brain salad surgery (1973) - emerson, lake, and palmer: manticore records, MC-66669

Prog rock fans have always been easy to mock because a very select but vocal minority of them take it all so very, very seriously.  For these arrogant few, prog bands don't play "music" - they create ethereal artistic moments.  They don't write "lyrics" - they plumb the depths of human existence and greater universal truths.  And these annoying prog fans fancy themselves as having the depth and intellect required to be able to comprehend the subtleties and sophisticated nuances within the compositions (never songs, of course!) that normal nose-picking slobs could never grasp, giving them the attitude that they are better than the rest of us.

In short, these smug dingbats view prog rock as an exclusive domain populated by a bunch of intellectual elitists gathering together in a ritualized group jerk session.

And that totally sucks, because those folks give prog bands and fans a serious image problem. Sort of how that really aggressive Star Wars dork fan will engage in lengthy, pointless arguments regarding the defensive prowess of Imperial Star Cruisers when matched against the maneuverability and speed of Rebel X-Wing fighters, and the divergence of the Sith from the Jedi.

It sucks even more when prog bands themselves contribute to the perception that prog is nothing more than a pompous collection of pseudo-intellectual claptrap filled with self-indulgent musical conceit and gaudy lyrical grandiloquence. Sort of like this paragraph.

Enter Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and their pridefully flamboyant album with perhaps the single best title in all of music history, Brain Salad Surgery (although, to be fair Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy certainly merits consideration).

Side 1: Jerusalem Toccata Still ... You Turn Me On Benny The Bouncer Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part I)
Side 2: Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part II) Karn Evil 9 (2nd Impression) Karn Evil 9 (3rd Impression)

I actually really like this album but I can still see it for what it is, and I simply can never listen to it without just thinking that it is a parody of itself. Everything from the cover (which is an amazing HR Giger piece that simply demands lengthy and intimate examination) to the songs are so incredibly pretentious and overdone that I honestly do wonder whether the boys intentionally decided to go over-the-top on this one.

I mean, this album has all the trappings of prog parody: orchestral score, pipe organs as the lead instrument, ridiculously dramatic lyrics, and the toffee-nosed singing of someone who considers their voice and interpretive skill as being somehow touching the mind of god.

All that out of the way, however, this album really is good. There is quite a lot going on musically, ranging from the weird futuristic interpretation of Toccata (giving it the feel of a soundtrack to a cheezy 70’s B sci-fi movie), to the ragtime piano of Benny the Bouncer, to the soul/funk guitar driving the otherwise saccharine ballad Still … You Turn Me On. And all of it does showcase the fact that everything else aside, Messrs Emerson, Lake, and Palmer are very accomplished musicians. And their willingness to premier the Moog Apollo (the first polyphonic synthesizer) shows that the boys embraced new technology.

The centerpiece of the album is Karn Evil 9 – a 30 minute song rendered in three “impressions” spanning the last 9 minutes of side one and all of side two. Karn Evil is both the best and worst of prog in one go: a song about a dystopian future featuring complex musical passages fused with ludicrously ostentatious lyrics.  Just consider this excerpt from Karn Evil 9 - 1st Impression, Part I (I mean even their song titles drip with pretense!):

Cold and misty morning / I heard a warning borne in the air
About an age of power / where no one had an hour to spare
Where the seeds have withered / silent children shivered, in the cold
Now their faces captured / in the lenses of the jackals for gold.

Or this bit from the beginning of Karn Evil 9 - 3rd Impression

Man alone, born of stone / will stamp the dust of time
His hands strike the flame of his soul / ties a rope to a tree and hangs the Universe
Until the winds of laughter blows cold.

I mean, come on! These make the lyrics for songs like Supper’s Ready or Stairway to Heaven seem subtle and understated. But they save the best for last. The album ends with this musical dialogue between the machine-voiced overlord and the piteous but defiant human:

(Man) I am all there is
(Overlord) Negative! Primitive! Limited! I let you live!
(Man) But I gave you life
(Overlord) What else could you do?
(Man) To do what was right
(Overlord) I'm perfect! Are you?

That reads like the journals of some angst-ridden freshman philosophy major whose girlfriend just broke up with him and who now finds himself questioning the mechanics of the universe.

But still and all, this is a cool album with cool music, cool cover art, and a cool title.

Next up: Heavy acid-blues sung by one of the most soulful voices ever