Emerson Lake & Palmer

Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album, made up of keyboard-dominated instrumentals ("The Barbarian," "Three Fates") and romantic ballads ("Lucky Man") showcasing all three members' very daunting talents. This album, which reached the Top 20 in America and got to number four in England, showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly – with the exception of a few moments on "Three Fates" and perhaps "Take a Pebble," there isn't much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here. "Take a Pebble" might have passed for a Moody Blues track of the era but for the fact that none of the Moody Blues' keyboard men could solo like Keith Emerson.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) is one of the most popular and successful english progressive rock bands in history. The main characteristics that made the trio so popular were their technical skills and their showmanship. It wasn't very usual -back then- to see such technically proficient musicians like keith Emerson (keyboards) or Carl Palmer (drums) to develop such a highly-visual concert experience; which in fact made an often quite complex music genre, instantly appealing to a broad audience. The Many Faces of Emeron, Lake & Palmer is a key release that shows uknown aspects of their successful career.

Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album, made up of keyboard-dominated instrumentals ("The Barbarian," "Three Fates") and romantic ballads ("Lucky Man") showcasing all three members' very daunting talents. This album, which reached the Top 20 in America and got to number four in England, showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly – with the exception of a few moments on "Three Fates" and perhaps "Take a Pebble," there isn't much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here…

Upon its release, the 1973 LP Brain Salad Surgery had been hailed as Emerson, Lake & Palmer's masterpiece. A long tour ensued that left the trio flushed and begging for time off. Before disbanding for three years, they assembled a three-LP live set (something of a badge of achievement at the time, earned by Yes in 1973 with Yessongs and, somewhat more dubiously, Leon Russell with Leon Live)…

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Well, such is the idea for an Emerson, Lake & Palmer compilation, but this one does tend to fall a bit short, literally. After all, since it was originally released as an LP, the disc comes in at less than 40 minutes. Certainly with a catalog as rich as Emerson, Lake & Palmer's it is extremely difficult for one CD (especially a short one) to truly capture the essence of the group. This one fails both as a chronological compilation and as the best-of that it is billed as being. That said, there are some good points here. "Lucky Man," "Peter Gunn," and "Still You Turn Me On" are all essential Emerson, Lake & Palmer cuts that truly work well here.

In 1977, after three years' time off working on various solo projects – which were to have culminated with a trio of solo albums – Emerson, Lake & Palmer reunited to release Works, Vol. 1, a double LP containing the best of the solo works plus a side of group-conceived pieces. All in all, it was the most ambitious and wide-ranging body of music they'd ever released, and was followed by the more modestly proportioned but still successful Works, Vol. 2 in November of that year, and a tour that fall and winter; in keeping with the albums that spawned it, the concerts initially featured a 90-piece orchestra supporting the trio…