Dave's Raveiews 3: Genesis - ...and then there were three...

Raveiews from the Fringe

By HuggyDave

Hello again, and welcome back to the vaguely defined Fringe where we look up a the rest of civilisation living successful, financially secure and relatively enjoyable lives and mock. Now, while this may sound very much like sour grapes, indulge me as I discuss the concept of 'sell outs'

Ah yes, it's all starting to fall together now isn't it? In your mind? Only in the realm of music would we decry someone's success and feel betrayed by them making money on the art we love. Alright, there's more to it than that, I know. But let it be known before we go any further that I have no problem with any music that's successful. Even though this is Raveiews from the Fringe , if a band becomes popular, this does not within itself mean that they are sell outs who now and forever will never make a artistically credible album. The charts and the purchasing habits of the mainstream public are nearly impossible to comprehend (this is the same public that bought Michael Bolton after all) and thusly, for an album to be a hit requires a lot more luck than actual focus, much like the quality of any given thing I write.

Most sellouts that I tend to hear about in Rocsoc are usually those where the quality is more questionable than the norm. You know, things like Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction (which I really like), Aerosmith's later albums and especially Metallica's Black Album (and to a lesser extent, Load and Reload too). The thing is, even at their most insultingly populist, most bands that at least began as a serious music outfit keep some of their credibility even if it becomes harder and harder to find it. I'll even defend 90125 and Big Generator by Yes: two of the most populist, abusively catchy and utterly joyous albums to listen to in the 80s.

However, even I have limits, so with a heavier heart than I probably should have, I bring to you good people:

...and then there were three... - Genesis (1978)

The Death of Prog Part 3: The Genesis of a Sellout

Here we are, on the final part of this triple foray into the fetid follies of 1978's rapidly dying prog rock scene, and we're at the final piece in the puzzle, the third big pillar of Progressive Rock that bitterly crumbled and collapsed in on itself. This third catastrophe however is somewhat more tragic and close to my heart than the other two. Because, unlike ELP, which was hilarious, and Yes, which was a mere blip compared to it's follow-up, And then there were three changed everything. None of this will make the slightest bit of sense if you don't know who Genesis is so here goes nothing:

Genesis, much like ELP isn't exactly a band that it's particularly cool to like these days, and are usually one of the groups singled out for particular derision. Unlike ELP however, Genesis were never ever cool to like, commonly being called “Genesnooze” in the press. They didn't seem to be able to anything right in their eyes; their overblown musical epics to their nonsensical lyrics to their utterly ridiculous live shows where they just stand there while weird stuff sort of happens around them didn't really curry them any favour, particularly with the rock and metal set. Yet, I find them utterly brilliant.

Yes, that is the sound of the writer's credibility falling faster than the sands of an hourglass...

Once they found their style with Trespass and especially Nursury Cryme, they created album after album full of incredibly innovative, novel, thoroughly enjoyable music that I adore so much. Hell, I have a vinyl copy of Foxtrot on my shelf and I don't even have a turntable! I genuinely adore a lot of their body of work, and while the credit does have to go to the band as a whole, there are two band members in particular who were the pioneers of innovation in this regard. The first was frontman Peter Gabriel, who you may even have heard of as the guy who did “Sledgehammer” and essentially was the main creative thrust of the band. The other was Steve Hackett, lead guitarist and utter genius. This guy was doing tapping and sweep picking riffs a decade before Eddie and Yngwie, and I seriously deeply enjoy his unique guitaring fingerprint, which is like almost nothing I'd heard in rock, but yet didn't have to resort to novelty to be compelling.

Now take a good long look at those names, because neither of them are on this album!

This was when they times, they were a changing for Genesis. Gabriel left after a lot of personal disagreements with the direction of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: a masterpiece of an album written and credited primarily by Gabriel himself. He moved on to a highly successful solo career where he essentially went to every genre he could possibly think of, taking a lot of influence from African music in particular. And then, just after the release of the previous album Wind and Wuthering, Hackett too left for the greener pastures of solo work, and while his star would never shine as brightly as the rest, he was happier and enjoyed being able to work for himself.

Both of these left Genesis with the ever popular dilemma of who would replace them. Who could provide the soulful, imaginative singing and writing of Peter Gabriel? Along with that, who could possibly replace the sheer innovation and excellence of Steve Hackett?

