. From the opening cut "Barbarian" that was apparently a very heavy arrangement of a classical piece by Bela Bartok from 1911 titled "Allegro Barbaro" (Thank you internet for coughing up that little nugget of information). The twelve minute "Take a Pebble" is a really interesting piece of music, and features a great little acoustic guitar section that then gives way to what feels like an extended improvisational jam but was more likely a painstakingly arranged, before resolving to the ending section where Greg Lake sings the song's final verse. The first side closes strong with "Knife-Edge" that is more straight ahead rock with a lot of wicked keyboard work by Keith Emerson, and at the mid point of the song he's let off leash and goes to town before the song winds down ... literally as the tape grinds to a halt.

Flipping it over the second side is again a showcase for the talents of Keith Emerson as the "The Three Fates" is comprised of three solo sections. The first features a festival hall organ (I can read credits, otherwise I'd have just said it was a churchy sounding thing) and then segues into a solo piano piece and then concludes with a piano trio, that was as much a call and response with drummer Carl Palmer that ends with a suitable explosion. It's all pretty interesting and at times a little atonal for me, but not displeasing. I just kept thinking, man the '70s really did have it all. Emerson and Palmer seemed to have so much fun on "Atropos" the final section of "The Three Fates" they just kept going for most of "Tank" until the album's closer "Lucky Man" brought all of the bits and pieces together for a little masterclass in pop magic. This was Greg Lake's showcase, but without the contributions of Emerson, particularly the ending moog sequence and Mr. Palmer's delicate but driving percussion this would have just been an ordinary rock song.

Admittedly "Lucky Man" was why I picked this up, but in the end I got so much more than I had expected. Who's the lucky man here?

Me.

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTOs Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) who knows maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust - it seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight ahead pop, or rock. It was leaning to the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough the vocals reminded me of Mi

Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

The first time I got this album it was a gift from my old roommate Otto. For a goofy little nebbish he would occasionally surprise me with some left of field musical treasures. Although, I still think he was reaching a little when he brought home the new "Led Zeppelin" album by Kingdom Come and forced me to listen to "Get it On" over and over again. I'd not listened to Mars Needs Guitars in a long, long, long time. The first thing that I jumped out at me was how David Faulkner's vocals reminded me of his fellow countryman Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. I think the reason this never occurred to me was at the time I didn't have any Midnight Oil until Diesel and Dust in 1987. I'm not saying it was all the time, but there were a couple of songs where it stood out. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Even at the time this felt slightly out of step with what was going on in 1985. It seemed like everyone was using drum machines and synthesizers and having t

Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

It was going to happen sooner or later. Nostalgia is a cruel Mistress...she can dull the sharpest edges and over time can even soften the hardest of opinions. I found this in the dollar bin, and frankly at a dollar I was worried about what this would cost me. Not only from a monetary perspective, but my time, and more important my credibility. Fourteen year old me was screaming "Don't you dare. DON'T DO IT! Put it down. Walk away!" Then there was grey bearded me holding it and looking at it, thinking, "How bad could it be? I actually kind of like "Staying Alive" and me buying this record won't bring disco back, and no one will have to know I bought this." I pulled the album out of the bin, and carefully took out the records. They'd seen better days, and there were a couple of decent scratches that would no doubt make their presence known later. The jacket was in decent condition, and both of the albums had the original sleeves. I dusted the

Old Enough to Forget

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