ELP Digest Friday, 31 July 1998 Volume 8 : Issue 9 The "Show's About To Start" Edition Today's Topics: Latest Tour Dates... NJ Ticket For Sale Concert Tickets 8/11 & 8/14 Tickets for 8/19 Show in Toronto ELP Cleveland ELP in San Diego ELP in San Diego ELP and British Telecom ELP Tribute album on Magna Carta Greg Lake's Trivia Page and Bass Guitars Two questions... Interesting Digest (re: V8 #8) Prelude ======= Well, after an I'll-apologize-that-it-took-so-long gap between Digests, I'm squeaking one out onto the wire just in time for tomorrow night's tour opener at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. I'll be there so you can try to guess who I am if you're also in th crowd. I've been giving some thought to how I'm going to handle the reviews that readers send me during this tour. Last year, a lot of the reviews got delayed because of the backlog and that was frustrating, especially to the people who took the time to write. So... this year, I'm not going to put reviews in the Digest. I'm going to put them straight onto the ELP Digest web site. I'm going to add links to each date of the tour as it happens (and as people send reviews). That link will go to a page of links to the reviews that people send me (or pointers to links if people have reviews on their own web sites). I think that will help keep the reviews more current as well as free up the Digest space for the discussions, questions, etc. How does that sound to everyone? We'll try it and see how it goes. If you're near a tour stop, I hope you have a great time. If you're not, I hope ELP gets near your part of the world next time! - John - ------------------------------------------------------------ From: John Arnold , on 7/31/98 8:13 PM: To: arnold@reluctant.com Subject: Latest Tour Dates... The tour starts tomorrow!!! (Well, today (or yesterday...) by the time most of you read this! This is the latest tour schedule that I've been able to gather: ELP Only shows! August 1, Casino Ballroom, Hampton Beach, NH August 2, Flynn Theater, Burlington, VT For the following tour dates, ELP and Dream Theater are appearing in Deep Purple's Summer 1998 USA tour: August 3, Chance Theater, Poughkeepsie, NY August 6, PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ August 7, Meadows Music Theater, Hartford, CT August 8, Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts, Mansfield, MA August 9, Jones Beach Ampitheater, Wantagh, NY August 11, Harvey's Lake, Wilkes-Barre, PA August 12, E Center, Philadelphia, PA August 14, Finger Lakes P.A.C., Canandaigua, NY August 15, Pineknob Music Theater, Clarkston, MI August 17, L'Agora Vieux De Port, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada August 18, Molson Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada August 19, Molson Amphitheater, Toronto, Ontario, Canada August 21, Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, OH August 22, World Music Theater, Tinley Park, IL August 23, Grand Casino Amphitheater, Hinckley, MN August 24, Marcus Amphitheter, Milwaukee, WI August 26, Fiddler's Green Amphitheater, Greenwood Village, CO August 28, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA August 30, Universal Amphitheater, Universal City, CA August 31, 4th & B, San Diego, CA (Some are saying this an ELP only show, too) - John - ------------------------------ From: "Jason Kochel" , on 7/29/98 10:44 PM: To: Subject: NJ Ticket For Sale I have an extra ticket to the Aug 6 ELP/DT/DP show at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ. The seat is near the soundboard. Asking $40 (face value + handling fees). Email if interested. Jason jason.kochel@dartmouth.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 01:15:42 -0400 From: Douglas Lyle Graham Subject: Concert Tickets 8/11 & 8/14 I have a ticket for the Harvey's Lake show and the Finger Lakes show. I can't get to either show, and I am trying to find someone who needs a ticket for those shows. I will sell them for face value ($26 and $39 respecively) to anyone needing one of the tickets. It would be a shame to have a good seat empty. Let me know if anyone's looking for a good ticket for those shows. Thanks Doug Graham nicelp@earthlink.net ( I will check my e-mail on 8/3/98) ------------------------------ From: "The LaserDisc Depot" , on 7/10/98 3:28 PM: To: Subject: Tickets for 8/19 Show in Toronto Hi ELP Fans: Today I ordered my tickets to the Toronto show with Deep Purple for Wednesday, August 19 at the Molson Amphitheatre. I will have 4 extra seats and have purchased these so other ELP fans on this mailing list can join my wife and I for the show. My preference would be that they be used by fans who live outside of Canada. If anyone's interested, please email me. Regards, John Weitner -- The Laserdisc Depot The Digital Video Depot discs@ld-depot.com http://www.ld-depot.com ------------------------------ From: C320i@grapevinenet.com, on 7/20/98 9:37 AM: To: elp-digest@reluctant.com Subject: ELP Cleveland unfortunately i won't be able to make the 8.21 cleveland show as i will be out of the country. would someone e-mail a review