ELP Digest Friday 9 August, 1996 Volume 6 : Issue 19 The "See the Show" Edition Today's Topics: Rehearsal update from Greg Lake's manager need to trade tickets; any thoughts, suggestions elp/tull tour - Cleveland date Japan box office info ELP TOUR gatherings... ELP/Tull Concert Bulletin - Little Rock cancelled ELP Tour - Englewood. CO ELP/TULL Concert-Little Rock ELP on Olympics Re: What's a tarkus? Children of Keith (a band name, not a biological thing) Keith Emerson Interview (from 1992) Prelude ======= This may be the last ELP Digest before the Jethro Tull/ELP tour kicks off next weekend. (It depends if I can get to my mail here at work while I'm away from the office.) And I just wanted to get this Digest out quickly since it has a few tour updates. Also included is an interview with Keith Emerson conducted way back during the Black Moon tour of Europe. Hope to see some of you at the Great Woods show! Till next time, - John - ------------------------------------------------------------ From: BRUCETUNE@aol.com Date: Sun, 4 Aug 1996 23:13:28 -0400 To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Subject: Rehearsal update from Greg Lake's manager John: Greg and I have been speaking each day. We spent a week together in NYC working on plans for the new studio solo LP and finishing details for the January release of Anthology. Anyway, according to him, rehearsals have been really good and the band sounds great. He is looking forward to getting out there again. Thought your readers would like to know this. Bruce ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 07 Jul 1996 21:55:29 -0700 From: Lora Hall To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Subject: need to trade tickets; any thoughts, suggestions Am an ELP fan of 20+ years now. Looked SO forward to the August 27th show at the Merriweather Post in Columbia, MD. My husband, fan of 20 years as well, JUST told me date had changed, tickets are for August 23, at which time I am committed to be in New York. Am distressed. Will be in New York through August 26. Is there some way I can get info to fellow fans in hope someone would like to trade for another, later, show within a few hours of Baltimore? My tickets are LG LFT D 302 (Left Louge, 4th row). Or, any suggestions about what path I might take? Thank you! Lora -- Lora Hall NEW ADDRESS: lora@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us Editor, writer, project & promotions manager 410-377-5051 fx 377-2850 (a shared line) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Jul 96 22:57:04 UT From: "Julius & Jennifer Saroka" To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Subject: elp/tull tour - Cleveland date cleveland ohio - nautica stage (outdoors, on the banks of the Cuyahoga River) 03 sept. 1996 ------------------------------ To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com From: geoff@goostrey.u-net.com (G R Goostrey) Subject: Japan box office info Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 19:53:17 +0100 John, Tickets are now on sale and are nearly sold out in Tokyo! For internet purposes, Contact phone no. is: Computer Ticketing Network +81 3 5237 9999 - Tokyo English is spoken, and all major credit cards accepted. Some tickets are still available. ^.-.^ Geoff Goostrey (UK resident) ((")) geoff@goostrey.u-net.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 21:03:47 +1000 To: John Arnold From: mburns@blast.net (Mary Ann) Subject: ELP TOUR gatherings... Hi all! I'll be going to the shows - Darien Lake right thru to Camden (NJ)....tailgate parties definately happening at GSAC in NJ, Jones Beach, Great Woods, Merriwether get together planned... please email me if you'd like to meet up at any of the shows...and join us at the Tailgate parties (LOOK for the BIG ELP flag at GSAC especially) welcome back, my friends, to the show that NEVER ends.... Mary Ann ------------------------------ From: mbranick@nsslgate.nssl.uoknor.edu (Mike Branick) Subject: ELP/Tull Concert Bulletin - Little Rock cancelled To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com John, Bulletin - I have just been informed that the ELP/Tull concert scheduled for September 15 in Little Rock AR has been cancelled as of yesterday (6 August). The reason given to me by the Concert Company was poor ticket sales. They have no information as to whether the groups will reschedule elsewhere or use the date for travel, but they think that if it is rescheduled, it will be somewhere farther north (Nebraska?). Bad news for ELP (and Tull) fans in the south central US, as we now have only Kansas, Colorado, or Arizona as options. Mike B. Norman OK ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 18:16:31 -0700 From: wells wylie Subject: ELP Tour - Englewood. CO To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com John, On the tour a date for Englewood Co is listed thou I have not seen anything in the press for the show here. Have you heard any futher Info on this show. Thanks, Wells Wylie Englewood, Co [ Editor's Note: The Englewood show was listed on an early "draft" list that I'd seen but I can't find it listed on the TicketMaster or other web sites any more. So, it seems to have not made it to the final round of venues. Sorry about that. Hope people in that part of the world can see the tour somewhere else. - John - ] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 21:42:59 -0700 From: Randy & Jerah Boyd