Emerson Lake & Palmer: In the Hot Seat (1994)
Hand of Truth
Daddy
One By One
Heart on Ice
Thin Line
Man in the Long Black Coat
Change
Give Me a Reason to Stay
Gone Too Soon
Street War
----------
Black Moon may not have fully recaptured the glory days of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (note the comma which was now officially in the band name), but sales of the album were pretty good, no doubt boosted by the fact that it was their first album in 14 years, and the 1992-1993 world tours were successful enough to encourage ELP to make a follow-up album.
Say what you will about the quality of the songwriting on this album (and indeed much has been said), but ELP cannot be accused of repeating themselves, or resting on their laurels. Just as Genesis and Yes changed both their sound and approach to adapt to the changing musical climate, Emerson, Lake & Palmer did the same. Another album of ten songs, all in the four- to five-minute range, fusing simpler song structures with virtuoso playing. As with
Black Moon, the songs on
In the Hot Seat aren't particularly adventurous, but feature some new tricks, and continue to break new ground musically.
Sadly, it's usually a bad sign when an established band resorts to using outside writers. Either the band or the label is clearly hoping to score a hit, and willing to sacrifice the band's integrity to get it. Or maybe the band is just out of ideas and
needs a spark from the outside to help get the job done, but that's not exactly a preferable scenario.
The album opens with a catchy, uptempo song called "Hand of Truth" featuring a fast keyboard lick as its hook. The song goes through a couple of changes before the vocals finally come in, over two minutes into its 5:22 length.
The momentum, unfortunately, is immediately halted by "Daddy", a song Greg Lake was inspired to write by the tragic kidnapping case of Sara Anne Wood. It's actually a pretty good song, but it's quite depressing, and feels like social commentary being that it's based on a true story, and it just seems incredibly out of place on an ELP album.
"One By One" is a medium rocker in 12/8, featuring Keith's first use of orchestral samples. Writing credit goes to Emerson, Lake, and someone named Keith Olsen, whose name appears in the credits for four of the songs on this album. My curiosity about this guy is simply not strong enough to overcome my laziness. (In other words, I'd love to tell you more about Keith Olsen, but I just don't care enough about him to look him up.)
"Heart on Ice" is a Lake ballad, with another co-writing credit to Keith Olsen. It's not one of Greg's better songs, and if that's Keith Olsen's fault, then it is. It reminds me of any of the countless 90's David Foster songs recorded by Chicago and/or sung by Peter Cetera.
"Thin Line" isn't too bad. It's a shuffle, something new for ELP, and is driven along quite nicely by Palmer's percussion. This one's credited to Emerson, Keith Olsen again, and someone named Bill Wray.
"Man in the Long Black Coat" is a cover of a Bob Dylan song. Yes, you read that correctly, Bob Dylan. No classical cover on this album, Bob Dylan instead. I told you they still had a few tricks left up their sleeves. I'm not familiar with the original, and I'm not a huge Dylan fan by any stretch of the imagination, but this song isn't horrible, and has a pretty cool synth sound that permeates the song.
"Change" is the other Emerson, Olsen, Wray composition, probably the lesser of the two. Pretty weak overall.
"Give Me a Reason to Stay" is credited to Steve Diamond and Sam Lorber. I have no idea who those guys are. The song is pretty basic 90's dreck and sounds nothing like anything Emerson or Lake would have written.
"Gone Too Soon" isn't too bad. At least it's uptempo, almost catchy, and has a cool synth solo. It's credited to Keith Wechsler, Greg Lake, and Bill Wray. Nope, I don't know who Keith Wechsler is.
The album closes with "Street War", the final Emerson-Lake composition. They could have gone out with a bang, or gone out with a clunker. Oddly enough, they did both. It's an uptempo song, and moves along nicely with Carl's backbeat and Greg's bass, but the refrain "Street War!" is clearly supposed to be a bit more exciting than it is, and the song overall is kinda silly. Nice synth work, and a weird breakdown in the middle that's almost kinda cool, but doesn't end up going anywhere.
And thus endeth the catalogue of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Yeah, there's a comma now. Originally, the idea was to include only their names, and an ampersand to make it less awkward to pronounce, but by this point I guess they didn't care anymore. Someone included a comma in the cover art of
Black Moon and no one caught it, and here it is again, and now no one cares.
Keith Emerson never stopped coming up with great synth sounds. They're all over this album. Carl Palmer never stopped being a force of nature on the drum kit. Both of those guys will always be favorites of mine on their respective instruments. Greg Lake's voice is actually stronger here than it was on
Black Moon, though it's pretty clear that it will never regain the strength it had when he was in his prime.
No, the problem is that the guys ran out of ideas. Let's be honest, the songwriting was always the weak point of this band. It sure wasn't the playing. Their love of the classics was a great gimmick that took them farther than anyone could have guessed, but a band has to have original material. And they did have some great songs along the way. But they were down to writing maybe half the material, and with the mediocre sales of this album, the old tensions between Emerson and Lake returning once again, and all of them facing health issues (Emerson has had multiple surgeries for repetitive stress related injuries, Palmer has been treated for carpal tunnel syndrome, and Lake has apparently eaten several fans), it appears that the guys have finally called it quits.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer did reuinite one last time at the High Voltage Festival in 2011. Billed as the 40th Anniversary Reunion Concert, it's on DVD and Blu-ray if you're interested. I caught the (edited) TV broadcast, and it was pretty much what I expected: disappointing. Keith can still play, but he's clearly lost a lot of speed and mobility. Lake is so huge now that I was surprised that he could move at all. He played no guitar and very little bass, prefering to let Emerson's wall of keyboards provide the backdrop. His voice was pretty good, but this was a one-off show, not a tour, so this was as good as it gets now. Only Carl Palmer still had the fire. They should have called it the Farewell Concert, though I think many suspected that that's what it really was. So Farewell to Emerson Lake & Palmer. It was a good run.
Topic: Emerson Lake & Palmer Discography (Read 47373 times)
