To live reflected in a spoon makes it too hard to stay in tune

Continuing my trip back through the 1977 album charts.

07/08/77 : Works - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Our first visit with the prog legends - I've no idea what I'm expecting to get here, but I suspect I'm not particularly going to like it.

Well, I don't hate it but I'm not entirely sure how many people would say they like all of it - there's just so much variety on there.  It starts with an 18 minute classical piano concerto, which obviously features a high level of skill, but also a high level of bemusement on my part.  We then move on to some fairly standard songs (not even that proggy), most of which have absolutely dreadful lyrics.  And then we head into progland - this was what I was expecting...

...but what I wasn't expecting is to like this stuff WAY more than anything we'd seen beforehand - some of it is a bit far out, but it's at least an interesting kinda far out and I actually almost liked "Two Part Invention in D Minor" and "Tank".  And then we go back to classical with Aaron Copland's "Fanfare For The Common Man" (with a prog interlude) and some other piece of classical/prog combo.  All in all, it's a very odd combination and my suspicion is that they all got to choose what they wanted to do - and it wouldn't surprise me if they all chose something they knew the others would hate.

We're at #15 in the charts this week on their tenth week of a seventeen week run, which was its second run after an initial eight week run, with it having peaked at #9 in its second week.  The top five this week were Yes, the Johnny Mathis best-of, A Star Is Born, the Connie Francis best-of and Fleetwood Mac and the highest new entry was The Bay City Rollers (#18 - a lucky escape!).

Wikipedia has a lot more than I was expecting on the album (256 milliPeppers) and it tells me that they did indeed get a side each, although apparently they were getting on at the time, so they didn't do it just to annoy the others.  The Emerson side features Keith on the old Joanna with the London Philharmonic, the Lake side is a load of stuff Greg wrote with Peter Sinfield (of King Crimson), the Palmer side has all sorts including Prokofiev ("The Enemy God Dances With the Black Spirits") and Bach ("Two Part Invention in D Minor") and the other side has other stuff!  Apparently, Aaron Copland was perplexed by the prog interlude but kinda shrugged, let them do their thang and accepted the cheques.  The critical reviews were mixed at the time and are retrospectively mixed, but with such a mixed album that's probably not such a surprise - I'd be quite surprised if ANYONE liked all of it.  Commercially it did OK, getting to #12 in the US and selling 500k units over there.

"Customers also listened to" Focus, Yes, Renaissance and King Crimson - none of which are really my thing.  But whilst I'm not a fan of prog, you generally know the sort of thing you're getting and that's very much not the case here - and the most surprising thing was probably that it was the prog stuff that I enjoyed the most.

31/07/77 - A potential grower
14/08/77 - A surprisingly successful album

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