Emerson, Lake & Palmer Trilogy Music
by Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Keith Emerson was the best rock keyboard player. His style was like a mixture of Bach + Mussorgsky + Janacek + Oscar Peterson (in Peterson's earlier, boogie days). This band scooped all the English music performance polls in the early 1970s. This was their 4th album (1972).

The last track ("Abaddon's Bolero") I'm not so keen on, and "Living Sin" is kinda borderline for me, but once you get to "The Sherrif" (NOT "I Shot The Sherrif" - ELP's came first), you're into A-Grade rock. The whole first side of the orginal vinyl (tracks 1-4) are all equally my favourite, with the title track (No.7) coming a close second.

This is the band that made famous Fanfare For The Common Man, and they do another of Aaron Copland's (my favourite US Classical composer) on this album: "Hoedown".

Yeah, something different. Keith Emerson was the guy that Bob Moog (builder of original synthesizer - not counting pre-1960s experiments) gave his prototypes to for appraisal.

Also love ELP's earlier albums (eponymous debut album - 1970;
"Tarkus" - 1971; and their live version of Mussorgsky's
"Pictures At An Exhibition".) After "Trilogy" they went a bit silly / passe with "Brain Salad Surgery", and like most bands, never managed to recapture their early amazing creativity.

But ELP's excellent first 4 albums merged totally new harmonies with a great heavy (but up-tempo) sound. The bass player & vocalist (Greg Lake) doubles well on electric guitar, and plays (& composes) some truly beautiful acoustic guitar songs. The drummer (Carl Palmer) is fast but precise - plenty of oomph, but never messy. Maybe only Billy Cobham (from Mahavishnu Orch.) improved on him.