moog solo in "lucky man"

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I picked up a couple of elp cds on thee way home from w3rk thee other day, b/c our band keeps getting request to play some elp number or other. No way in this world am I going to play "fanfare for the common man" b/c it's horrible, so I figured either "the endless enigma" or "lucky man". I bought "trilogy" and the first album for a tenner each from hmv. "The endless enigma" is great, but to be quite honest, I'm going to struggle to play some parts of it. So I listened to "lucky man", which is pretty cheesy, but ok-ish considering that greg lake wrote it when he was 12. There's this famous moog synthesiser solo at the end, and seeing as every damn synthesiser ever made features a preset called "lucky man" or "mr lucky" or whatever (even the DX7 iirc) I figured it would be OK. According to the sleevenotes, they cut the track before keith emerson got his moog 3c, and they used manfred mann's machine, which was in the studio. emerson did a run-through of the solo, and the others liked it so much they made him keep it, even though he wanted to re-cut a better take. emerson was right, the solo on the record is FUCKING HORRIBLE. I guess we won't be doing any elp in our set then.

ELP were pretty terrible really. too much blues scale drivelling (unlike yes & genesis who were much better, plus king crimson's robert fripp didn't even know how to play a blues scale, good for him) and too much 12-bar fluff. too gimmicky. out of the 2 albums, "the endless enigma" is the only good track, and strangely enough, it is _really_ good. WTF? IIRC there are couple of good bits in "tarkus" and "brain salad surgery", and even then ars nova do it better. feh.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:01 (twenty-two years ago)

If you really want to play an ELP song (for the crowd) ..

From Brain Salad Surgery:
-Still You Turn Me On
From Works 2:
-Brain Salad Surgery
From Trilogy:
-Living Sin, From the Beginning

it's all pretty unbearable...

― dave225 (Dave225), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:09 (twenty-two years ago)

OMG! "still you turn me on" is TERRIBLE!!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:11 (twenty-two years ago)

It's ALL terrible... I thought you were trying to please the crowd...

― dave225 (Dave225), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha, yes it is. I think in this instance, the crowd can go unpleased. We can do another yes number instead perhaps.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 12:21 (twenty-two years ago)

terrible:
the wacka-wacka electric guitar during the chorus
the hollyoaks electric guitar during the verses
that 'ladder' moment

not terrible:
harpsichord
harpsichord with sound changed (pedal?) - unfortunately leading up to that 'ladder' moment

wtf:
that really is an accordian in there too isn't it

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

haha "that 'ladder' moment"! OTM.

Pash you should do the "I Believe in Father Christmas" song.

― Broheems (diamond), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 17:33 (twenty-two years ago)

How could Robert Fripp not know how to play a blues scale?

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 18:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Sundar - it's in the booklet that came with "a young person's guide to king crimson", apparently he never learned, and the "islands" era band used to piss him off by playing blues jams live (btw I am unable to play a blues scale fwiw)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 19:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe not a blues scale, but certainly parts of "21st Century Schizoid Man" are blues-derived (like that part in the middle that goes Cmin --> Fmin --> Cmin ---> Gmin, etc.)

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 20:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I think you NEED to cover "Taste of My Love" from Love Beach. That will DEFINITELY please the crowd.

"I want to DY-NO-MITE yer mind..with LOVE TONIIIIIGHT!!!"

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Joe OTM. I was gonna say, that riff is pretty damn pentatonic.

(unable or unwilling, Pashmina?)

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:22 (twenty-two years ago)

(both, jordan. n.e.england is pub blues hell, so i've avoided it on purpose)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll see if I can dig out the quote w/r/t fripp as well.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 21:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I forgot to look up the bit about fripp.

I went to this cheap ass rekkid shop in gateshead metrocentre thee other day, and the had the elp cds I picked up for a tenner each in hmv, except they only cost six quid each. Gah. I bought "Tarkus" for some reason. I have no idea why. I was looing at it on the way home thinking "why did I buy this". I think I was kind of charmed by the concept, which is kind of loveably daft. "hey guys, the new album's going to be about this thing that's like half world war one tank, half armadillo, and it goes around blowing shit up" "fucking hell keith, giz a hit of that willya". The title track is pretty good for the most part, esp the (i think) 5/4 riff that it opens with. It sounds pretty, uh, manly. I can imagine an epic trance version of it, actually. Emerson's organ sound, with the percussion engaged, is not all that different to the organ riff sound used in pop trance rekkids, plus the "big" moog sound is quite like the "super saw" sound on the jp-800. Mentasm-tarkus. You know it makes sense.

The rest of the album is really horrible, except for the pipe organ bit "the only way". "jeremy bender" is just fukcing unforgiveable, even in the context of it being written in the 1970's.

Probably I'll buy "brain salad surgery" next week, and do a comp of all the good bits.

If we do an elp song, I figure it'll be "eruption/stones of years"

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 22 May 2004 10:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Norman,

I wanted to ask you this question as a keys-gear expert: Do you know what accounts for the difference in Moog sound between the 'big' Moog that has some meat/edginess/power on it that you describe above (typical in ELP and much symphonic prog of the 70s) versus the comparatively more watered-down, 'drippy', bleepy, softer Moog sound that particularly characterized mid-70s fusion (e.g., Gilgamesh/Alan Gowen, if you've heard that; Jan Hammer as he went along; Kit Watkins of Happy the Man)? Is it still the same kind of Moog?

― Joe (Joe), Saturday, 22 May 2004 14:16 (twenty-two years ago)

The "big" moog is one of the modular instruments, where you create the sound by plugging modules together using patchcords, if you see pics of ELP on stage, you can see the thing to Emerson's right. Klaus Schulze had a similar instrument, which IIRC he bought from Florian Fricke. The other stuff is minimoog, which is the small portable instrument with the hinged control panel, which you're no doubt familiar w/. The main differences are that the big moog has 9 audio oscillators, which can all be detuned against each other, as opposed to the minimoog's 3 (plus, if you wanted vibrato, which is usually essential, you had to switch one of the three oscillators out of the audio path on the mini), the filter design in the big moog is slightly different (modcan, a modern modular synthesiser manufacturer, for example, offer filter modules derived from the minimoog and the moog modular, even though they azren't that different really) and the big moog tracks the keyboard less accurately, and tends to drift in pitch w/changes in temperature, humidity etc more than the mini. thus = "bigger" sound.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 22 May 2004 14:30 (twenty-two years ago)

+ yeah, I have some gilgamesh on tape somewhere, as well as alan gowen on national health cds. He was damn good. there was a feature in a really old issue of "keyboard" magazine that had a chart for kit watkins' minimoog lead setting, which I think I've got stashed somewhere. Of course, I haven't got a minimoog!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Saturday, 22 May 2004 15:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks for the info! Yeah, Gowen was a monster (as was Dave Stewart).

― Joe (Joe), Saturday, 22 May 2004 19:10 (twenty-two years ago)

nine years pass...

WHY ISN'T THE WHOLE ELP 1ST RECORD SOUNDS LIKE LUCKY MAN? OH WHY?

― nostormo, Thursday, 29 August 2013 21:30 (twelve years ago)

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