Emerson, Lake and Palmer Works Live

I remember hearing the one two-punch of “Introductory Fanfare” into Peter Gun” on the radio when Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s In Concert album was released in 1979 and applauding the fact that it sounded as if my favorite band had not broken up. They had a year before, little did I know, disbanding after being ‘forced’ into their last 70s studio album, Love Beach, and the bankruptcy of touring with an orchestra on their Works Volume 1 Tour.

This ‘new’ remastered release is the expanded version of In Concert, released in 1993 as Works Live. Then as now, it features a whole bunch of songs from ELP’s grandaddy of a live show that happened at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal in late August of 1977 and three tracks from a concert in Wheeling, West Virginia in November of the same year when the trio went out as only a trio to try and recover some funds from the orchestra tour's money bloodletting.  

In this remix we get to hear the orchestra really adding to the sound and not just as a backing as they sounded in the other two versions of this collection. The transitions between some of songs are a little off as this album is an attempt to mix two different concerts into one, but songs like the later ELP release of cover “Show Me The Way To Go Home,” the “Peter Gun” theme instrumental and Greg Lake’s wonderful near solo take on “Watching Over You,” stand out better here than they ever did. 

ELP classics “Knife Edge,” and “Pictures At An Exhibition,” even with the orchestra, never really worked for me, and they still don’t, even with the better sound quality. 

Besides the music, there’s new artwork here, and a  new book of liner notes. This new Works Live surely takes one back to a time when we all still had hope there would be an Emerson, Lake & Palmer to get us into the new decade.