It's strange to me that some people "hate" Benny the Bouncer. To me it's not much different from something like The Beatles "Her Majesty." I guess I just don't feel something like that breaks an album.
This! Call me weird, but I've never had the same opinion of the "non-serious" album tracks as some do. For me, it's all of a piece - what the band was feeling in the time. There are tons of examples of this, from all sorts of bands, and none of them are dealbreakers for me.
David
Happy with what I have to be happy with.
Agree. I don't know why people need to make note of 2 minutes and twenty one seconds they don't like, of an otherwise album they love completely. Keith loved honky-tonk piano, and was often found playing honk-tonk in pubs while on the road. It's just a short bit of fun on BSS to warm you up for the lengthy KE9. I personally recall as a youngster loving it from day one. It's quite catchy and I can recite the whole thing in my sleep. But to each their own of course.
no kidding. I love ELP but man, there can't be any stone left unturned at this point? Especially since nearly all the outtakes/"rare" tracks they did wound up on Works 2.
both these albums are great, of course. really cool to hear the leap taken from The Nice to ELP's debut, sound-wise. and yet you get the sense that they weren't really firing as a band, yet - so much of that album sounds like solo spots w/ some band accompaniment. by the time you get to "Lucky Man" it's almost a shock...oh yeah, Lake's in there isn't he? I guess all of ELP's discs are like this to some extent, but the debut is the one where you can really tell how things came together. Even on "Take a Pebble"...it's kinda just "Epitaph" part 2, but with a new middle section, isn't it?
Critter Jams "album of the week" blog: http://critterjams.wordpress.com
The debut really reminds me of THE NICE / NICE album. It has the same sort of feel and soundscape. Both start off with kind of ruckus number, "Azreal" vs "Barbarian". Then "Hang On To A Dream", which structurally is similar to "Take A Pebble". Then we pick up the pace with some cool grooves on "For Example" vs "Knife Edge." Side two perhaps changes up bit but both started with more sprawling works from "Rondo" to "The Three Fates" Fill in the ELP debut with Carl's drum solo and Greg's number, and there you have it.
Rondo then became an ELP signature piece straight away as well. So the seminaries are very stark to me.
I generally find drum solos a bore too, especially those rock drum solos that go on for 5-10 minutes, when, at best, they should have really only been 90 seconds. And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of critics take shots at ELP. Not only is there a drum solo on a studio album, but one of their live albums manages to have two drum solos on it.
One of the things I liked about the Grateful Dead was that Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann did interesting things with the Rhythm Devils parts of the Dead's shows. It wasn't just "Look at how fast I can play a paradiddle" or getting the audience clap progressively faster every time you hit the snare drum or whatever. They'd do stuff that dynamics to it and incorporated different types of percussion instruments, etc.
Bookmarks