The answer: Noone, and they knew it. Instead of a new vocalist, drummer Phil Collins picked up the reigns with his distinctive though rather middle of the road style. And instead of a new guitarist, bassist Mike Rutherford (who was always the fifth most talented member) switched to doing all guitars. Rounding off the three was the ever talented keyboardist Tony Banks who you continue to get the impression is really carried off by the whims of the more charismatic parts of the band.

In other words, this is still Genesis, just minus the visionary talent that made the band great.

That's all well and terrible, but then again, maybe this is a chance to thrust into the spotlight three incredible and charismatic talents that just got lost in the shuffle compared to Gabrial or Hackett. Sadly, due to the fact they don't have particularly evoking personalities, this wasn't the case, even though due to the way the band was set up, all three had a striking and unique job to do, much like that other trio I reviewed an album of, can't put my finger on why. In any case, personal problems and the burn out from constantly being on tour probably didn't help, as well as being in the looming shadow of punk rock.

Looking at the cover of the album doesn't exactly fill me with confidence either. While it's typically sound advice to not judge a book by it's cover, the best prog covers are those that epitomise the themes and it seems to correlate that a terrible cover means a terrible album, with only a few exceptions you have to take case by case. Let me assure you that what you're about to witness is not one of them:

...braincells left after trying to make sense of this mess.

Oh yes, it's one of those covers again, that depict just how half-baked, nonsensical and utterly ridiculous (not in that good Prog way) yet inexplicably earnest the music you're about to listen to is. While Love Beach is hilariously bad and way off-genre, and Tormato was a product of general dissatisfaction, this epitomises the transition from a prog band that differed from the rest by their ability to make genuinely good songs into a mess of insultingly obtuse yet contradictory radio friendly cheese.

But anyway! Enough of this stuff that doesn't matter, it's about the music in the end, and it is in this department more than any others that Genesis truly disappoint with this opus. The album lacks a truly epic track; one will not find a Supper's Ready nor a Cinema Show or even a Stagnation here. Only three of the tracks actually reach the five minute mark, and it's clear right from the very beginning that while all the familiar sounds are there (minus Hackett's guitar of course), it's really masking the fact that this is a very different album, with a very different attitude to music writing than Genesis past.

The album starts off with Down and Out, a rather claustrophobic opener, led by Banks' spine-chilling Mellotron and surrounded at all sides of the mix by Collins' ever brilliant drums and Rutherford's um, guitar style. Alright, Rutherford is not a brilliant guitarist on this track and is really essentially there to fill up the mix, but the track overall is very effectively done. It's powerful, emotive and simple, but not in a way that panders nor patronises. We've got later in the album for those treats. Lyrically, the track is a callous track about a business partner betraying another to his face, telling him to keep up otherwise he'll be overtaken. Now, putting on my beaten metaphor cap, this could be read more literally as a harbinger of the callous greedy 80s (the decade which Genesis had their most fruitful years and became megastars by the by) and defending his actions by being blunt and straight-laced with them. However, my personal reading of this is relating to the reception of Genesis to progressive rock in general, essentially telling people it's over and that at least they're suddenly shifting genres rather than hiding the fact they're becoming more populist. Either reading is suspiciously effective, and I actually really enjoy the song, despite it's simplicity. It's clear they did too, since it became the template for most of Phil Collins' angry darker songs for both Genesis and his solo albums. In fact, listening to it a few times, you can hear a lot of this in songs like Mama and Tonight Tonight Tonight. If you wanted a single song that epitomised the change in attitude, Down and Out is pretty much it.

And after the chilling intensity of Down and Out what do we get? A bloody piano ballad, that's what! What we have here is Undertow, a classic Carpé Diem song about the older narrator advising someone younger than him to suck up everything life throws at you and make the most of life, otherwise “the days they turn into years/ and still no tomorrow appears.” It's cheesy, though not irredeemably so. It's imagery is sound, and the central focus is at least not a sappy love song, so we can take comfort in the fact that Genesis wouldn't ever stoop that low right?