To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Subject: ELP/TULL Concert-Little Rock The concert for ELP/TULL at Little Rock,Ark Was Cancelled by Ticketmaster Aug. 8,1996 ------------------------------ From: doug@tellabs.com Date: Fri, 2 Aug 96 10:27:39 CDT To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Subject: ELP on Olympics Hi Fellow ELP fans, I've been on this list forever..Used to post a lot...Been lurking lately. Have enjoyed it tremendously though. NIce job John...Anyway, I was watching the Olympics a few nights ago and one of the women did her floor exercise to Nutrocker!! It cracked me up. It was not ELPs version. It was a cover and kind of a lifeless one. It even had a real bad guitar solo instead of piano. Just wondered if anybody else heard it. On another note, After 10 years of collecting dust, I finally restored my minimoog to it's original glory! I had forgotten how great that moog sound is. I started playing various KE solos that I've learned over the years. What a great sounding synth. I really lucked out...Several of the keys were not working...the switch mechanisms were shot..A friend of mine at work had the whole keyboard, pitch bender, and modualtion wheel assemblies in a box of spare parts... He gave them to me for $25...Also got the service manuals and a genuine moog sample and hold... for $15 ...look out!!! Makes a great addition to my arsonal of digital synths. Later, Doug David ------------------------------ From: slottich@his-po.inf.uiowa.edu To: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Date: Tue, 23 Jul 96 07:41 CST Subject: Re: What's a tarkus? From antigone@usa.nai.net (Shelley Harrington), 10 Mar 1996: > Also have a question I hope you can help with. A friend of mine is > pregnant & seriously considering naming her son Tarkus - only problem is > that she needs to know more about the name & what it means. Is Tarkus a > mythological creature, or an invention of ELP? Did he symbolize evil or > good? Etc ..... If you or anyone else can shed some light on the origin, it > would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again ...... Tell your friend to seriously consider the effect a name like that could have on a child while growing up. Classmates can be cruel concerning unusual characteristics, why make it any tougher on the boy by saddling him with the name "Tarkus"? Sometimes parents try to be too clever in naming their child, without considering the potential problems they may be causing the kid when he begins to interact with the world around him. Steve Lottich ------------------------------ To: arnold From: Timothy M Holmes Date: 17 Jul 96 16:25:14 EDT Subject: Children of Keith John Found this on my 'net travels - the following extract from the attached URL explains: > CHILDREN OF KEITH > > Named after Keith Emerson, progressive rockers with no shame and a sense > of humour. > Their first submission to the archive is our longest/largest so far! This > was uploaded as soon as the size limitation was removed just recently > (looks like they were JUST waiting for this..). Children of Keith are best > described as an odd shameless mixture somewhere between ELP and Frank Zappa. > > "Carbuncle no.1 / Zebra Shoe Interlude" 11KHz 10m12s IWAVE > "Carbuncle no.1 / Zebra Shoe Interlude" 32kb/s 10m12s (2.4MB!!!) MPEG > > More information about Children of Keith to follow (haven't got it yet!). I don't think they are an ELP tribute band. http://www.hsq.co.uk/musicarc.html#CHILD Tim. ------------------------------ Date: 26 Jun 96 08:23:31 EDT From: Jeroen Ravesloot <100341.1024@CompuServe.COM> To: John Arnold ok Subject: Keith Emerson Interview (fro 1992) Dear John, Here's the interview I promised you. It took me a little longer to type it down, but anyway. The questions were asked by myself and a colleague of mine (he asked the dumb questions, haha, just kidding).[...] Interview taken from Keith Emerson, in Brussels on november 6, 1992 during the Black Moon Tour. This interview appeared in the december issue of the Roland Info Magazine, a consumer oriented paper issued by Roland Benelux Corporation in Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Q: I read the article in Keyboard Magazine by Mr. Doerschuk about the reunion of ELP. He stated that the reunion was something inevitable. Is this your feeling as well? KE: It was a question of choosing the right time and the right record company, I think, and getting the right interest, you know. That was the basic idea. Q: What was the decisive fact, was it the record company or was it just you guys that said, listen we just want to play together again. KE: I think, well I think it's because we had a lot of confidence in the company that, er, that was showing the interest in us, Victory Records. Their president was Phil Carson, and we've known him quite since the early days, and er, he was with Atlantic when we were with Atlantic, and then he 'rogged (?)' out and when into management and he formed this record label, with a lot of backing from Japan, from JVC. So we realised that we would actually have somebody first hand looking after our interests, somebody we knew and somebody that we trusted. So that was really the main deciding factor. Q: So it wasn't a 'YES' kinda stuff, like they had to organise all their legal affairs first, in order to be able to play together again? KE: No, there wasn't a big legal complication with us at all. Q: I suppose there was also