Wilkommen Back My Friends, to the Blitzkrieg That Never Ends

One band that we think has never gotten its proper due is Hitler Lake & Palmer.  We know, we know--everybody missed Keith Emerson.  But when Adolf Hitler unseated him in the Madison Square Garden putsch of November, 1977, "Der Fuhrer" brought more to the table than just a luger and a toothbrush mustache.  An experienced performer, Hitler brought the crowd to its feet with such songs as "Mein Kampf is Your Comforter" and the 4-year "Barbarossa" song-cycle, with its climactic finish, "Funk in the Bunker."  Admittedly, the band didn't win any reader's polls.  Hitler's tendency to shriek won him the Rolling Stone "Yoko Ono" Award in 1978, and his personal behavior--he was responsible for attempting to send almost 30 HLP roadies to concentration camps for being Jewish or "insufficiently committed to a 1,000 Year Reich of Musik"--won him a reputation as a prima donna.  But that said, nowhere will you hear a more committed 11-minute song to the need for Lebensraum than the rondeau-influenced "My Livingroom Will Seat 90 Million."  And God Bless Lake and Palmer--not the brightest chips of anthracite in the coal mine, it took them almost 3 years to figure out that Hitler was an extremely evil man.  Greg Lake said, "No one who's a vegetarian could possibly be a bad person."  As for Palmer, his response to Hitler's notoriety was the same as his response to everything else: "Me want bigger gong." 

Comments

[scott]

Karn Evil Nein.

Hello, Mike.

[JEB]

"Fanfare for the Ubermensch".

[gillian]

"Mein Kampf is Your Comforter" is one of the funniest things I have ever read.

[UF MIKE]

Hello, Scott! JEB, that is funny and I wish I'd thought of it. Gillian, thank you darling. You are the wind beneath my mangy wings.

[Jan Martin Löhndorf]

... although the original idea of a blitzkrieg is that it ends a.s.a.p.- but after all, you can't get enough of a good thing. Except one is from poland.
Gabba gabba heil.

[Martijn]

It's a good thing Hitler got kicked out of Wings, or the world would have been deprived of this super group.

(Gabba gabba heil made me smile!)

[Bullet Holes]

Rommell plays the Half-track on Tarkus.
Haha.

[Martijn]

JEB, I really enjoyed reading a number of your pitches this morning. Jewels in the Crown of Failure! And hilarious too.