After this comes Heaven For Eve- I mean the Ballad of Big. It begins with a weird synth-backed piano opening that launches straight into a more traditional classic rock tale. Much like Tormato's

Release Release, it tries to ham-fistedly add more rock elements to the more symphonic sound, which was doomed to failure the second Tony Banks chimed in during the chorus, with his high pitched synth really damaging the mood that was almost attained by Rutherford's simple but catchy hook. Collins' voice really doesn't help either; his tenor-come-falsetto really makes the story of Big the sheriff's tale of manly hardness suspiciously unconvincing. I usually like Phil's voice (unlike most of the English speaking world apparently) but while Gabrial got away with his range with his astounding charisma and the 'mad storyteller' atmosphere he generated with his voice, Phil sings it with such earnest that it turns it into the song equivalent of a story from Hello magazine. That said, ignore the lyrics and you have a rather enjoyable song made up of two infectiously catchy hooks. In hindsight, I guess the radio friendly direction is no surprise – they're damn good at it!

And after the infuriatingly catchy hook dies down we fade into yet another synth/accoustic ballad. A lot of people actually didn't see Duke coming somehow! This actually has a very power ballad style, kind of like Every Rose Has a Thorn. Except about the snow. It's suspiciously romanticist in imagery (in the poetic movement sense, not the loving sense) like a lot of the slower ballady songs Genesis used to do and is all about nostalgia and the loss of youthful innocence. The metaphor is beaten to death, and is not helped by Collins' hilariously melodramatic delivery to the big money line:

Hey there's a Snowman
Hey, Hey what a Snowman
Pray for the Snowman
Ooh, Ooh what a Snowman

It is times like this that I start to wonder whether prog is really all that intellectual after all...

Enough about that, it's time for the epic song of the album, Burning Rope. Well, it's the longest song by a full minute so it must be right? Except not entirely. It's essentially another ballad but with a much better melody and slightly better lyrics. Actually, having said that :

And the man in the moon
Who seduced you
Then finally loosed you

I'm really not sure what to tell you about that.

The message seems to be once again about the Carpe Diem and forging a path of your own through your life regardless of life's problems. I'm somehow doubting this needed seven minutes to tell. Aside from the great instrumentation it's really seven minutes of filler.

The song leads quite nicely into the next track, Deep into the Motherlode, which is a first for this bloody album. This seems to be an actual allegorical tale (unlike the last one, which is just jumbled imagery with a moral), using the gold rush as a metaphor for being forced out into the big wild world and the loneliness and pain that come with always believing the grass is greener on the other side. It's not a bad track, with a great chorus hook and an infectious if probably overused mellotron. If we keep up the quality and more progressive arc of this album, maybe this will all be salvageable...

Any hopes of continued progression in the music are completely and utterly shattered by the arrival of probably the fourth or fifth ballad in seven tracks. This one is again about betrayal, believing in a path of life that is straight and true, yet pulled and twisted in front of your eyes. If anything, this is a fascinating contrast, and shows the dividing line between the progressive intentions of Deep in the Motherlode and the pandering, meaningless non-threatening pop style of Many Too Many. It feels like the lead single off a really bad middle of the road soft rock group.

Once again like a particularly bad car crash the album whiplashes into an imaginative song about old comic character Little Nemo. Scenes from a Night's Dream is a thoroughly enjoyable song about imagination and dreams which I suppose at a push could be considered romanticist again, simply for the regression to childhood and use of nostalgia. Of all the songs on the album, this probably has the widest appeal for me. While Down and Out's great dark tone and ambiguous lyrics make it great fun for my literary-minded person, Scenes from a Night's Dream is just a really happy imaginative bouncing song, which sets it apart from all the plodding, depressing mean spirited ballads. It's far from Genesis' best song, and the mix of comedy, nostalgia and fantasy has been done much better in songs like Supper's Ready but we take whatever enjoyment we can from this album when we find it.

...And just as the pace and tempo of the album begins to move faster than glacial, Rutherford once again pulls the drag chute for a quite moody end of a night drunken ballad. It has some weird, bitter and downtrodden lyrics about an insular man who seeks escape and a sympathetic ear through Joe. It's all mopey and depressing than before you know it you get bashed in the face with some prog! And before you can even react it's gone, which I guess almost works as a metaphor for the excitement he wishes to seek, but the chorus is too short and he soon slips into the melancholy of the verses. This song would have benefited a lot more with more time I feel, maybe giving the extraneous two minutes of Burning Rope to this to really help the mood of utter drunken misery.

Continuing the trend of depressing drunken songs comes The Lady Lies, a fantasy inspired song which sort of gives away its metaphor in the song title. The melody is really good, almost a merger between a bassy film noir song and the bouncy tempo and instrumentation of a fantasy bardic tale. It's essentially a warning song about dangerous women similar to Evil Woman by ELO, with a veil of metaphor wrapped around it. That said, it is a deceptively well concocted metaphor, being clear with its intentions but not at the expense of the tale. I think if Genesis used the Verse-Chorus-Verse structure for more songs like this I doubt I'd have as many problems as I do with the album.

