To begin, I am not the biggest ELP fan around. Granted I own all the albums on vinyl and thought that they were pretty cool when I was a younger man, but like all things you enjoyed when you were younger, you grow, develop, broaden your tastes. My main problem with ELP is that it demonstrates all that’s bad in progressive rock. The music is overblown, pompous and like a quickie at McDonald’s, ultimately unrewarding. But saying that, I still enjoy Greg Lake’s vocals and the songs that he brought to the group. It’s a shame that he was never allowed to shine in ELP – instead Keith Emerson decided that it was his ego trip.
So will this opinion flavour my review? No. And I’ll tell you why. The people who put this DVD together got the package right on the button. The first disc contains all those old live performances from Beat Club and snatches of live material taken from the group’s hey-day in the 1970s. It’s all good stuff and seeing as I wasn’t witness to ELP’s shows, it was a real insight to how the band operated on stage. Of course, the real gem on the first disc is the 60 seconds or so of black-and-white footage snatched at the 1969 Hyde Park performance of King Crimson. I already have this in another form, but it is nice to have a complete, DVD quality snapshot of that footage. It is slight and it is gone in a flash, but if you are a KC fan, you will want this collection just for that brief dalliance with 21st Century Schizoid Man.
The rest of the material covers 1970 at Beat Club through to a 1992 performance at the Royal Albert Hall, so you get a good snapshot of the band through the ages. There are even promos for “I Believe in Father Christmas” and a really naff 1970s TV performance of “Tiger in the Spotlight” featuring a real tiger tethered up, right next to Greg Lake. What would the animal rights crusaders think of that now? When Emerson comes clunking in with his god-forsaken Hammon organ, the poor tiger gets startled and you can see that he wants to try and take Emerson out…and I was cheering for the tiger. But alas, that doesn’t happen. J
The second disc is a game of two halves: the first is the full 44 minute performance from the California Jam of 1974. It’s good to see an entire performance rather than the patchwork of material that you get on disc one, but my minor criticism is that there is some crossover of material with edits of Still You Turn Me On and Karn Evil 9 appearing on both discs. This was wasteful – but that’s ELP, I guess. The performance at the California Jam is fascinating to watch and when you think of what the other prog bands were doing in 1974, going to an ELP show must have been something else. You even get to see Keith Emerson performing his hammy “spinning piano” trick at the end. Hilarious…I’ve never laughed so much in my life. Genesis had theatricals and flash powder, Yes had Roger Deans organic stag set and ELP had a rotating piano. Amazing.
The second part of the second disc is given over to the “Beyond the Beginning” documentary that lasts an hour. It’s interesting to hear the band talk about each other so candidly and the reasons why and how the band imploded. (It’s also interesting to hear about Love Beach and why it is such a dog’s breakfast). I really enjoyed the documentary, though I thought it could have been longer. It left me wanting more, so I guess that’s a good thing. There are some extras too including a nice short interview about the ELP artwork (did you know that three artists that worked on Greg Lake-related album artwork all died prematurely? It’s the curse of Greg Lake, I tells ya).
I think that this is a fantastic package of material and hope that band’s like Genesis, Yes and King Crimson take note. Bring out a DVD of all that old live material from the 1970s that appeared on TV to stop those bootleggers flogging it on eBay. And do a second DVD with an interview…it works so well and ELP have set a good standard with this package. Heck, it even got me playing Tarkus this morning while I type this review. And that’s got to be a good thing!
To get you in the mood and all juiced up for the release, here’s Greg Lake talking about the “In the Court of the Crimson King” album cover:
To pre-order this DVD from Amazon, click here.
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