Pictures at an Exhibition

I know this one is going to be a tough sell for most people. I liked it well enough, although I don't think it's their best work by any means. I don't think this album should have been on this list, it's a live album so that's already strike one. But it doesn't really provide anything that you couldn't get on another better album. I like the whole concept of approaching classical music with contemporary instruments and sounds and I suppose that's why this was included. I don't think I'll listen to this one again, maybe down the road sometime. 3/5

I’d never heard this album before today, and once I finally tracked it down I realised it’s a live, almost entirely keyboard-driven record which straight away wasn’t what I was expecting. The concept is also pretty bizarre: largely instrumental interpretations of a 150-year-old Russian classical piece. Fair play for the ambition, but it all feels very niche.

There are moments where it’s catchy and interesting, and I can appreciate what they’re trying to do, but overall this really wasn’t my thing. I enjoyed Blues Variation and Promenade (Part 2), but beyond that it’s a tough, often dull listen. Too much of it blurs into one long stretch of noise where you’re not quite sure what’s happening or when it’s going to end.

I get why people rate it as bold and different, but for me there are far better live albums that somehow haven’t made the 1001 list.

Favourite track: Blues Variation
Least favourite tracks: Most of the album. It all merges into one confusing sprawl
Album artwork: Cool album cover, easily one of the highlights

Is this meant to be fun? Enjoyable? Sophisticated? Clever? Impressive? An exhillerating display of virtuosity? A great lesson is just because you can doesn't mean you should? It's not even THAT technical is it? I truly never understood who this kind of stuff is meant to be for. There's a crowd going wild, who are you people?! Just listen to classical music, avant-garde experimental music, hard rock, OR do some math homework. But don't try to do them all at once - it just ends up as this tepid psuedo-smart dross.

This is fantastically wonderful. I love that the reviews on here describe the record as well if not better than the positive ones. Video game boss villain aliens invading the Catholic Church indeed!!!

Lame, Lame & Lamer.

I'm the first guy to ever make this joke. Cheers.

I do appreciate the gimmick here but it was t a thing I really liked.

Has it's moments, but also a bit ridiculous and pretentious.

*Started slow but the last 2/3 of the album was great jazz rock
*Impressive that it was live

Did these lads just discover synthesisers that day, or...? Obviously very talented musicians, but the incessant noodling felt like a bit of an assault on my brain. Definitely worse than their Tarkus album that I had already. Hopefully that's all I have to endure from ELP now.

Hard to hate, hard to enjoy. Some interesting explorations into symphonic prog rock which bounds about the place with great enthusiasm but never really delivers a clear vision which balled me over.

Not horrible.

Listen, I like 70s English prog as much as the next red blooded American millennial, but a live version of these toothless, diddling, prententious, go nowhere jamfests which crescendos in an encore of a bad organ rendition of the Nutcracker is NOT one of the albums you need to hear in your lifetime. 1/5

what even was this

I really wanted to like it, but it disappointed me.

I don't know the original piano suite of Pictures At An Exhibition.. But this was o.k.?
The crowd seemed hyped. Some good noise here and there, but not super catchy. Probably some higher art than I am able to take in...

I wanted to like this, because ELP is one of the few prog bands I generally dig. Hell, their other 1971 album that’s also in this book (Tarkus) is pretty damn good in my opinion. Greg Lake is a great vocalist, and between his sick bass tone and Emerson’s killer organ work, they usually just sound like a great hard rock band to me. Additionally, I am nowhere *near* a classical music expert, let alone a Mussorgsky completist, but I know I really like “Night on Bald Mountain”. As I suspected, though, this doesn’t really work for me. I tend to have a disconnect with this style of prog that’s *very* classically influenced; I reeeeeally don’t want to use the “p” word (pretentious) because a) I like hundreds of artists that could be described as such, b) I don’t want to denigrate the effort these musicians have put forth, and c) I don’t think that word necessarily needs to have a negative connotation. So instead, I’ll just say it sounds…a bit hammy? Stilted? It’s most likely a product of me wanting different things out of classical music and rock music, both of which I enjoy on their own. There are moments on here I dig, but I won’t be itching to return to it.

2.5/5

Serious prog, but still fun somehow.

A live album that's as dead as the medievalisms these dudes resurrect, w/ an ear for the pretentious and the sentimental: 'Eroded by times rivers / To the shapes we now possess'; 'Trained apart from houses of stone / Hour of horses pick the bone'; 'Come forth, from love's spire / Born in life's fire.' It's soap-operatic rather than rock-operatic, brimming w/ melodrama and about a thousand meaningless interludes. ELP is missing the H, tho I doubt they found any, releasing seven tapes after this one, and something tells me they're no better than this organ-blasted nonsense. I actually feel for Baba Yaga, stuck in this soulless mess w/o even an attempt to understand where he's coming from or to properly delineate his character. The nerve!

im not weird enough for this yet. feel like i got fucked up at a carnival

These guys knew what drones would sound like before drones were invented, as shown at the start of the song The Old Castle. Either that, or someone was having dental work done and they decided to record it...

Someone said this album sounds like the Catholic Church being invaded by aliens, and that's accurate

Favorite songs: Blues Variation, "Promenade, Pt. 2", Nutrocker, "The Hut of Baby Yaga, Pts. 1 & 2", The Curse of Baby Yaga, The Great Gates of Kiev

Least favorite songs: The Gnome, The Old Castle

3/5