Of course, there has to be a high place to start before one can begin their dramatically ironic fall from grace, which is not going to spoil the quality of the final track on the album. Before I talk about it however, I probably should talk about the first Genesis single to chart: an interesting and inventive little ditty called I Know What I Like (In your Wardrobe), about a guy who mows lawns and really wants nothing else in life; he's happy as he is and doesn't see any reason to risk his happiness. It's a fantastic song of one of my favourite albums, Selling England by the Pound, and manages to do the sensational thing a lot of prog bands could not by being both complete nonsense yet at the same time incredibly relatable. It was a sleeper hit for the group, hitting number 24 in the charts in 1974, back when the pop charts actually meant something.

Four years later, the final track on ...and then there were three... hit the top ten. But instead of hitting the top ten for being innovative, unique and bizarre, it reaches those lofty heights by betraying every thing about Genesis whatsoever. It skips all pretense, all allegory or metaphor and is a song about love so smugly content it's impossible to believe it's on the same album as The Lady Lies or Scenes from a Night's Dream. It's a clearly engineered radio hit, far more than Many too Many; at least with Many too Many you had the feeling that they were actually talking about themselves! I must confess to liking it, but I like it for the same reasons I like eating clotted cream scones in front of a roaring fire; it's comfortable and relaxing and nice. I don't listen to the bands I like because they sound 'nice'! I listen to music to stimulate the mind and the soul, not to wrap it up in a big snuggly blanket! That's not to say I don't believe there is a place for love songs, but that they need to provide the listener with more than just mild smug contentment.

The worst part of it all was of course that this was their biggest hit to date, and the band would get more and more populist to befit their ever-growing popularity. It's not enough that the song is bland, insipid and monstrously complacent; people paid more money for it!

That right there, that generic mess is why prog rock died. It wasn't just the terrible albums being released by big stars, nor the looming shadow of punk that was explicitly targeting prog rock as a target for derision. It was the fact that the big money was in pop rock and eventually new wave, and no story about submission to corporate greed has a happy ending.

Dave's Raveiews 2: Yes -Tormato

Raveiews from the Fringe

By HuggyDave

Welcome back to the Fringe, a place of wonder, nonconformity and a veritable sea of forgotten music. Last time, I talked about possibly the worst, most damaging album in music; an album that alone did some significant damage to an entire genre, and with the help of two other albums by the two other biggest names in Prog at the time managed to kill the genre as anything that could be taken seriously. In fact, 1978 killed Progressive Rock so badly that it was an utter laughing stock for the next two decades. However, the causes weren't just an abject lack of quality, although in these albums not one of the bands really brought their A-Game to the production studio, but personal problems, a lack of unity and the winds of change blowing straight into their faces and their desperate attempts to change course ending in either utter mockery or backlash from fans and critics alike.

I invite you to guess how this ended up, as I bring to you:

Tormato - Yes (1978)

The Death of Prog Part 2: The Fragile Union

I have a somewhat bizarre relationship with Yes, in that I adore and cherish all that I've heard of them (which admittedly isn't as much as I'd like). Indeed, Close To the Edge may possibly be in my Top Ten favourite albums I've ever listened to. However, like all the most wonderful pursuits it is incredibly easy to get burned out on their music and just not be willing to commit the vast swathes of time you need to to fully enjoy something like “Roundabout”. I can assume the purchasing public was the same, and sales of Yes albums were somewhat inconsistent; some shot up to number one while at the same time others made heavy work of reaching the top ten then sunk without a trace. That said, a few blips aside, they are one of the few long running bands where every album has at least a tiny bit of that Yes magic, and for the most part, whether you'll like a particular album is based entirely on whether you like the other twenty or so.

This is unfortunately one of the exceptions, for reasons we'll very savagely go into.

