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It’s been about a year since I made the trip to Durham NC to see Greg Lake<\/strong> in concert. In the run-up to that performance, I interviewed Greg<\/a>, and while in the course of our wide-ranging discussion we spoke a bit about the tour, he wished to keep the details mostly under wraps. I knew it would be a one-man show, but didn’t know how exactly Lake would deliver the songs in this career survey of a show called \u201cSongs of a Lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n As it happened, the show was a really well-thought-out affair. Lake appeared onstage amidst a \u201cset\u201d peppered with road cases (stenciled \u201cGreg Lake, London\u201d), subdued lighting and a bit of the good old dry ice fog. Alternately seated and standing, he moved between electric guitar, acoustic guitars, bass guitar and even a bit of keyboards. He was backed by recorded versions of his songs, though this was no mere karaoke performance. He sang all his parts, and the recorded backing wasn’t some soulless MIDI playback; these were modern re-recordings of songs from throughout his career.<\/p>\n Some tunes were classics closely associated with Lake: her performed abbreviated versions of King Crimson<\/strong>‘s \u201cIn the Court of the Crimson King\u201d and \u201cEpitaph,\u201d plus \u201c21st<\/sup> Century Schizoid Man and \u201cI Talk to the Wind.\u201d Those represented four of the total of five songs on Crim’s debut album<\/a>, from a time when Lake was their lead singer and bassist. Along with each of the songs, Lake would bookend each with context and personal anecdotes, so that even those unfamiliar with his work outside Emerson, Lake and Palmer<\/strong> could appreciate the songs more fully.<\/p>\n Several ELP songs figured into the set, of course: the romantic ballads \u201cLend Your Love to Me Tonight\u201d and “C’est Le Vie\u201d plus the hits \u201cFrom the Beginning,\u201d \u201cStill…You Turn Me On,\u201d \u201cTrilogy,\u201d \u201cKarn Evil 9, 1st<\/sup> Impression Part 2,\u201d and \u2013 of course — \u201cLucky Man.\u201d Sometimes Lake would sit down \u2013 usually for the acoustic numbers \u2013 but he was a commanding presence when he strapped on his bass and sang the more rock-oriented numbers, too.<\/p>\n Lake took to the keyboard for a reading of \u201cPeople Get Ready,\u201d and he covered a few other songs that were important to him, songs he’d never previously recorded (or, for that matter, played onstage any time in the last several decades). Elvis<\/strong>‘ \u201cHeartbreak Hotel\u201d and The Beatles<\/strong>‘ \u201cYou’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away\u201d (during which he enlisted the audience’s help on the \u201cHey!\u201d parts) were covered, and for both Lake told interesting stories about those artists.<\/p>\n He even played one left-field original, \u201cTouch and Go,\u201d a song from the period in the 80s when Carl Palmer<\/strong>‘s drum seat was occupied by Cozy Powell<\/strong>. And to the delight and surprise of the audience, he took a fairly lengthy chunk of time to encourage and field questions. True, some of the questions had a Chris-Farley<\/strong>-interviewing-Paul-McCartney<\/strong> quality to them: \u201cRemember the time you played in New York? It was great!\u201d But the whole exchange nevertheless felt very organic, very heartfelt and real.<\/p>\n It’s been about a year since I made the trip to Durham NC to see Greg Lake in concert. In the run-up to that performance, I interviewed Greg, and while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,49,51,56,62,65],"tags":[191,771,780,945],"class_list":["post-3927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-new-release","category-pop","category-prog","category-rawk","category-review","tag-andre-cholmondeley","tag-elp","tag-emerson-lake-and-palmer","tag-greg-lake","cat-44-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32046,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3927\/revisions\/32046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/greg_lake_bk.jpg\")
<\/center>And here’s the most surprising part of all of this: an audio document of that tour titled Songs of a Lifetime<\/em> accurately captures that vibe. Not just the music, singing and stories (Lake was ably assisted by Andr<\/strong>\u00e9<\/strong> Cholmondoley<\/strong><\/a>, a master stage manager\/factotum and renowned musician in his own right), but the feel of the entire evening. (The Q&A sessions aren’t part of the disc, which is fine.) For me, as a souvenir of the concert tour, Songs of a Lifetime<\/em> ranks right up there with the photo I had taken of me and Lake, but purely as music it’s a fine listen, too. More song-oriented than your typical ELP album, even with the stories about Ringo Starr<\/strong>, Paris and the King Crimson album art, Songs of a Lifetime<\/em> is a delightful album, one sure to please anyone who’s enjoyed any phase of Lake’s forty-plus years in the spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"