My 2010 Illinois Entertainer Reviews, p. 12

Mark Olson: Many Colored Kite (Rykodisc)--Mark Olson sings like a combination of Tom Verlaine and the Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson. And if those allusions (both of them compliments) evoke long-forgotten memories, Olson’s adding of wind-swept strings to his acoustic starkness creates a meaningful melancholy worthy of Nick Drake and Sister Lover’s-era Alex Chilton. Elemental images abound (birds, a beehive, a snake, a dove, rivers, rain, a fountain, water that Olson’s “loved one” walks on), as do religious ones (the Tree of Life, milk and honey, being still and knowing, a song titled “Scholastica” and apparently inspired by the seventh-century saint of the same name, water that Olson’s “loved one” walks on), resulting in an irresistibly luminous mysticism somehow summed up by this proverb from “Wind and Rain”: “Empty pockets are a part of love.”

Carl Palmer: Working Live--Volume 3 (Eagle)--With all due respect to Keith Emerson’s organ stabbing, the highlight of every peak-period Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert was Carl Palmer’s drum solo (especially the seven-minute one during “Tank” circa 1977). On this latest installment of live re-workings by Palmer’s current trio of the music of ELP, there’s only one such solo (the first seven minutes of the eight-minute “In A Moroccan Market”), and its intensity isn’t quite up to the bash fests of yore. But it does earn its keep. As for the remakes of “Peter Gunn,” “Pictures at an Exhibition,” “Nutrocker,” “Bitches Crystal,” and “Romeo and Juliet,” the replacing of Greg Lake with a bassist who keeps his mouth shut (Simon Fitzpatrick) is genius. As for replacing Emerson with the electric guitarist Paul Bielatowicz. it’s, um, interesting.

Sabbath Assembly: Restored to One (:Ajna:)--Bob Marley’s popularity among non-Rastafarians is proof that, if the music is good, one needn’t identify with its religious impetus in order to enjoy it. On the other hand, if the music is as quirkily hermetic as Sabbath Assembly’s, even the group’s co-religionists might wonder whether it couldn’t make like Aquarians and let the sun shine in. For the record, the sect to which Sabbath Assembly’s five members belong is the Process Church of the Final Judgment, a Scientology offshoot that worships Christ, Lucifer, Satan, and Jehovah. Dirge-like and pseudo-mystical, none of their songs would seem out of place in a Spinal Tap set. But those guys, obviously, would play them for (and get) laughs. These guys (and gals) play (and sing) them as if laughter were the unpardonable sin.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer: Black Moon & The Atlantic Years (1992)

(As published in Rock & Roll Disc ... )

Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Black Moon
Victory 383 480 003-2
Producer: Mark Mancina
Engineer: Steve Kempster
Total disc time: 48:57 (no SPARS code)

Merit: **½
Sound: ****

The Atlantic Years (2 CDs)
Atlantic 7 82403-2
Producers: Various
Engineers: Various
Total disc times: 74:19, 76:26 (no SPARS code)

Merit: ***
Sound: ****

With the possible exception of the Knack, no band that emerged and made its fortune during the '70s has endured more negative criticism than Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Although four of their albums went top ten in the U.S., three more top twenty, and all of them even higher in Europe, no critic that I know of except Lester Bangs has ever been willing to risk his credentials and admit that ELP were anything other than a trio of pretentious dilettantes.

Which isn't to deny that on one level they were pretentious dilettantes. But they also possessed an anarchic streak that could be counted on to erupt with a magnificently perverse lack of propriety, especially live, where Keith Emerson's multi-keyboard screechfests fostered many a heavy-metal fantasy and Carl Palmer's drum solos encompassed a dazzling variety of percussion wizardry.

The group's weak link was Greg Lake--or, rather, his role in the group. As a bassist anchoring Emerson to Palmer, he was perfect; as a cosmic folksinger whose job it was to emote throughout fifteen-minute jams, he was hopeless (as anyone in his position would be). But democracy and pacing demanded that he take center stage as often as the other two, so he did, and therein lay the band's Achilles' heel.

Therein also lies the explanation for why Black Moon--named, apparently, for a lunar eclipse--shines forth only dimly. As the featured performer on seven of the ten songs, Lake ends up hogging the spotlight. His voice has gained resonance over the years, but he still writes lyrics like "Take my love into your breast. / Commit my spirit to the test. / You will see him like a knight. / His armor gleams..." and so on. Meanwhile, although Emerson piles on his share of industrial-strength progressiveness, Palmer's role has shrunk to little more than maintaining a steady four-four. All of which means that Black Moon finds ELP at their most conventional instead of at (or even near) their most daring.

The same can hardly be said of The Atlantic Years, a great-sounding two-CD, two-and-a-half-hour compilation featuring many of the lengthiest and most extreme exercises of ELP's first decade. "Tarkus" (twenty minutes), "Karn Evil 9" (thirty), "Pirates" (thirteen), and a fourteen-minute excerpt of the group's album-length Pictures at an Exhibition receive the digitally-remastered-from-the-original-master-tapes treatment to good effect. Now more than ever, one can admire the technological architecture of these rock equivalents of the Tower of Babel.

Yet ELP were at their strongest when blowing up that architecture, and by including only one cut, Ginastera's "Toccata," from the three-LP live album Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends (where many of these pieces are available in louder, gnarlier versions), and by editing the band's demolition of Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" from nine minutes to five, The Atlantic Years gives ELP's metal-machine power short shrift.

Not that fans won't find pockets of pleasure in these discs. Among Black Moon's highlights are Palmer's plundering of Queen's "We Will Rock You" beat for the entire seven minutes of the title track (even heard it on the Olympics!) and the unabashed virtuosity of the two full-band instrumentals, "Changing Staes" and Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet."

And The Atlantic Years, although it features too much Lake, sticks mainly to hummable Lake like "Lucky Man," "From the Beginning," and the surprisingly enduring "I Believe in Father Christmas" (in its original seven-inch, as opposed to the Works Volume Two, version).

But there's a lot of foggy-headed filler too, especially on Black Moon. And most of it bears Lake's name.