Yes are one of the big monoliths that design and epitomise Prog rock, and probably one of the biggest love it or hate it bands in rock: a somewhat broken genre as it is. From their first big hit The Yes Album in 1971 up until the 1990s was a consistent feature in the Top Ten album charts, and their line up for a long time consisted of some of the best musicians alive at the time, leading to some incredibly memorable moments on each album. That said, one could rarely say the different instruments ever gelled particularly well, as if every single instrument was competing incredibly strongly for the listener's attention, so you'd get the most incredibly quick solos just striking at random moments, then a keyboard solo for fifteen minutes before you can breathe, before being accosted by the distinctive alto of longtime frontman Jon Anderson. These albums were not albums you could just put on and allow the music to breathe a relaxed controlled life into the room, they demanded good ears, better headphones and your fullest attention. This kind of marketplace style of musicianship, while you could not fault it technically, did sort of hamper the band's ability to write actual songs, as opposed to fantastic little bits of music lined up almost at random, though nowhere near to the same degree of unlistenability as our good friend ELP. It wasn't so much that they couldn't write as much as they ended up writing too much and don't quite agree on how to piece it together.

All this is redundant though, since at their peak not only were they absolutely awesome, but got rewarded with success. From 1973 to '77, their albums hit the top five. Hell, Tales of Topographic Oceans, the album cited along with anything ELP as every single thing wrong with prog rock, hit number one! And this feat was followed up by possibly the most underrated album in their discography, Relayer! And after that, another chart topping album in Going For the One!

What's my point you ask, other than to out myself as a drooling prog rock fanboy? My point is that Yes essentially is an anomaly: a group so fundamentally wrong in all aspects that is all becomes so so right. That they are utterly mad, yet their madness has such a profound method it leaps forth into genius. And that, much like ELP, Yes' problems, while at first glance appearing to be a sudden plummet of quality being the product of small issues taking their toll.

You see my dear reader (if there's even one left after this monolith of introduction), the issue with Tormato begins with the production of Tales of Topographic Oceans, and really how it essentially became a vanity project for alto vocalist Jon Anderson and gnarled guitarist Steve Howe. This alienated the rest of the band to a degree, in particular Rick Wakeman, who spent any time Topographic songs were played on tour eating curries. Wakeman then left, shockingly, to focus on his solo work, which is more than a little bombastic...

After an album with Swedish keyboardist Patrick Moraz, Wakeman returned for the chart topper Going for the one, which blended very listenable shorter songs with the classic yes style. The problem of course is that Going for the One was a sleeper hit really; After 3 years it was difficult to see how Yes would have a hit at all, let alone a number one. But the gambit worked, which led to more problems than it solved. Topographic was a number one despite being essentially a Yes symphony, while Going for the One was the polar opposite, taking Yes in bold new directions yet keeping the same musicianship, innovation and musical philosophy.

You can see how Tormato was a difficult birth to begin with even before a single note was written down. Originally known as Yes Tor, the album essentially suffered from a lot of production issues that hampered the material, as well as a cover so bad, Rick Wakeman threw a tomato at it, and essentially changed both the name, and the album cover:

Putting the Prog into Pillory

Alright, enough waffling about things that don't really matter, let's get to the music, because if the music's good enough, it could transcend even the band's loathing of the material.

The album begins with the rather nice, catching “Future Times/Rejoice”, which I must say I enjoy quite a lot. Wakeman's fantastic synth really helps elevate Anderson's sometimes punishingly high vocals, and while it suffers from the classic problem of all the musicians jostling for position to try and get your attention, there is some fantastic work all around but one of the main issues of the album quickly stands out and that is the production. I tend to like to dance around the issues with an album, but this time I have to be blunt: the production is abysmal! This is a serious problem, as one of the key things that made a Yes album great was how slickly it was produced to essentially reclaim order from the chaotic squabble, yet here (even on the Remaster, which helps some of the other issues I've heard about the album) they trip over each other far more than they should have, turning some great synthesiser and guitar supposed “harmonies” into a jumbled disjointed mess, with only Anderson's nonsense lyrics reminding you that yes (or is that Yes. Oh aren't I such a wit!), this is a song.

The next track is so obviously single bait that it wasn't even funny. Don't Kill the Whale is a short song based on an exceedingly catchy hook, but yet at the same time contains an extended solo section, as if the band weren't quite sure where they wanted to go with it. Again, this is an utter shame, as it would have made for a nice late 70s rock song without the confusion. Oh, and maybe if you could hear Chris Squire's usually dominant basslines.

