Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Trilogy

THE REVIEW

There was a time in our lives when we needed to confront the great albums of the past, urged by uncles, older siblings, and classmates repeating years again, lucky witnesses of an unrepeatable era that was slowly coming to an end, overtaken by colorful glitter and sparkling light shows.
It was then that our bedrooms suddenly transformed into infernal circles where the reassuring hit parade songs gave way to the tormented guitars of the Who and the powerful high notes of Ian Gillan, mercilessly pouring out from improbable record players and homemade speakers.
That was the period when interest in music became predominant, the era of records exchanged between school desks, tapes recorded multiple times with the best album each time, the first Purple/Zep-pelian binges, and then ever more refined listens, the discovery that Pink Floyd existed before The Wall and that Keith Emerson was not just that crazy guy who drifted with his piano among the waves in a famous TV theme.
It was the era of Trilogy, long courted for that splendid cover and the curiosity aroused by listening to Tarkus, too fundamental not to deserve precedence over everything else. Emerson Lake and Palmer, the first great supergroup because three is the perfect number, three extraordinary musicians, three minds merging into a single, unique, fundamental work. The Endless Enigma, Trilogy, two masterpieces that shine with their own light, but both are here, and it's still not enough. The refined From the Beginning, the intense Living Sin, the cheerful The Sheriff, Hoedown, and the mystical Abaddon's Bolero, ending in that beautiful sunset in which I lost myself so many years ago.

To Keith, with all the love in the world (1944-2016)