STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)
By:
October 23, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of proto-punk records from the Sixties (1964–1973, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn. Also check out our proto-punk playlist (a work in progress) at Spotify.
EMERSON, LAKE AND PALMER | “BRAIN SALAD SURGERY” | 1973
With their pretension and pageantry, it could be said that, by reaction, ELP created punk — or at least made it necessary to be invented. But they have some more positive claims on it too.
ELP was, of course, Emerson Lake and Palmer, an amalgam of the three virtuosos who comprised the band, and the only thing they ever abbreviated. As a trio, you’d think they exemplified the less-is-everything ethos of punk, but that wouldn’t count Carl Palmer’s 360 array of percussion, Keith Emerson’s infamous banks of towering keyboards, and Greg Lake’s booming master-and-commander vocals. They became stereotyped as the embodiment of all that was too much about “progressive rock,” and often contributed to the stereotype.
Some clashing notes were sounded, though (and I don’t mean the egos of three players who had jumped ship from three then-huge other bands). On ELP’s most-liked album, Brain Salad Surgery, tucked between opuses like a secret note stuffed into the cracks of a brick wall, was “Benny the Bouncer,” a bizarre mix of murder-ballad lyrics and music-hall mirth. Lake snarls his way through the song like Johnny Rotten and there’s even a character named “Sid” — and this is 1973. Though paradoxically, this may be too on-the-nose to be truly prescient; they may (consciously, at least) have been reaching back into the recent past to reference the influential cartoon violence and social anxiety of Clockwork Orange (the other classic of the genre being Elton’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”).
Much more predictive in the simplicity and dissonance of its method (not completely in its sound) was the title track, which was orphaned from the actual album and at first surfaced only on bootlegs and as the B-side of a broadcast-exclusive promotional single. But any punk-to-be who caught it on radio or coming out of a record shop would have heard a common chord being struck.
Lake screams the lyric from start to finish; not the punctuating escalation of ’60s rock but the instant nuclear option of punk. The analogy is apt both to the lyric’s subject matter (vaguely identified government psy-ops) and to its brutal brevity; it’s all slogans and chants, in the paranoid panic of what we’d soon know as punk.
But not that soon; Never Mind the Bollocks was four years off, and Lake’s verses are offset with definitive dainty Emerson synth-noodling. The tension between that instrumental edifice and vocal fury is also an essence of punk, and you see the seams cracking on ELP’s entire era while at least one of them sounds eager to jump off the cliff. “Brain Salad Surgery” feels like the midway point between what punk would become and what Clockwork Orange’s droogs might listen to if they weren’t Beethoven fans like ELP themselves. Economic desperation, class antagonism, and late-Cold War bleakness would explosively settle the musical argument. But ELP set a few fires that stayed burning too.
STOOGE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mandy Keifetz on The Trashmen’s SURFIN’ BIRD | Nicholas Rombes on Yoko Ono’s MOVE ON FAST | David Cantwell on ? and the Mysterians’ 96 TEARS | James Parker on The Modern Lovers’ SHE CRACKED | Lynn Peril on The Pleasure Seekers’ WHAT A WAY TO DIE | Lucy Sante on The Count Five’s PSYCHOTIC REACTION | Jonathan Lethem on The Monkees’ YOUR AUNTIE GRIZELDA | Adam McGovern on ELP’s BRAIN SALAD SURGERY | Mimi Lipson on The Shaggs’ MY PAL FOOT FOOT | Eric Weisbard on Frances Faye’s FRANCES AND HER FRIENDS | Annie Zaleski on Suzi Quatro’s CAN THE CAN | Carl Wilson on The Ugly Ducklings’ NOTHIN’ | Josh Glenn on Gillian Hill’s TUT, TUT, TUT, TUT… | Mike Watt on The Stooges’ SHAKE APPEAL | Peter Doyle on The Underdogs’ SITTING IN THE RAIN | Stephanie Burt on Pauline Oliveros’s III | Marc Weidenbaum on Ornette Coleman’s WE NOW INTERRUPT FOR A COMMERCIAL | Anthony Miller on Eno’s NEEDLES IN THE CAMEL’S EYE | Gordon Dahlquist on The Sonics’ STRYCHNINE | David Smay on The New York Dolls’ HUMAN BEING | Michael Grasso on the 13th Floor Elevators’ YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME | Holly Interlandi on Death’s ROCK’N’ROLL VICTIM | Elina Shatkin on Bobby Fuller’s I FOUGHT THE LAW | Brian Berger on The Mothers of Invention’s WHO ARE THE BRAIN POLICE? | Peggy Nelson on The Kingsmen’s LOUIE LOUIE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!