And then the filler begins, as it does on so many Yes albums. Madrigal isn't a bad song per se, but really has no time to provide you with anything but some nice synth strings, accoustic guitar work and the feeling that they wasted two minutes with this. And waste is right, since it goes into a very Genesis-sounding rock song, Release Release, which is actually a nice change for Yes. Or maybe I just like the fact that one of the riffs sounds like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. However, again, this song is ruined by the two eternal bogeyman of the album: Production and direction. Release Release essentially is the answer to the question of why classic Yes should not try their hand at classic rock. Added to that is a downright pandering drum solo with piped in cheers and a more bluesy solo than we typically see from Steve Howe ruined by the same football cheers! Added to that is the really odd lyrics for yes that would be more expected on an AC/DC track:

Have you heard before, hit it out, don't look back
Rock is the medium of our generation
Stand for every right, kick it out, hear you shout
For the right of all of creation

It's such a strange mix of the typical naturalistic Yes imagery and typical “proud to be a rocker” rhetoric that I should in theory love, but instead Anderson's classic Yes delivery really harms the track. The fact the track following it is a very Fragile-esque ditty about UFO spotters doesn't help things either.

Typically a Yes album really works because of it's flow; even if the songs don't explicitly continue on from each other, they have this great flow that makes the album feel complete as opposed to an album full of disjointed singles. Take a wild guess what this is. The thing is, with a little more continuity I'd actually probably love it but the fact they just whip the mood around like a cat 'o' nine tails from naturalistic acoustic nothing-songs to hard rock to the quirky stuff we actually know Yes for is really disconcerting, and I could imagine that probably hurt the opinion of the album with more than a few fans.

Circus of Heaven doesn't assault you full force unlike the last couple of tracks and is a surprisingly stripped down track for Yes, reducing the melody to Anderson and the synth as opposed to the wall of musicality you typically have to scale in this album. It's a rather pleasant track, though rather unmemorable and really doesn't go anywhere: a typical downside to Yes' shorter tracks. Onward has the same problem, compounded by the utter lack of any catchy riff and its very plodding pace typical more of a pop ballad than a Yes album. It kind of washed over me...

...before I was kicked in the face by the start of the closer, On the Silent Wings of Freedom. There seems to be some severe audio balencing issues with Howe's guitar, in that in no other album is it this jangly and painful to listen to. The opening instrumental is pretty bad all around. Once the vocals kick in, the song picks up just a bit, or at least is forced into some kind of order that makes it actually listenable. This final song is to its credit like the middle of a much longer, much better Yes song, and like most massive Yes songs it has a ton of memorable musical moments, including a fantastic Rick Wakeman keyboard solo. However, it really just stops, as if it was literally part of a bigger song that was cut for some unexplored reason. And that essentially sums up the album in a nutshell.

This album is a weird one to comment on really since while it has a lot of absolutely astounding aspects to it, it has even more problems, some of which so innate that even a rather good remaster of it can't truly save it's legacy. It was such a misstep that it set into motion a chain of events that led to the break up of Yes after the infamous Drama and its return as a pop rock band much like a lot of prog bands that actually survived into the 80s. Drama is a much worse album than Tormato, though since that came way after the writing was on the wall for prog, it'll have to be a tale for another time. Next comes the final, most depressing nail in the coffin of prog, and then there were three... reviews... under my belt.

Dave's Raveiews 1: ELP - Love Beach

Raveiews from the Fringe

By HuggyDave

Hey there everyone, I've seen a lot of fantastic reviews on the site, and thought, as a professional cynic, to throw my cloven hoof of a writing hand into the arena. With pretty much the entirety of the reviews and columns being about rather heavy, rather recent and rather popular genres of rock and metal, I decided to dance around the fringe and talk about music from the wide and far reaching world of rock: Music you may not have heard about; music you may not have given the time of day too and of course music you didn't listen to for more than a few moments for fear it might cause your ear canals to implode like a pair of miniature pipe bombs.

Unfortunately for both you and I, the latter is firmly what we have today, as I bring you:

Love Beach – ELP (1979)

The Death of Prog Part 1: Oh yes, it's that personal!

Now, anyone who's known me for more than a few minutes will realise that I love progressive rock music. There is something utterly magical and compelling about music that takes apart all the conventions we know and hate about music and bring a vast array of influences back into relevance. However, it's easy to see the hate, and the genre is far from easy to get into.

