Works Live is the re-issue of Emerson Lake & Palmers legendary show at Montreal Olympic Stadium on 26th August 1977, with 4 songs recorded in November 1977 in Wheeling, West Virginia. This had made me listen to a whole album of theirs for the first time in over 40 years, I come away both appreciating the good parts and still hating the overly grandiose madness of some of the other parts. For this show Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer were joined by an unnamed 64-piece orchestra conducted by Godfrey Salmon.
The concert opens with an Introductory Fanfare and a rather staid introduction with them going straight into Peter Gunn that is full on cartoon chase music, with the synths going all squiggly and that super solid bass with a heavy groove, that is super steady, no matter what Keith does over the top of Lake & Palmers solid bedrock.
Tiger In A Spotlight is boogie rock that chugs along, allowing Greg to seemingly ad lib the vocals, before the inevitable instrumental freak out, that never stops being perfect to get down for some headbanging boogie rock dancefloor moves, so you can try to figure out what Greg could be singing about.
C'est La Vie is neo medieval balladeering with the orchestral strings accenting the carefully picked guitar and neo crooned vocals, that is on the borders of being a touch cringy, it becomes more windblown, like they want to be Charles Aznavour. Watching Over You is a soppy ballad for your sleeping babies, very syrupy and sentimental. In a complete change of gears comes Maple Leaf Rag played totally straight, like they are in a 1930's Juke Joint and they want to outdo Scott Joplin.
Things shift again into The Enemy God Dances With The Black Spirits a full-on prog freak out, fully of squiggly synths and more ideas than any one song needs, like they are trying to condense a full symphony into less than three minutes of musical mayhem.
Fanfare For the Common Man is fully grandiose and over the top from the horn section on down, when you can hear the cheering audience, the timpani signals things are going to get properly monumental, the central riff comes in and they are off combining a great boogie rock base to all the Timpani and orchestral magic, showing why this is the bands most enduring tune. Parts of this version sound jammed like they are just having a blast, in front of that huge audience.
It gets bombastic in the middle eight with Keith's keyboards taking flight while it stretches out to 11 minutes of magic and mayhem.
Knife Edge is all hippy dippy lyrics and odd musical changes in weird ways, lifted by the organ part, before it gets properly messy sounding with the orchestra sounding more focussed than what Lake and Palmer are doing, while it twists to pastoral orchestral conclusions.
Show Me The Way To Go Home is about the oddest of cover choices going, the old music hall classic is treated as a piano bar croon, with Greg not sounding anywhere near drunk enough to really nail it, but this song contains so many happy childhood memories, when sung by anyone practically, that I still end up smiling at the head scratching middle of the road impulse to put this in a stadium rock set.
The first cd closes with Abbadon's Bolero that features Carl Palmers military two step drumming with the strings rising around them on what sounds like the soundtrack music for some late 50's historical epic, it swells and rises majestically taking them in yet another totally different direction, this show is incredibly varied, the eventual addition of wavy synth lines is greeted by a huge cheer from the audience.
The second CD opens with an immense sixteen-minute version of Pictures At An Exhibition that opens with fanfares and a bucolic beauty, before it descends into squiggly weirdness and synth effects, that must have worked magnificently with the light show. By the time the hushed vocals come in they are in quiet contemplation of just how this tune splits into its various parts, then it becomes much more frantic and alive to the possibilities they have created for themselves to properly go over the top, the keyboards that go fairground intense, before the truly odd vocals, are a high spot in a piece of music that sounds rather confused, with too many ideas clashing together. The salvoes of horns are inspiring, before the hippy dippy nonsense of Greg's vocals come back. This one piece of music is everything that would have driven me away from ELP as a teenager.
Closer To Believing opens as a slow soft ballad with strings and a calm sense of what they want to believe in, seeing their dreams slip away, into a fugue of easy listening gentle loveliness. Piano Concerto, Third Movement: Toccata Con Fuoco is full on classical, magical madness, swelling and rising, shifting from quiet intensity through Keith's piano flourishes, into a cartoon like chase part to some cool brass stabs and back to more brittle tinkling piano and strings, slowly building into ever more grandiosity.
The album closes with a twelve minute plus version of Tank that opens like they are playing over the opening credits to a 70's detective series, with Tank being the titular detective, the urgent keyboards battling it out with the flute, before the brass section arrives to clean up the crime scene, strings and drums sounding properly arresting. Eventually the bass drums start firing off like they are the Tank guns, cymbals crash and overwhelm everything, apart from the timpani, for some massed battle scene. Eventually they find a funky groove for the horns to rise over, while Keith lets fly on his synths one last time.
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