the will to play together again, the interest of ELP making music again? KE: Yes, well, yes, we wanted to try and do something a little bit different, but something that really followed on from the past. For that purpose we had a producer Mark Mancina, who is actually a keyboard player himself. Q: What does somebody like you, who is so used to analog equipment, think of todays 'menu controlled' digital synthesizers? Do you use them? KE: If I use digital synthesizers? Yes, of course I use them, I've got a whole rack of them, even some Roland stuff, but you'd have to speak to my keyboard technician about it, to know which one it is I'm using. Q: Do you program them yourself? KE: No, my keyboard tech (Will Alexander, now his manager, too, ed.) does that for me. Maybe you should talk to him about this. Q: I was surprised when I bought the album (Black Moon that is, ed.), on the sleeve notes was indicated AAD, which means everything except the final stage of the CD manufacturing was done analog. Also, I couldn't find any use of samplers on this CD. Is this an indication towards the fact that you don't like to use digital equipment? KE: I'm really not too worried, unless it makes the right sound, I don't care if it's analog or digital, I don't have a real preference. I think though, that analog does record better, particularly for what we do, you get a lot more, I don't know, it drives harder, I think, or you can make it drive harder. Q: Was that the reason to record in analog? KE: Em,......., I don't know what the decision was actually, somebody booked the studio, and I just showed up! And, er, we let that choice also to Mark, I think he had a preference of recording us in that way, so as a producer, we just sat back and did what he wanted. Q: How do you write, and what do you write. To put the question in another way, do you come to the other guys and say, listen, this is the scheme, these are the chord changes, please find me a bass part and a drum part. A lot of your musical work has a strong classical influence, so there are a lot of things to take care of, like the structure, the counterparts and so on. How 'free' do you leave the other musicians? KE: Yes, well, normally, if it's about pieces like 'Changing States', I write that out on manuscript. So it's all there, the chord shapes, the bass lines. So then, I just teach it to the other two. Then they might come up with alternative roots, or root notes, or riffs, and then we work it out as a band. Q: With you classical influences, do you approach your music mainly from a theoretical point of view, or do you just sit down and start playing and see where it ends? KE: Well, no, I play it from an emotional point of view, first of all, and then I can get a bit sort of theoretical about it after that, I think that maybe that motiv would sound good if I'd try to arrange it in a fugue style, perhaps or by modulating, like reversing around or imitating it in a different way, using different chords behind it,....... Q: Which are classical techniques... KE: Yes, I use classical techniques, I think, you know, and structure the pieces instrumentally, I structure them. Q: Do you have a classical training? KE: No, not really. I had private lessons, every week for half an hour, that's all. Q: But not when you were young? KE: Well, yeah, about the age of 8 until I was 14. Q: Speaking of classical music, your Piano Concerto no. 1 is going to be performed in Cologne, at the end of this year,.. KE: Yeah, I've heard about it, the guy called me up from Germany,..... Q: Is there any company who edited your piano Concerto? KE: Yes, I think Theodor Press from Philadelphia, is it called Theodor Press or Presse?.... I think they did have it in their catalogue for publishing. Q: What is you input in the developing of new Korg Synthesizers? Do you have a say in it? Or do they just call you up and say (imitates Japanese speech: haro mista emeson, we gotta new sizzesise, ando we rike you to pray it..?) KE: (laughs) Well, yes, er........, pretty much like that. Earlier, sometimes like about 1980 the flew me from England to Japan, and I spend a week there. I met with all their engineers, and we discussed certain things, and they showed a lot of interest, but whether they actually used any of the ideas, em....., I was really sort of talking about keyboard styles and shapes, rather then getting into the actual programming, you know. Q: Is there any specific reason why you choose Korg? KE: Em,....well, loyalty, apart from anything else, that's the main ingredient. And secondly of course, I do happen to think they have very good products. When I first joined them in 1976, was it?, I had the very first things they were coming up with, which was really not very good, but em, they were giving them to me, so I accepted them. Then came the Trident, which I started to use, and then they realised that I was using their products, and they wanted to do like an endorsement deal, and I went along with that. Since then I stayed with them, you know, it's like one big family, we know each other Mr. Cato and so on. Q: Weren't you approached by Yamaha, since they control KORG (at that time, ed.)