Progressive rock is a musical genre that through the late 60s up until the mid 80s was home to one of the most diverse, intriguing and self-indulgent groups in the history of music. These were guys with a love for music who brought classical, baroque and jazz to the masses through the medium of rock! Nowadays it still exists, but in the late 70s something happened, a paradigm shifted and progressive rock no longer held the great high spot it once had in the public collective conscience. Now, a lot of people would say that it was punk rock that swept aside with a single spike wearing arm the pomp and bombast that came with prog. Others claim the genre stagnated and lost the novelty it brought in the 70s. I think it was something more sudden. In 1979 three albums from prog rock titans were released. All of which were so embarrassment and contemptible that they killed all mainstream credibility left for the genre and forced its fans underground, communing in secret about Asia and the future of music as it stumbled into the mechanical 80s. For two of the bands we will discuss next, this was just endemic of the personal problems suffered by a band after a decade in the limelight; their difficulties metamorphosing into vinyl. And then we have to get onto ELP. Oh this is going to be fun.

ELP is essentially the sour memory a lot of people instantly think of when you tell them about prog rock. Essentially the ludicrousness, bombasity, pretension and utter unlistenability that a lot of people associate with the genre is usually accompanied by them citing an ELP record. They're usually akin to Disco as something that people point to, snort at and mockingly ask “How the hell could anyone buy that!?”

Well here's your answer Mr Snorty!

ELP was essentially the supergroup of the 1970s, formed by the three biggest and baddest names of early prog and at one point was going to be fronted by none other than Jimmy Hendrix! You had Keith Emerson, the manic keyboardist behind The Nice (known for doing that instrumental cover of America from West Side Story); Greg Lake, the soulful voice behind the first two King Crimson albums (also known as the two best ones); and Carl Palmer, an insanely fast drummer who worked with both psychedelic forerunners Atomic Rooster and the utterly insane Crazy World of Arthur Brown. It sounded like a killer prospect, and initially it was, their first few albums being met with powerfully mixed reviews. The early albums were usually diverse enough to have something everyone would like, in particular the first album, which I consider a classic of prog. However, things turned sour about the mid point of the 70s, which was probably demonstrated the best with Works Volume 1, an album which gave an entire lp side to each member and the final side to their combined stuff. The issue was of course, that Lake and Emerson were of very different schools of music and never ever agreed on ELP's direction, which regretfully led to a lot of Lake's talents being vastly underused. After Works Volume 2, which was made up entirely of unused takes from the first Works album, they had one left to produce, with the slight problem that they hated each other. What kind of music would come from such stress?

Listening to the results, I advise you to never ever ever fall out with your band if you want to make a good record guys!

Anyways, everything about Love Beach screams at you to flee as far as possible to an inland country where true love is forbidden to avoid this waste. Right from the name. Love Beach. Say that to yourself at home, and ask seriously to yourself if it gives the image of pretension, intelligence and musicianship. If you answered yes, then gaze into the abyss of wrongness that the album cover posits:

Gee, sure is Bee Gees around here.

In any case, lots of great albums have terrible covers I hear you cry, and I can't entirely argue with you. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of Love Beach is in the ear pain you suffer afterwards. It is really difficult to start with the general issues with the album. Like most ELP albums, the production is utterly messed up, and the overreaching emphasis of Emerson's Moog synth preset is as immensely distracting as it is immensely painful. I know I'll get a lot of hate for this but Emerson wastes his talent, and has wasted his talent ever since he set his synths to the most ear damaging of pitches and then stab knives into then to record the digital cries of pain. Having said that, in this album he doesn't rely on his usual tricks of breaking his expensive fragile equipment and instead just uses a piano and a presumably digital synth on its most screechy preset. On the complete other end, Greg Lake actually sings through the entire album which is as brilliant as it is utterly sad that it took them until ELP's last and worst album for them to utilise Lake more. It is also deeply sad that they wasted his talents on such utterly painful lyrics as the vapid All I want is You and the deeply disturbing Taste of My Love. Palmer is as good as ever but since he was always the lukewarm water between Emerson's fire and Lake's ice, this is hardly surprising.

The influences they seemed to have adopted here come primarily from Disco, and much like the worst of disco that people remember, the entirety of the songs on the first side have no weight, dodgy rhythm, and are utterly vacuous in tone; proof positive that utterly wretched love songs are not just a product of the noughties. The synth strings often used by Emerson to utterly kill all your old favourites strike again here, making even the slightly less shite 20 minute Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman sound like it belongs in an fantasy video game from the early 1990s.

