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Karn Evil 9 - the movie


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I saw ELP live on the Brain Salad Surgery tour.

Karn Evil 9 was played. The entire show was fantastic.

 

They had a quadraphonic sound system.

 

I was more or less in the center of the floor at the arena when Keith E unleashed the sequenced arpeggios that swirled around the stadium.

Being "on a higher plane" at that moment in time, I left the floor or perhaps it disappeared and gravity failed.

 

Anyway, I remember it now and think I'll just leave well enough alone. Among the best live shows I've ever seen.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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I saw ELP live on the Brain Salad Surgery tour.

Karn Evil 9 was played. The entire show was fantastic.

 

They had a quadraphonic sound system.

 

I was more or less in the center of the floor at the arena when Keith E unleashed the sequenced arpeggios that swirled around the stadium.

Being "on a higher plane" at that moment in time, I left the floor or perhaps it disappeared and gravity failed.

 

Anyway, I remember it now and think I'll just leave well enough alone. Among the best live shows I've ever seen.

 

 

Saw the BSS tour in Vancouver, likely we shared the same 'state/plane'. When the quad kicked in most ppl looked up and followed the sound in each of the 4 speakers. I had seen Led Zep not long before and thought that ELP had more speakers in the air than LZ had onstage. With the Colliseum being round the sound really swirled and was loud. Bought my MiniD shortly after that ELP concert.

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Saw the BSS tour in Vancouver, likely we shared the same 'state/plane'. When the quad kicked in most ppl looked up and followed the sound in each of the 4 speakers. I had seen Led Zep not long before and thought that ELP had more speakers in the air than LZ had onstage. With the Colliseum being round the sound really swirled and was loud. Bought my MiniD shortly after that ELP concert.

 

I saw the same show in Vancouver. It was a spectacle of sound, vision, talent & gear! That concert influenced me more than any concert before or after.

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August Jam, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Charlotte, NC, 8/10/74

 

ELP, Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker Band, Black Oak Arkansas, and a small army of other bands.

 

If you look up the most disastrous concerts, that one makes most of the lists. However, my impressions from the ground were nowhere near as negative as the later reports that made it sound like the end of the world. Yes, the fences went down. Yes, I saw a guy break the neck of a police dog. Yes, people were uncontrolled and rowdy for a few hours, but then...it all settled down, oddly enough. The concert itself went off pretty well. The bad behavior was outside the speedway, on the grounds, and only temporary, although it must have seemed like an eternity to those tasked with keeping the peace.

 

I was in my right mind, having long since adopted a policy that I wasn't going to pay for a ticket to a concert that I couldn't remember. I mean, what's the point? You can get messed up at home, you know? A guy I went with didn't remember anything from that weekend--none of the bands, who he was with, what he ate, where he slept, nothing. Another remembered only, maybe, a third of the weekend. I just shake my head. What a waste.

 

Much has been made of the stage show ELP put on during that era. For my part, I went for the music, not the theatrics, and would have been just as happy if they had dialed down the craziness by 5-10%. Playing while spinning in the air is dramatic, but takes me out of the moment--I lose my immersion in the music and start wondering about the structural factors and how Keith felt with all that blood rushing to his head, etc. Distracting. Stabbing a keyboard with a knife? I've never been one to trash equipment; never smashed a guitar. Gear's subject to enough wear and tear. I want my stuff to last.

 

But that was Keith, bless 'im. Just his way of making sure the audience got a spectacle...and spectacle it was.

 

That said, it was a good show, musically. Tight and clean.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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I got to see them do "Brain Salad Surgery" in quad, which left a major positive imprint on me, of course. However, I think its a work of its time & place too much not to be seen as ponderous if translated. Its all too easy to see some Internet gobbling being shoveled onto the story as a natural extension of its Big Brother/AI base. Add a private equity firm and 7 producers born in 1992 who know jack about the broader world of rock, much less prog rock. Stir with a stick. I can SMELL it already. Its like having one of those producers pipe up and say "Hey, I have a great idea! Let's re-make 'Lawrence of Arabia' with midgets! It'll be hilarious!" You can't even name everything that's wrong with that one before lunch. :lolol:

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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Just think, ELP had the whole dystopian future thing down, forty years before Mockingjay, et. al. Now Hollywood has caught up, but the punchline is, "It's been done before..." HAR, HAR, HAR...that's a knee-slapper!

 

I can't see Brain Salad Surgery as a movie, but if they can take an amusement park ride and make a hit movie out of it (Pirates of the Caribbean), then I guess anything's possible. I'll be curious to see how a '70s prog/Boomer generation album works for anyone other than the original audience. Some music, like the Beatles, seems to be able to make the fifty year leap. Other music, specifically including prog and fusion jazz, haven't fared as well, although as I've said elsewhere I think it's cyclical and that there will be a comeback for prog/fusion eventually. A movie, though? I'm not so sure about this.

 

Grey

 

(...and I believe the correct count is seven virgins and a mule...)

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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[Third Impression]

 

Man alone, born of stone

Will stamp the dust of time

His hands strike the flame of his soul;

Ties a rope to a tree and hangs the Universe

Until the winds of laughter blows cold

 

Fear that rattles in men's ears

And rears its hideous head!

Dread, death in the wind

 

Man of steel pray and kneel

With fever's blazing torch

Thrust in the face of the night;

Draws a blade of compassion

Kissed by countless kings

Whose jeweled trumpet words blind his sight

 

Walls that no man thought would fall

The altars of the just

Crushed, dust in the wind

 

No man yields who flies in my ship

DANGER!

Let the bridge computer speak

STRANGER!

LOAD YOUR PROGRAM. I AM YOURSELF

 

No computer stands in my way;

Only blood can cancel my pain

Guardians of a nuclear dawn!

Let the maps of war be drawn

 

Rejoice! Glory is ours!

Our young men have not died in vain

Their graves need no flowers;

The tapes have recorded their names!

 

I am all there is!

NEGATIVE! PRIMITIVE! LIMITED! I LET YOU LIVE

But I gave you life!

WHAT ELSE COULD YOU DO?

To do what was right!

I'M PERFECT. ARE YOU?

 

As I said before, this is going to take some work.

 

 

 

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(...and I believe the correct count is seven virgins and a mule...)

Other than the mule, that's going to be a challenging casting call...

 

Particularly in Hollywood, eh?

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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"Ten virgins and a mule...."

I believe that's three virgins too many. :D :D

Sorry for the abundance of virgins in my post. I stand duly corrected.

 

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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