Songs Of A Lifetime is
a recording of an evening of intimate, interactive musical reminiscences which
are full of drama, pathos and humor. I approached this release eagerly,
offering as it does a solo concert with music from King Crimson and ELP plus
insightful information and witty anecdotes, and my thoughts turned back to a
similar, but live, evening in the presence of Rick “The Caped Crusader”
Wakeman, who surrounded by banks of keyboards, serenaded the hall with excerpts
from classic prog albums and entertained with many anecdotes.
To
the matter in hand then, with this release from Greg Lake, Songs Of A Lifetime, and a detailed review of how the “evening”
progressed listening to the performance.
Songs Of A Lifetime is
a single disc, which is an initial surprise when the track listing is looked
at, with a running time of around 74 minutes for the 20 tracks. The shortest
track is the album opener, “ 21st Century Schizoid Man,” lasting a
mere 1:00 minute and track 5, “Tribute To The King,” being the longest at 7:03
minutes.
Highlights
from the album after several listens to some very familiar material, are “Lend
Your Love To Me Tonight,” “From The Beginning,” “Epitaph/Court Of The Crimson
King” and “Lucky Man.”
“Lend
Your Love To Me Tonight” (3:39), is originally from The Works by ELP and this version has that superb Greg Lake voice
in fine fettle. This is an excellent version, powerful, atmospheric and outstanding
and is, in my opinion, the best track on the album. The superb acoustic start
to “From The Beginning” (5:04) sets the scene for another stunning version of
an old ELP favorite. The Greg Lake voice is smooth although I did notice that
there is a change in the “quality” of some of the vocals and I assume that has
been caused by taking tracks from shows on different evenings. King Crimson is
the source for “Epitaph/In The Court Of The Crimson King” (5:05) and another
powerhouse for Greg but I started to wonder why the backing material is all
prerecorded, some from original early material and some subsequently all redone
by Greg. I really think that having a live band would have added another
dimension to the evenings. A song that Greg wrote when he was only 12, is the
last of my highlighted tracks, and is the simply stunning “Lucky Man.” This
version is still as magnificent as the original, all those years ago, and that
manic synthesizer outro is still “out of this world.”
I
will admit to being a bit deflated by Songs
Of A Lifetime and there are several reasons. I think, as to why I have this
feeling. Over 30 minutes of the CD is turned over to the anecdotes, which,
interesting and funny they may be, but once heard, I tended to skip past these
tracks on future listens. I also appreciate that Greg was paying homage to the
other artists that he covers, namely Elvis and The Beatles, but I’m not sure
these tracks really work. The final reason that I don’t think Songs Of A Lifetime really hits the nail
on the head, is the fact that the backing to the tracks is all prerecorded and
therefore precludes any form of spontaneity during the performance. At times,
my feeling was that there was a bit of a sterile feel to some of the tracks.
Although
I did find some excellent passages, and his voice is certainly still very
powerful (on some tracks), I did find that looked for the original King Crimson
and ELP tracks once Greg had given a sample of the material.
What
seemed an excellent idea at the outset, didn’t quite work, although if you had
attended one of these evening performances, it would be a great reminder and I
think that a DVD of the evening might have been a more successful way to have
progressed. Songs Of A Lifetime is
certainly worth a listen, but not something that I would go back to time after
time.
3.5/5 Stars
Key
Tracks: Lend Your Love To Me Tonight, From The Beginning, Epitaph, Lucky Man
Jim “The Ancient One” Lawson-MuzikReviews.com Staff
April 20, 2013
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