? It would have been logical, you using the GX-1 and so on? KE: No, no, well, I've always had a little bit of a, well, .... Yamaha not being as agreeable. Well, KORG use to design a drummachine for Yamaha organs, they built the actual drummachine, and then they broke away. But hey still have a loose connection. Q: You use to use a lot of Yamaha synthesizers, like the GX-1, GS-2,.. KE: Yeah, I actually bought the GX-1 for something like 30.000! Q: Do you still have it? KE: I still have it, but it doesn't work, they don't build them any more, so the parts aren't available. Q: That's a pity, I was a nice instrument. KE: It was an interesting instrument, yeah, I use it on 'Pirates' and 'Fanfare For The Common' man. Q: Speaking about compositions, do you compose on the piano, on a keyboard? KE: Well, I compose up here in my head, and then I normally take it to the nearest accessible keyboard around, which in most cases would be the piano, because you don't have to switch it on. Q: If you start with a composition in your head, and you want to put it down on a keyboard, do you feel a strong tendency towards a certain key, in other words are keys and moods for you related? Because, for example, looking at certain classical compositions, a flat key is often used in romantic works. KE: Hm? Oh, I see, no, I don't compose in any particular key, but that's interesting, I've never really thought of it that way, actually, no, er, I'm normally not aware of keys when I start, I just hear it in a certain register and that's where it stays. -- Road Manager brings in hot food-- KE: Do you mind if I eat?, Thanks. Q: Have you ever thought of using a sequencer? KE: No, not really, em... Q: Because it's too much of a hassle? KE: Well, no, it's cheating, isn't it? Q: Well, not really, 'cause you can use it as a tape recorder as well. KE: Really?, well no, I've never done that. I stick to the old fashioned way, playing it straight to tape. We use sequencers in the show, only on two numbers, for some backing voices on the sequencer. Q: Which samplers do you use? KE: Well, em...., I don't know! I think, em.....I think it's the 01/W, perhaps, I don't know. (When, after the show, we took a look at KE's rig, it came out he uses a couple of Akai S-1000 off stage) Q: Does your old MOOG system still works? KE: Yes, but not on stage. My keyboard tech has been brought up on MOOGs, and he has done a great job getting it back into shape. Q: Do you still sometimes bump into Mr. Moog himself? KE: Sometimes, yeah. I saw him at the California fair once. Q: What about today's synthesizers? Do you prefer the old analog range, because of the so-called sound quality (as many say their sound quality is superior to today's range of digital synths, which of course is not true, ed.)? KE: The thing is, some synths you get so used to, you don't want to change, and if something goes wrong with it, the frustrating thing is, you can't get the parts for it any more, so I think the sad thing in today's keyboard sales is that they don't really consider that the poor musician who's saved all his live to get this keyboard together, he's literally forced into buying a newer model, rather than repairing the old one. Q: What's Hammond to you? KE: Well, the one I've got has been completely remodified by Al Goff from America and, it's still got its sound, you know which I like, and it's MIDI'd as well, so it's another keyboard controller. Q: Can you give us some hints on how to make the typical Emerson Hammond sound? KE: Well, back in those days I use to have a direct out from the Hammond itself going into the Hiwatt, which I would crank up the presence on it, so it accentuated the key click, so that was part of it, and the other was em......, I had a Leslie 122, which would been beefed up and the speaker taken out of it and a JBL put into it, and er,.... it had a bigger output. Then the Hiwatt was miked up and balanced along the Leslie. Q: I also never heard a fast/slow Leslie in your music? KE: No, I didn't use a lot of that, no. I use it more now, em, because I can control it from a foot pedal, before I had to take my hands off the keyboard. Q: How has the tour been up to now? KE: Long, but it has been OK. It's nice to be touring. Q: Am I right if I say that there is an influence from Asia in the latest album (Black Moon, ed.)? Songs seem to be shorter, you work towards a chorus, tempi are higher,... Was that deliberate? KE: Really?, well, no, there is no connection, I mean, we won't try and model ourselves to anything, really. Em, I think, we were, as every band, er..... radio play is important, and to get on radio play, you got to have shorter pieces. I don't think we made any concessions in our music, and make it so that we might get radio play. It's just something that we're not very knowledgable about, we felt that perhaps the radio stations would change and conform to what we were doing, but that's probably wrong and very stupid of us to think so. Em, so probably the next album might be a completely different approach. Q: But I don't think it's not really important for a band such as ELP to have a hit single. I mean, it's nice to have one, but..... KE: Yes, of course it is nice, but I don't think there was a conscious attempt on this album to go for a hit single, but at the back of our minds we were thinking, well somewhere on the line, we've got to have something here which is radio-playable. Q: Yeah, but I mean, people who buy Black Moon will not buy it because there is a hit single on it, they will probably buy it because it's and ELP album? KE: Yes, I mean there is that, but of course we wanted to get into the ballgame to attract other audiences, people, another generation, you