Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 4: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Here is the fourth and last part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. There is still one more day of the festival to go after this. This set features the prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

At this point in the band's career, they had only released two albums: "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" in 1970, and "Tarkus" in 1971. They had a new album coming ("Trilogy"), but it wouldn't be released until June 1972, and they didn't perform any songs from it. 

The band's bassist and lead vocalist Greg Lake later shared some memories about the band's experience at the festival: 

"The first thing I remember about the Mar Y Sol festival was stepping down onto the runway to discover the sun was so intense it had begun to melt the tarmac. After quite a long drive, we arrived at a luxury tropical hotel. At first, it all felt like a holiday atmosphere until we began to learn there were serious problems at the site and the government was trying to get the festival stopped. I remember jumping down out of a helicopter and being greeted by the backstage manager, who told me that they had just killed a rattlesnake under the stage. The whole thing did not feel good. It was not until later that we discovered a body being ferried out on the helicopter we had just arrived in was, in fact, the dead body of someone who’d been murdered, apparently over some drug deal that went wrong."

Lake also recalls having problems during the band's set. "I remember performing and feeling my left arm becoming unbearably hot. I quickly snatched a look between playing and singing and could see that my left arm was actually beginning to give off smoke. Apparently they had set up a huge and powerful search light on the side of the stage and were planning to use it during the filming. After a few desperate and agonizing screams from me, they finally switched it off."

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
02 Hoedown [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
03 Tarkus (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
04 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
05 Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
06 Piano Improvisation [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
07 Pictures at an Exhibition (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
08 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uC48SVJP 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/SBcMMFJtjOTdVgH/file 

I couldn't find many photos from this festival. For this album, I was only able to find one decent one. It only shows keyboardist Keith Emerson. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-14-1988, Part 2: Ben E. King, Roberta Flack, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the Average White Band, Ruth Brown, Debbie Gibson & Robert Plant

Here's the second part of a six-hour long version of the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert.

I explained the basics about the concert in my write-up for part one. So read that if you want to know about the concert in general.

Ben E. King was a big soul music star back in the 1950s and early 1960s, both with the Drifters and as a solo act. But in 1986, two years prior to this concert, a reissue of his song "Stand by Me" reached the Top Ten in the U.S. and Number One in Britain.

Technically, Emerson, Lake and Palmer didn't perform at this concert. Instead, for one album only in 1988, Greg Lake left the group and was replaced by Robert Berry. They released a studio album using the group name "3." Then Lake rejoined the band, replacing Berry in time for the next album. For this concert, they were introduced as "Emerson and Palmer," with Berry and the group name "3" being ignored. I'm calling the band "Emerson, Lake and Palmer" so their music can be easily found with site searches and labels and such.

In retrospect, I think Debbie Gibson got too much time in this concert. Her set was 15 minutes long, making it longer than a lot of other acts who made it into various halls of fame. For instance, she had a longer set than Ruth Brown, despite the fact that she was such a big star for Atlantic Records for the first ten years of the company's existence that its nickname was "The House that Ruth Built." (Even the Wikipedia entry about the record company mentions that nickname.) But the timing was just right for Gibson. She had a huge debut album in 1987, which sold three million copies in the U.S. Her second album in 1989 would also be a big seller. But after that her sales fell off a cliff and she largely disappeared as a big star. I give her kudos for writing all her own songs. But I wouldn't be surprised if some people skip or delete her set.

I know of some music from this part of the concert that I couldn't find. Ruth Brown sang a second song, "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean." Emerson, Lake and Palmer (or 3, or Emerson and Palmer) played one other song, "Fanfare for the Common Man." The Average White Band did two other songs, "I Got Work to Do" and "Person to Person." I don't know when it happened, but probably early in this concert, Herbie Mann played a set of the songs "Push Push," "Soul Serenade," and "Memphis Underground." Also at some point, Vanilla Fudge played two songs, "You Keep Me Hangin' On" and "Take Me for a Little While."

Robert Plant had lots of success as a solo artist in the 1980s. So he got a three song set in this portion of the show, while also singing lead with Led Zeppelin later in the show.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track numbering continues from the numbering of the previous part, in case you want to listen to all the concert as one huge album.

021 talk (Stephen Stills)
022 Spanish Harlem (Ben E. King)
023 talk (Ben E. King)
024 There Goes My Baby (Ben E. King)
025 Save the Last Dance for Me (Ben E. King)
026 Killing Me Softly with His Song (Roberta Flack)
027 The Closer I Get to You (Roberta Flack & Peabo Bryson)
028 America - Blue Rondo a la Turk [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
029 Pick Up the Pieces [Instrumental] (Average White Band)
030 Teardrops from My Eyes (Ruth Brown)
031 talk (Lisa Bonet)
032 Staying Together (Debbie Gibson)
033 Foolish Beat (Debbie Gibson)
034 Out of the Blue - Shake Your Love - Only in My Dreams (Debbie Gibson)
035 talk (Debbie Gibson)
036 Happy Birthday (Debbie Gibson)
037 talk (Phil Collins)
038 Heaven Knows (Robert Plant)
039 talk (Robert Plant)
040 Ship of Fools (Robert Plant)
041 talk (Robert Plant)
042 Tall Cool One (Robert Plant)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FWMHka7W

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/njDAQ0s6ftPW7fx/file

The cover photo of Ben E. King is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 5: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

The next big act to play the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP).

