Album of the Day

Emerson, Lake & Palmer, by Emerson, Lake, & Palmer (1970): Geez, prog is barely out of the gate and already it's spawned a supergroup! I've never paid a whole lot of attention to ELP's debut. It's easy to overlook it in light of Tarkus, Trilogy, and Brain Salad Surgery. It's better than I've given it credit for, really. It does a good job of mapping out where ELP was headed, with the longish instrumental workouts ("Take a Pebble" and "Tank"), classical reworkings ("The Barbarian" and "Knife Edge"), and, of course, the prototypical Lake ballad, "Lucky Man," complete with ground breaking Moog solo. It's a little half-baked at places, but still a pretty solid debut.