know. There was that consciousness to make it attractive, and of course we wanted to progress ourselves, we wanted to learn more about, em, different ways of recording, that's really why Mark was there. He was that influence who said, if you gear it this way, if that's what you want, you may have more of a shot if you do it this way. We weren't really selling out, we weren't really changing our style, but we were compacting the ideas that we had, and putting it in such a way that perhaps it would stand a chance, you know? Q: I personally feel that 'Farewell To Arms' could be a hitsingle? KE: Well yes, that's been released in Germany, actually, and we we'll wait and see what happens there. Also, 'Affairs of the Heart' has just been playlisted on BBC, which is quite a difficult thing to get..... Q: Even for ELP? KE: Oh, yeah, more difficult, really, em...., I find that the typical thing with record companies,.... it's so corporate Rock and Roll, that the people inside the record companies, young guys that wanna break an unknown band, you know, it's much more of a feather in their hat to do that than it is for them to break an ELP record, because at the end of the day, their claim to fame is, well, I got the so and so band a break, that is my idea. But if he would have to say the same thing about ELP, people would go, ' well, that wasn't too big of a job, was it, because the're a well known band anyway?' So we tend to suffer as a consequence to that, because people would take us very much for granted, like 'Oh, the band's gonna do well because of it's name!'. And it's not! It needs just as much hard work as any other band. Q: In that respect, 'Fanfare' and 'Peter Gunn', was it more like an accident? KE: O very much so, all of that, singles I think were pretty much accidents,... Q: Also Lucky Man? KE: Yeah, it was just released in America. Fanfare was a complete accident, really. Q: When you go into the studio, how much of the work is already finished? KE: Pretty much, I'd say, something like 65, 70%. We used to go into the studio and see what happened, but back then, we wasted a lot of money as well. We don't do that any more, it's too expensive. In the rehearsal room, we got a lot if it down there, some of it went down into the computer, so we would have lines, keyboard lines or whatever, and we would change the sounds, or the actual programming in the studio. Q: Once I read a story that in the early days, just after the split of The Nice there was a rumour going around about E,L,P and Jimi Hendrix getting together. Is it true? KE: Well, not really, that was more the media who put two and two together and making four, which it does of course. We had a conversation with Mitch Mitchell, before we met Carl. And er, Mitch was keen on playing with the band and suggested maybe he could have a chat with Jimi, that was when he was alive. So we thought, well, yeah, that's not a bad idea, but I was a bit iffy about it, because I jammed with Jimi before, and I toured with him and he wanted to get back to his black roots, he didn't want to be part of a honky band any more. But, er, it was after we got together with Carl and somebody asked me about how we started and all that, and because Mitch was nearly involved, they figured, well Jimi may have been involved too, so it was just some daydreaming. Q: What happened to the old members of the Nice? KE: Well, Lee is a good friend of mine, he is currently in England and Brian Davison is teaching drums and playing jazz. Q: Was Five Bridges Suite, apart from the live recording and Fairfield Hall, played somewhere else as well, together with the classical orchestra? KE: There were some other concerts yeah. After we'd recorded in the Fairfield hall, we actually did another concert at the Royal Festival Hall, which was quite interesting. We did a lot of mix media experiment, that days. Q: Have there ever been plans to expand ELP to ELP + somebody? KE: Well yes, we thought about that, adding a guitar player or something, you know. Wait and see, maybe on the next album. Q: As an actual member? KE: Oh,just as an guest appearance, that would be nice. I mean Greg is very friendly with Gary Moore. We would have too wait and see to know what will be coming out of that..... And that was the end of the interview. Some photographs were taken and I enjoyed an incredible performance by the band. ------------------------------ Digest, mailing address, and administrative stuff to: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com | +=> The same for now... ELP-related info that you | want to put in the digest to: arnold@dartmouth.coordinate.com Back issues are available from the World Wide Web ELP Home Page: URL: http://bliss.berkeley.edu/elp/ Note: The opinions, information, etc. contained in this digest are those of the original message sender listed in each message. They are not necessarily those of the mailing list/digest administrator or those of any institution through whose computers/networks this mail flows. Unless otherwise noted, the individual authors of each entry in the Digest are the copyright holders of that entry. Please respect that copyright and act accordingly. I especially ask that you not redistribute the ELP Digest in whole or in part without acknowledging the original source of the digest and each author. Thanks! ------------------------------ End of ELP Digest [Volume 6 Issue 19] *************************************