From rick155@aol.com Fri Feb 01 11:09:17 2002
Subject:OT: Re: Tarkus Revisited, and 70's prog rock

Up-front disclaimer: This post amounts to little more than nostalgic self-indulgence. Read at your own risk.

Mitch wrote:
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Man, you're making me feel old. LOL. Allmusic.com says Tarkus was released in June 1971. I'm not home right now, so I can't check that. But I think that's right.

>>From what I have read, it sounds like many people were considering that the next logical step for "rock and roll" was a bombastic combination of classical sensibility and the sweaty edge or rock.<<

As a high schooler at the time, I know this: We didn't know WTF would happen next, but there was a whole lot that was new to our ears, coming from different directions. What you're talking about was just one of them. Without wishing to sound too nostalgic, it really was a great time to be growing up and listening to rock music. There was a lot of variety back then without the fragmented categories we have today. Consider a few of the other albums released that year, all of which sold hugely:

Black Sabbath's "Paranoid"
The Allman Bros. "Live at the Fillmore East"
Jethro Tull's "Aqualung"
Don Mclean's "American Pie"
"The Yes Album"
Elton John's "Tumbleweed Connection"
Led Zeppelin "IV" (Stairway to Heaven)
Rolling Stones - "Sticky Fingers"
The Who - "Who's Next"

Back then it wasn't unusual for a kid in high school to own and listen to all of these, notwithstanding the big differences among them musically (today such a kid might own all of them too, but now it's because they're "classics". LOL). I know my friends and I all did. And if you consider the music that was available to us in, say, 1968 and then look at what had arrived by 1971, and then look again at what came in the years immediately after, you can see this was a pretty exciting time musically. As the short list above illustrates, there wasn't just one direction in which rock was moving, although Yes, ELP, Tull and others earned the "progressive rock" badge. Many of us thought they were THE biggest innovators. Maybe hard to imagine now, but there was major anticipation when these bands were releasing new albums. We were always expecting something really *new*. In that respect, no question, Side 1 of Tarkus delivered in spades. Today we can talk about Palmer's botched drum fills, but to the kids who were buying this stuff back then (me and many like me) it was sonic transportation to a different world that nobody had revealed to us before. And that's all a lot of us really cared about. Forget about accurate time in the rhythm section; how about those synths, the likes of which we'd never heard ever before!!

So yeah, ELP made perfect sense in 1971. Synths were popping up everywhere with new sounds, creating new possibilites, jamming and extended tunes were cool, concept albums were in and chops were still king. Enter ELP!

Sheesh, I can see this is post is just saturated in nostalgia even tho I said I wouldn't. Sorry. Adding the disclaimer at the top of page now....

Killin' time on a rainy friday afternoon,

Rick