{"id":16484,"date":"2012-08-16T08:32:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T13:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16484"},"modified":"2013-06-15T08:56:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-15T13:56:05","slug":"weigels-prog-rock-series-the-excess-creeps-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/16\/weigels-prog-rock-series-the-excess-creeps-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Weigel&#8217;s prog rock series: the excess creeps in"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The third entry in Dave Weigel&#8217;s excellent and informative <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/arts\/prog_spring\/features\/2012\/prog_rock\/prog_comes_alive_emerson_lake_palmer_at_madison_square_garden_1973_promo_ill_cast_comedy_for_fools_the_birth_of_prog.html\" target=\"_blank\">history of progressive rock<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With more gigs came more pomp. Ian Dove, one of the <em>New York Times<\/em>\u2019 rock writers, approached ELP\u2019s December 1973 Garden shows the way a reporter might write about a fully loaded nuclear submarine. The gear \u2014 <em>tell us about this gear<\/em>. ELP had arrived in Manhattan, Dove wrote, with \u201cover 200 separate items of equipment, valued by customs at just over $100,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Among them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThirteen keyboard units\u201d for Keith Emerson, including a \u201cbrand new prototype Moog synthesizer.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>A $5,000 Persian rug, \u201cfor bass player Greg Lake to stand on while playing.\u201d<\/li>\n<li> A drum kit as complex as a painting by H.R. Giger \u2014 he\u2019d designed the nightmare cover to ELP\u2019s most recent album, <em>Brain Salad Surgery<\/em> \u2014 crafted in stainless steel, topped off by an \u201cold church bell from the Stepney district of London,\u201d surrounded by Chinese gongs. If a stage was equipped right, the kit could rotate 360 degrees while Carl Palmer pounded out the solos in \u201cTarkus.\u201d Cost: $25,000.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Band members got a little tired of talking about all this. Lake showed up for a <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> interview in cheap jeans and pronounced touring \u201cincredibly tiring.\u201d The excess was the sacrifice the band made for you, the fan. \u201cIt is very hard to get something across to 10,000 people with just a piano, a bass, and a set of drums,\u201d Emerson told the <em>Times<\/em>. \u201cIt works fine in smaller places and the recording studio. I always compose on the piano. But in the large arenas where we have to play, everything gets lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Where we have to play<\/em> \u2014 a magnificent early example of the humblebrag.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The third entry in Dave Weigel&#8217;s excellent and informative history of progressive rock: With more gigs came more pomp. Ian Dove, one of the New York Times\u2019 rock writers, approached ELP\u2019s December 1973 Garden shows the way a reporter might write about a fully loaded nuclear submarine. The gear \u2014 tell us about this gear. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,28],"tags":[263,200,915],"class_list":["post-16484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-media","tag-1970s","tag-music","tag-progrock"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4hS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20678,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16484\/revisions\/20678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}