Lead me from tortured dreams - childhood themes of nights alone

Starting my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

19/12/71 : Pictures At An Exhibition - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

This is a live album, so would normally be excluded - but it will soon become clear this is not a normal live album. It's also only our second visit with ELP - and the last one was so peculiar that I struggle to imagine it's particularly representative of their work.

I guessed at least some of it was based on Mussorgsky's work of the same name and Wikipedia confirms it's their interpretation of his ten piece piano suite with a couple of original compositions thrown in for good measure. I'm not familiar with the classical piece (although I was surprised to recognise the theme from "Promenade") but I'd be surprised if Mussorgsky would actually recognise too much of it either - it's very prog indeed. But enjoyably so (despite it not really being my sort of thing) and there's obviously massive amounts of skill involved - particularly when you consider it's all done live. It's not your normal live album though because the audience noise is kept to an absolute minimum throughout except for the beginning and end and none of these tracks are available elsewhere, hence its suitability for inclusion - and I'm glad I included it.

We're at #9 in the charts this week on the fourth week of a five week run, with it having peaked at #3 in its first two weeks - and there's an interesting tale coming up as to why this only managed five weeks, so stick with me! The top five this week were T Rex, Hot Hits 8, Jim Reeves's Xmas album, Led Zeppelin and Simon & Garfunkel and the highest new entry was The Faces (#10) who were unlucky to just miss out, but I probably would have been mean about them anyway.

Wikipedia has quite the history for us on this one - the band had been playing it live since '70 and decided it would be a fun thing to put out as a live album, so recorded an evening at London's Lyceum theatre in December '70, which was also filmed. However, the results were so poor that the band decided they'd have another go in March '71, this time in Newcastle's City Hall because it had a pipe organ, which Emerson was allowed to play, as long as he didn't stick knives in it (apparently this was something he did). This time around was much more successful - but releasing it was somewhat less straightforward. Various sticking points included how it fit with the timing of their second studio album, whether it was a rock or classical release, whether it should be a single or double album and whether it was a budget or full price release. 

And so, obviously, they decided to shelve the whole thing. But then, a radio station in New York played the whole thing and the fans started asking for it - so they basically just chucked it out as a single, budget priced (£1.49!) release. At the time of release (November '71), budget albums were eligible for the charts, but new rules came in early '72 which changed that - hence the truncated run in the charts. Intriguingly there's also a section about the cover artwork which tells us that William Neal painted all the canvases, which doesn't seem to be anything to boast about when you look at the artwork above - I can only assume there are different pictures on the back or in the gatefold.

The only other thing of interest I learned from the entry was that Mussorgsky's first name was Modest (and the only other Modest I can think of is Modest Mouse). Critically, the response was very different between here and the US - it was generally liked here but the US critics hated it, with our old mate Robert Christgau giving it a D+ and Lester Bangs "brutally mocked" it. But fans everywhere liked it, with it getting to #3 in Canada, #2 in Japan (really?) and #10 in the US.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for a couple of quid, but if you fancy a mint original copy then it's going to set you back £66 - there's also a Japanese reissue up for £1,206.12, but I'm very suspicious about that price. And I was also somewhat suspicious as to what this album was going to be like, but I found it to be surprisingly enjoyable - whilst still obviously being completely bonkers.

26/12/71 - A great start to the year