Been there, heard it...
Dec. 4th, 2008 05:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningSo there I am, browsing in Fopp again. I have no idea how I got there.
My eye is caught by a box set. “Original recordings from the Manticore vaults.” And one of those recordings is of the second ever rock concert I went to: Emerson Lake & Palmer at Hammersmith Odeon, 27 November [erm…] 1972.
ELP were also the first gig I went to – a Melody Maker poll winners concert on a warm September Sunday afternoon and evening at the Oval. (Focus, Argent and Barclay James Harvest also played. And they played Virginia Plain over the sound system.)
This wasn’t the first gig I had been to at Hammersmith Odeon – my parents had taken us to see Duke Ellington a couple of months before (my father took us to the bar in the interval and introduced us to Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves; and Gonsalves stood in a white spotlight and played a wonderful tenor solo).
But it was the first big gig there I went to. I went back many times – I saw a lot of bands at Hammersmith Odeon (Rainbow, the Tubes, Hawkwind, Television… you get the idea).
I can’t really remember much about the gig, actually. I think they played “Pictures at an Exhibition” as an encore (and it is on the CD). But hey, I was only 12.
They were touring to promote their fourth album Trilogy, which I went out to buy the next day – it was the first LP I bought.
ELP are clearly deeply engrained in my musical history, but I don’t have any of their recordings: all the vinyl I had I gave to my brother, since I stopped listening to the overgrown pomposity of their music after hearing Patti Smith, the Clash and the Stranglers. “Brain Salad Surgery” was the last LP I bought by them, and frankly
Still, I just had to buy this boxset: I mean, this is a part of my history. I was there. The recording is awful, compared to modern day recordings – it was a bootleg (and I’ll bet ELP don’t make any money from this set). It features four different concerts over eight CDs (which means I have gone from having no recordings of ELP to having eight hours worth or more in one fell swoop) from 1972 to 1977. I hope the quality on the other CDs is better, but they’ll probably be quite a laugh, anyway.
Strangely, I spent more on this box set than anything else ever in Fopp - £18. Which is only a little over £2 per CD, I guess…
I also bought Dexter Gordon’s “Our Man In Paris”, which I have somewhere on vinyl (but not CD. Obviously), so I have yet another version of A Night In Tunisia, and another of Dexter’s albums, “Clubhouse”, because I noticed it has a version of I’m A Fool To Want You, which I heard on the radio the other day and I thought was absolutely lovely.
I wish I knew how Fopp had the power to make me buy stuff!
Edit: And I forgot to mention... It was watching Carl Palmer at that gig that made me want to play the drums. Ha!
My eye is caught by a box set. “Original recordings from the Manticore vaults.” And one of those recordings is of the second ever rock concert I went to: Emerson Lake & Palmer at Hammersmith Odeon, 27 November [erm…] 1972.
ELP were also the first gig I went to – a Melody Maker poll winners concert on a warm September Sunday afternoon and evening at the Oval. (Focus, Argent and Barclay James Harvest also played. And they played Virginia Plain over the sound system.)
This wasn’t the first gig I had been to at Hammersmith Odeon – my parents had taken us to see Duke Ellington a couple of months before (my father took us to the bar in the interval and introduced us to Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves; and Gonsalves stood in a white spotlight and played a wonderful tenor solo).
But it was the first big gig there I went to. I went back many times – I saw a lot of bands at Hammersmith Odeon (Rainbow, the Tubes, Hawkwind, Television… you get the idea).
I can’t really remember much about the gig, actually. I think they played “Pictures at an Exhibition” as an encore (and it is on the CD). But hey, I was only 12.
They were touring to promote their fourth album Trilogy, which I went out to buy the next day – it was the first LP I bought.
ELP are clearly deeply engrained in my musical history, but I don’t have any of their recordings: all the vinyl I had I gave to my brother, since I stopped listening to the overgrown pomposity of their music after hearing Patti Smith, the Clash and the Stranglers. “Brain Salad Surgery” was the last LP I bought by them, and frankly
Still, I just had to buy this boxset: I mean, this is a part of my history. I was there. The recording is awful, compared to modern day recordings – it was a bootleg (and I’ll bet ELP don’t make any money from this set). It features four different concerts over eight CDs (which means I have gone from having no recordings of ELP to having eight hours worth or more in one fell swoop) from 1972 to 1977. I hope the quality on the other CDs is better, but they’ll probably be quite a laugh, anyway.
Strangely, I spent more on this box set than anything else ever in Fopp - £18. Which is only a little over £2 per CD, I guess…
I also bought Dexter Gordon’s “Our Man In Paris”, which I have somewhere on vinyl (but not CD. Obviously), so I have yet another version of A Night In Tunisia, and another of Dexter’s albums, “Clubhouse”, because I noticed it has a version of I’m A Fool To Want You, which I heard on the radio the other day and I thought was absolutely lovely.
I wish I knew how Fopp had the power to make me buy stuff!
Edit: And I forgot to mention... It was watching Carl Palmer at that gig that made me want to play the drums. Ha!