to the following address? corsatea@uaic.ro thanks, neil corsatea warren, oh C320i@grapevinenet.com ------------------------------ From: "Paul D. Eccles" , on 7/22/98 8:43 AM: To: elp-digest@reluctant.com Subject: ELP in San Diego There will be an ELP only show in San Diego on August 29 at a place called 4thandB. Tickets are $27.50 for reserved seats and $22.50 for general admission. Doors open at 7pm and the show starts at 8pm. An expected opening act has not yet been announced. For more info go to www.4thandB.com. Paul Eccles ------------------------------ From: "Michael R. Garbiso" , on 7/26/98 10:17 PM: To: elp-digest@reluctant.com Subject: ELP in San Diego Greetings to all you great ELP fans and a special thanks to John for his continuing(and much appreciated) efforts to provide us with the Best Site on the web! Once again ELP will grace San Diego with another concert this summer. Yes, you heard right, on August 31, the boys will be playing at 4th and B in the heart of the historic GasLamp Quarter. Just got back from buying my tickets at the local TicketMaster. Not exactly sure when they went on sale, but was able to snag 12th row center. As usual your San Diego correspondent will be posting a same-night review of what will surely be the greatest concert of the summer. Until next time, be good, and good to each other. Randy Garbiso, a weaver in he web that he made ------------------------------ From: "Nigel Hobday" , on 7/3/98 10:30 AM: To: elp-digest@reluctant.com Subject: ELP and British Telecom Want a laugh ? - British Telecom (BT) have a new publication called BTQ which is a series of articles about BT internet services. There is an article in this called "It's good to e-mail" written in the context of a Mother talking about her family. It ends with this final paragraph... "When Andy was away the week before last, he asked me to check his e-mail and to my horror he had over a hundred messages unread, most of them from the Emerson, Lake and Palmer newsgroup which feeds him with a wealth of information which I really don't want to hear, especially over breakfast. Why can't we talk about normal things like other families ? Anyway, I never liked ELP; to loud and hairy for me...I wonder if there's a David Cassidy newsgroup ?" This publication has gone to almost every household in the UK !!! Need I say more.... Nigel Hobday nige@vnet.ibm.com [ Editor's Note: Thanks for sending this along! I got a good chuckle out of it. - John - ] ------------------------------ From: Paolo Rigoli , on 7/18/98 11:40 AM: To: ELP-Digest@reluctant.com Subject: ELP Tribute album on Magna Carta I found this info in the Net: > Magna Carta is preparing an ELP tribute album. Derek > Sherinian of Dream Theater will perform on "Tarkus" > and Mike Portnoy will play on "The Endless Enigma" > and "The Sheriff." Simon Phillips and Robert Berry will > also be on the album. The previous tribute albums by Magna Carta (Yes, Jethro Tull, Genesis,...) are all well done, so let's hope for another good one! Bye, Paolo. ------------------------------ From: Don Goodman , on 6/11/98 12:24 PM: To: elp-digest-web@reluctant.com Subject: Greg Lake's Trivia Page and Bass Guitars Again, Kudos for the great work on maintaining this digest. Has anybody been into the Greg Lake Trivia page? There is a question posed asking what two kinds of bass guitars he used during the 70's. The posted answers are 'Fender' and 'Alembic'. Sure he used those, but he certainly played a 'Gibson Ripper' as well. Or am I wrong? In fact on the back of the Welcome Back... triple album, is he not playing one? I queried the page and questioned this as far back as December, when the question first appeared. They have neither acknowledged my question or changed the page. Anybody else confused by this? Looking forward to ELP and DP. Who'd have thunk that twenty-five years ago? Don Goodman [ Editor's Note: Back in the 70s, Greg Lake was on the cover of Guitar Player magazine (that's I know if around here somewhere....) and I think it is a Gibson Ripper bass that he's playing in that picture. It's some kind of Gibson; I'm almost positive. I think he was playing that bass a lot during the Brain Salad Surgery tour. (As I recall, he started to use the Alembic as of the Works tour.) - John - ] ------------------------------ From: Paolo Rigoli , on 7/12/98 11:15 AM: To: ELP-Digest@reluctant.com Subject: Two questions... Hello! I hope some of you could answer the following questions. 1) Listening to "Pictures at an exhibition" from the "Isle of Wight" CD I noted that this early version has different lyrics in some point. My english is not good enough to understand the words but I hope someone is able to do this and put it in the Digest. 