Emerson Lake & Palmer-Works (1977)



Artist: Emerson Lake & Palmer

Title: Works

Label: Atlantic

roFormat: 2xLP

Catalog Number: SD-2-7000

Year of Release: 1977

Country and Year of Edition: US 1977 Preswell Pressing

Sell Price: $6.64

Sell Date: 8/17/26

Condition: G+/VG

Discogs Last Sold: 7/3/26 VG+/VG+ $4.34

Low: $0.99 G+/VG

Median: $4.00

Average: $5.07

High: $35.00

Current low price: $1.49 G+/G+

Curren Number on Sale at Discogs: 144

Have/Want: 3923/115

Where Sold: Greensboro, NC

Time It Took To Sell: 2 years

Where and When Bought: Whatnot auction lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: C+

Sad To See It Go: No

If Works wasn't long and ponderous enough for you, ELP released the companion Volume 2 in the very same year of release.  The savior of this double record is Carl Palmer.  His side is the most listenable of the three member dedicated sides.  Keith Emerson gives a straight up classical concert and Greg Lake gives us a side of prog-rock belters.  Carl Palmer brings in Joe Walsh to usher in the great track "L.A. Nights."   And now for something completely different seems the name and the game at least with Works Vol. 1.

A title like this is and isn't good for the Spotify random shuffle familiarization method of getting a handle on the music.  After a couple weeks,  I just decided to listen to it again start to finish, once and for all,  to get it off the cue.    For starters,  Emerson's 18 minute concerto is gonna come up whether you like it or not.  So is Copeland's Fanfare For The Common Man in rockified form close to ten minutes.  So is the bloated overwrought closing track "Pirates" where Greg Lake rides her all the way to the stars on a golden chain.  That was the most played live song of this set.

All that said, there some tracks on here I realized I like now and the are mostly Carl Palmer's side.  This is not just because we are spared the vocals of Lake. You wish it would end with "C'Est La Vie" but it is only the second song of the side. That one made the groups live shows in both the 70's & 90's almost as much as "Pirates."    Down the line Palmer delivers a sense of propulsion and fun that Emerson & Lake were incapable of for different reasons.  This worked well in their first 5 years or so, but once they realized the show never ended, they became comfortable with vacationing on Love Beach and to hell with the quarter million listeners that bought this volume and the next one, ELP were gonna score Gold records with quantity if they couldn't with quality.  Works makes a little more sense when the the group attempted to tour with a full orchestra as documented by Rhino on Works Live.

Scuttled due to cost after three shows.

FOR FURTHER REVIEW:

Trilogy (1972)

Brain Salad Surgery (1973)

Welcome Back My Friends To The Show That Never Ends (1974)

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