Thematically, the album is about love. Not about broken hearts or the balance between the beauty of love and the hideousness of hate. Just about love. On a beach. The songs don't connect into one concept, although you could argue that the first side could also easily be called Memoirs from the Copacabana. All I Want is You is the vapid desperate “we want a single from this dreck” song, which is simply a collection of nice loving sentiments from a man flying on “flight 112” to tell his love that all he wants is her. I don't want to call it simplistic, but the bridge appears to be taken from Spot the Dog goes on Holiday or something:

I'm on flight 112

The Airport's straight ahead

Runway lights in blue and red

I'm nearly home, nearly home

From a prog band, and the band that wrote such nonsensical genius as Tarkus, this could be considered quite the step down. This is followed by the somewhat less sentimental “Love Beach” which I suppose if All I want is You is the awkward courting song, this is the drunken lusting foreplay tune, with the refrain of “Gonna make love to you on Love Beach” sounding far seedier than perhaps it was intended, especially since it looks like it was saving all its disgusting sex lyrics for “Taste of my Love”, a song that appears to crib lines from Aerosmith but Greg Lake's melodic delivery makes it actually sound too sincere which as a consequence makes it sound more creepy than funny. ELP have taken themselves incredibly seriously, it's part of the reason how they got away with all the stupid rock star things they did. The issue though is that they don't and never have played straight rock and roll, which is what the lyrics borrow heavily from.

The Gambler continues their line of cringe worthy playboy songs, but despite the utterly ludicrous Sonic and Knuckles synth bass is probably one of the better songs on the album, if only because they at least hide the innuendo a bit better than Love Beach did, and the ludicrously plastic nature of the music actually helps the metaphor of a sleazy playboy gambler who's more careful about the mood of his women than of anything else because it's the one thing you can't gamble on! See, if this was any other band, it might of worked. A lot of these songs (alright, not All I want is You. Fuck that song) may have worked if it wasn't the high and mighty prog supergroup Emerson Lake and Palmer doing it. It seems that to ELP experimentation meant a step backwards.

For You is the last track on side A, and the last of the Club Tropicana beach disco tracks, the natural climax to the earlier seedier songs, the awkward morning after a night of hedonism and sex with strangers. Again, like the gambler this is a song that would work were it not actually Greg Lake singing it and without the Keith Emerson wailing car alarm in the background distracting. It's a far more regretful love that forms the central pillar of this song, as the narrator attempts to rationalise his nights of passion on Love Beach as true love that he wished could be realised if it weren't for her stoic rejection, and begging her to help him find meaning and happiness in a world of madness and sadness, ending with the bitter refrain “next time you fall in love, don't do it for you.”

Side B is clearly the bit that Keith Emerson, who produced the album (big shocker given the blaring keyboards) cared about, as it contains only the instrumental Canario and the 20 minute long Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman. Both are far more standard Elp fare, though I leave it as a thought experiment for you whether that's good or bad. Needless to say they were the saving grace of the song. But after 25 minutes of disco-prog even the relative lyrical excellence of Memoirs feels empty and unrewarding, as if the entire first side was a test and even if you survive it the reward is nowhere near satisfying enough. Compared to Karn Evil 9 and Tarkus it's more sane, character driven and sombre, which works really against it considering the people behind it, and even the heartfelt vocals and beautiful piano solo in the middle struggle to save it.

This is an album that I really feel quite angry about having listened through it again. It's not just that it's a bad album; it's not bad in that wonderfully perverse way things like Nitro or Europe excluding The Final Countdown. It's really profoundly mean spirited in the kind of way that is anathema to excellent music, mean spirited at itself as opposed to at the world the music attempts to portray and enrapture. It's a group of musicans that hate each other and could do so much better but deliberately didn't to spite themselves. Peter Sinfield co-wrote all the lyrics! Peter Sinfield! Possibly the greatest lyricist of this and the previous generation wrote All I want is You! It's deeply sad that his next gig writing notorious pop cheeseball Land of Make Believe by Eurovision runner up Bucks Fizz was a step up! ELP would never get their groove back and would end up making even worse albums first with Black Sabbath drummer Cozy Powell, then Carl Palmer was part of the first incarnation of that other failed supergroup Asia! Then they returned to make two even worse albums than Love Beach! It's amazing how far they fell and I may have to cover that at some point. However, Love Beach was their most damaging contribution to music, and was the collapse of the first pillar of prog, and then there were two...

Welcome to the Clinkining

Hey there, welcome to the Clinkining, the blog space/review thingy where I'm gonna put all my old reviews and views on stuff. Probably going to update it every week, sometimes more often sometimes less.