2) I am very curious to know if the Keith Emerson's "Piano Concerto #1" was performed as part of classical concerts and if so I would like to have informations about the orchestra, conductor, date, place, etc Thank you very much in advance. All the best, Paolo. ------------------------------ From: Peter Wilton , on 6/29/98 5:01 PM: To: John Arnold Subject: Interesting Digest (re: V8 #8) Thanks for the most interesting discussion that I've yet read on the Digest - quite a welcome break from descriptions of concerts on tour, which are often virtually identical to each other, and frustrating if you live in the UK, where they haven't played since October 1992! That the set-list discussions would ask for more performances of BSS and Tarkus is predictable, I suppose. I was "converted" as a teenager to Emerson's music shortly after the release of Tarkus, by hearing the first album. My "journey" with regard to the music was interesting - the thing that grabbed me immediately was the third Fate, and when I shortly after heard the three of them together, I couldn't believe that anyone working in what I had regarded as the "pop" musical field could be so subversive. Wasn't it simply "classical"? By contrast, the Barbarian, though the "real" classical piece, struck me as "like" other rock music going on around me. When I finally heard the original Bartok, seeing that it was note-for-note "the same", I had to question the way I listened to music, in particular how timbre was affecting my perception of musical style, and that I was mistaking perceptions about timbre as being about melodic and harmonic style, when they weren't. After the eclectic mix of the first album, in both timbre and harmonic style, I was therefore comparatively disappointed with Tarkus, particularly by the lack of the dazzling pianistic display of the Three Fates, and the lack of anything in the "mood" of the piano solo in Take a Pebble. The same went for the live performance of Pictures. I didn't feel I'd been given more of the kind of mix of the first album until Trilogy. And when BSS came out, the only respite, apart from the obligatory Lake ballad (not particularly to my taste) was a short and rather spare section of 2nd impression, so I felt I'd been denied again. The first album suggested a blueprint for a number of different possibilities for development, and I hoped they would all be developed equally, because it was the mix that was so "right" about it, but I felt that the "non-rocking", pianistic component in particular had been neglected in subsequent developments. Since my initial reaction to Tarkus and BSS, my opinion of the former has changed dramatically for the better, the latter rather less. The former is interesting in its harmonic experimentation, the latter less so, though it may have its moments. I have been interested to read that experimentation with timbre is generally important in the reception, by its audience, of pop music. (I suppose I should have drawn this conclusion myself, on my own, from the difference between my two reactions to the Barbarian, the one before I knew it was by Bartok, the other afterwards.) It is also important in some kinds of prog as well. However, as the new Nice tribute site suggests, the removal of guitar heralded a "classical" period for Emerson which has never really ended. Despite everything that has been said and written, my impression of Emerson's music is that it is conceived "classically" - that is it is recorded, partly in writing, making it an "art object" in the same way as classical music. What we know of his composition process (particularly the use of the piano) suggests that his music is conceived in the traditional way, as what can be recorded in notation: what musical events happen in the time-space, progressions of melody, harmony and rhythm - "orchestration" is a secondary stage. Therefore I wonder why so much emphasis is put on Emerson as "experimenter with timbre", or why his "originality" is located by so many in this. His "originality" seems to me to be more a matter of taking pre-existing elements from various musical arenas which for a hundred years or so have not really communicated with each other, and put them back together. Now "classical" and "popular" are re-converging. Before the schism, they were together, until Chopin's time. Emerson sometimes took some of the music most representative of the schism, and put it into the outrageous wing of the popular arena. Proponents of the avant-garde often rubbish kinds of originality other than their own, by ignoring the fact that it is possible to be both backward-looking and strikingly original at the same time. With regard to the "class" matter that someone wrote about: At the height of the popular-classical schism, there was no way to gain status except by writing music that demanded the same kind of attention and listening strategy belonging to music-as-art-object. Whilst this may originally have had some connexion with "class", it doesn't explain the world inhabited by those who work within the "classical establishment", which is apparently obviously fairly classless to those involved in it. Nor does "class" really explain the divide between the "bourgeois" audience and the artistic "elite" which sometimes despises their taste. Emerson was really rather subversive of all this, because Allegro Barbaro wouldn't have fitted in with the current predilections of either the "classical" audience or the avant-garde