They were unknown to the crowd, because they had only played their first concert a few days before. But they were given a prominent billing because they were considered a "supergroup" of sorts, coming from well regarded groups such as the Nice and King Crimson. Only after this concert did the band secure a record contract.

ELP singer Greg Lake later recalled about the festival, "The enduring memory is the actual physical sight of that many people. I suppose before that, the only other time you’d see that many people gathered together would have been a war. The night before, we’d played to something like 1,000 people. The next day it was 600,000."

Lake had mixed feelings about the festival as a whole: "There was a kind of random chaos taking place. In a way, it was all meant to be relaxed and 'peace, love, and have a nice day', but there was kind of a tension about the whole thing." However, the band's performance was received very well. "After that festival, the very next day, ELP was on the front page of every music newspaper. It was indeed one of those overnight sensations."

The bad did have one problematic moment, however. Lake recalled, "We decided to fire these 19th-century cannons at the end of 'Pictures At An Exhibition' – to emulate the 1812 Overture. Unknown to us, the road crew had doubled the charge in the cannons. All I can remember was seeing this huge, solid-iron cannon leave the ground! It blew a couple of people off the stage. Luckily there was no cannonball in it. Thank God!"

The set is complete, and it sounds great, because it was officially released as "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970" in 1997.

Tracks 73 to 83 make up a musical suite called "Pictures at an Exhibition," based on a 1894 piano suite by the same name by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Despite being played in concert from this time forward, ELP wouldn't release an album version of it until late 1971.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

068 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
070 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
069 The Barbarian [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
071 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
072 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
073 Promenade [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
074 The Gnome [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
075 Promenade (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
076 The Sage (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
077 The Old Castle [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
078 Blues Variations [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
080 The Hut of Baba Yaga [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
079 Promenade [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
081 The Curse of Baba Yaga (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
082 The Hut of Baba Yaga [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
083 The Great Gates of Kiev (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
084 Rondo [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
085 talk (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
086 Nut Rocker [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15929318/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-29-1970_Pt5_EmrsonLkePlmer.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

California Jam, Ontario Motor Speedway, Ontario, CA, 4-6-1974, Part 8: Emerson, Lake & Palmer

The eighth and final set from the 1974 California Jam festival features the prog rock act Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

I have good news and bad news about this set. The good news is that what exists from it here sounds excellent. Most of it was officially released on a DVD, as well as on the album "Then and Now." Two more songs, "Still ... You Turn Me On" and "Lucky Man," are unreleased but sound as good as the others.

The bad news is that the set is incomplete. It is known the band also played "Hoedown" and "Jerusalem" at the start, and "Tarkus" after "Toccatta." If anyone has any music that I missed from this act, or anything else from this festival, please let me know.

Prog rock reached a peak of popularity around this time, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer were one of the biggest prog rock acts. Their album "Brain Salad Surgery" was released in late 1973. It reached Number Two on the charts in Britain, and just barely missed the Top Ten in the US.

This album is 43 minutes long.

By the way, if you put all eight of these California Jam albums together, it totals six hours and ten minutes. I'm guessing there's at least another hour, maybe two, that was performed but isn't included here. 

Note that there was a second California Jam, in 1978. I'll probably try to post that in the future.

However, next up for me in terms of big festivals is the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. There were dozens of big festivals in the early 1970s, but most of them are fading from memory due to lack of quality recordings. The Isle of Wight festival, has great soundboard recordings for nearly all the major acts, making it special. But there are a few that I've heard exist but can't find. For instance, I've only found three songs performed by Kris Kristofferson, but I found someone who had his full set in great quality but no longer has it. It's a similar situation for Sly and the Family Stone, with only some of the set being easily found. If you have any of these hard-to-find recordings, please let me know soon so I can add them in.

77 Toccatta (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
78 Take a Pebble (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
79 Still ... You Turn Me On (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
80 Lucky Man (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
81 Piano Improvisations [Fugue & Little Rock Getaway] [Instrumental] (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
82 Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression, Part 2 (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
83 Karn Evil 9, 3rd Impression (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
84 Pictures at an Exhibition- Great Gates of Kiev (Emerson, Lake & Palmer)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15571929/CalifrniaJmOntrioMtorSpeedwyOntarioCA__4-6-1974_08_EmersnLkePalmr.zip.html

The cover photo, of Greg Lake, is from this exact concert.