art community at the time he started. Perhaps Emerson is the victim of his own ambiguity? His "style of presentation" suggests the antics of the most extreme heavy metal groups, as does the degree of amplification, which runs counter to listening to complex musical structures. The Hammond smashing act sets a context for the reception of the musical content. It's hardly surprising then, that the mood of the studio Take a Pebble can find no place on stage. Yet it's an important part of musical aesthetics, and, from ELP's studio work, part of their aesthetic too. Take a Pebble has always been transformed on stage into something energetic, like the more upbeat studio recorded music. Is it not the imperative of the Hammond trashing which demands this? Hence the approving statements by many fans in favour of the frenetic piano improvisations. Artistic standard is here equated with performance-as-audience- arousal, of which the Hammond trashing is the extreme end. But this is at the expense of Emerson's other modes of musical expression, the standard of which is best judged by other criteria. The "classical" compositional method suggests a "classical" listening strategy. But which? The "dilettante" one of the concert audience, or the analytical one of Western musicology? The one has traditionally liked to be soothed, the other wants to see complex architectural structures in time, with motifs being varied and developed over a time period. Emerson has probably done better in the long run with that part of the classical audience which is excited by the harmonic experimentation of the 20th century, but not if it's too analytical of musical structure. Many of Emerson's compositions do not "develop", but constantly introduce new ideas (The Endless Enigma, for example, where many of the new ideas for a large part of the piece don't seen to bear any obvious relations to what has gone before). On the other hand, musicological analysis is under attack these days for having been developed in 19th century German universities to "prove" that the German classical "canon" was greater than the music of other times and places. The trouble is, Emerson does pay court to this tradition, suggesting that his music should be judged in this way, but inconsistently. However, I might suggest that (a) sometimes he does it quite successfully, and (b) that his later examples of "longer" pieces often do it more successfully than earlier, and (c) I wonder whether the positive judgement on some of his music stems from the mixing of two different ways of viewing musical value, and that if a different listening strategy is adopted, some of his less popular pieces might actually come out with higher marks. >From the "classical" listening strategy, in which the way a piece is put together is considered important, I value, for example, from his later output, the Piano Concerto, The Miracle, and Another Frontier. In the first movement, the first notes which the piano plays have earlier been heard in canon at two different speeds, and recur in the cadenza with an "American in Paris" Gershwin-style accompaniment. There are one or two jars of style change (i.e. between the cadenza and the final orchestral entry, which, however, seems not to jar so much in the version for piano solo he played after having dismissed the orchestra). In the last movement, the development seems quite consistent, from the first entry of the rhythmically choppy main theme (C-Bb-Eb-C-Bb-C) to its transformation into a "triumphal" theme at the end. There are two reasons why I particularly like The Miracle, which is organised like this: A So here we stand... A Another sword... B Beyond the compass... A On a sea... C Still the dragons... D It's gonna take a miracle... E Stand clear... F Let no one yield... F In the sky... C Lay your life... D It's gonna take... A So here we stand... C Still the dragons... D It's gonna take... The opening A is repeated, but then contrasted with B. After a return to A, there's no "expected" return of B, but the more "violent" dislocation of C, leading to a "refrain" tune D. E is an excellent contrast, a "clearing of the air", a release of tension in the harmonic language. The first of the two moment I single out is that E sounds as if it will lead to an "optimistic" conclusion, but the expected resolution is interrupted by the "dislocational" B. B's effect here to replace an "end" is therefore quite different from its meaning at its original statement. This is followed by a return to A, and, as if to underline that there is no resolution, the dissonance of the accompanying harmonies is intensified, and one can hear polyphonic interweaving of different "voices" in it too, which is the second particularly admirable moment in my view. Another Frontier (celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall?) uses a formal device with which Emerson would have been familiar from his arrangement of Sibelius' Karelia with the Nice. A comparatively still introduction suggests "ghosts" of a theme that will later be heard in its entirety. Another Frontier introduces two major themes in this way. The opening chords portend a later section of a slow succession of chords, which are rhythmically simple, but they are very "spicy" harmonically, and they underlay one of Emerson's famous angular melodies. After the opening chords, the main theme (in a more "cheerful" style) is prefigured. Thereafter we hear the real start of this theme, followed by a fugal section, a return to the main theme, the "angular melody and harmony" section, and a return to the main theme - essentially a rondo form with "B" as a semi-fugue. In the ELP Black Moon version, there was no fugue, and the "angular" section was omitted, making a nonsense of the original function of the opening chords, which were left in place! In all these pieces, the structure is particularly important to the meaning and enjoyment of the piece, and the decision to put certain moments in certain positions was particularly fortuitous. Some are also in the "audience arousal" aesthetic, some not, but for this "listening strategy" that is incidental. The harmonic style is at least as adventurous as that for which Emerson was admired in Tarkus. There is little comparable to it in adventurousness in either the first or third impressions of Karn Evil 9 (the most oft-repeated theme in the former movement sounds as if it might be derived more from Country and Western than anything else). The second impression is comparable in style, but I would suggest that that can be seen as a succession of musical ideas not put well together, as all the above pieces are. More importantly, the above pieces can be seen in a very different light from that of the usual fan orthodoxy, and in fact in a very positive light, if judged by criteria normally associated with the musical forms Emerson has consistently drawn upon in his career. I would suggest that a piece based upon the repetition of a "Country & Western" idea is more "formulaic" than the pieces I've described above, some of which are much more recent. In terms of the discussion on whether Emerson should "trash his Hammond" or not, I think that it is the contrast between what that represents and, at the other extreme, his "Chopinesque" piano playing that makes the phenomenon that he is so fascinatingly hard to categorise. I would be quite happy to have him continue to do this. What I would prefer to see is a greater contrast, so that the "classical" pianism of some of his studio work could survive unmodified in the live arena, and not be coopted into the Hammond-trashing, audience arousal aesthetic. I would actually like to hear him play Close to Home/Ballade or Take a Pebble as if the restrained, delicate and romantic nature of "the text" of the piece mattered. If he then played Hammond-trashing and related styles as well, what is valuable about his contribution to music would be more apparent - the joining together of violently contrasted musical aesthetics that others have always wanted to keep apart. This contrast is undermined by the fact that the live ELP phenomenon excludes some of the listening strategies which can be applied to the recordings. With regard to ELP's playing with Deep Purple, it was by no means obvious that Deep Purple wasn't "progressive" in the 1970's, as Macan has pointed out. I don't think there's any good reason to distance Emerson's music more from Deep Purple than from any other rock band. What distinguishes Emerson's music from them distinguishes him even more from, for example, Pink Floyd. It is his use of harmony which is particularly unusual in rock. I don't think there is any particularly good reason to accept the arbitrary categorisations upon pop music which record companies have worked to hard to ensure the listening public relies upon. I do recognise, however, that the listening public might be too divided into these categories for a concert to work where Emerson plays as I suggest, and whose audience contains Deep Purple fans! As a result of my arguments, my playlist would include a very different set of pieces. I would like to hear Emerson play any of the following: Ars Longa Vita Brevis My Back Pages Country Pie/Brandenburg Barbarian Three Fates Take a Pebble Toccata Piano Concerto Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman Inferno Honky Nighthawks Learning to Fly* The Miracle Barrel House Shakedown Step Aside Another Frontier Silent Night O little town Romeo and Juliet Ballade * Why is Hoedown, a cheerful tune, but little more, put in the lists of those who want a "progressive" playlist more readily than a song like this, based upon a Bartok string quartet? Yours, (the Heretic Priestess?!!) -- Peter Wilton The Gregorian Association Web Page: http://www.beaufort.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------ Digest subscrition, mailing address, and administrative stuff to: elp-digest-request@reluctant.com ELP-related info that you want to put in the digest to: elp-digest@reluctant.com Back issues are available from the ELP Digest web site: 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 8 Issue 9] *************************************