Works Volume 2 is the sixth studio album by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, released in 1977. Unlike Works Volume 1, Works Volume 2 was a single album and it was seemingly a compilation of leftover tracks from other album sessions. While many derided the album for its apparent lack of focus, others felt that it showed a different side of the band, with blues, bluegrass and jazz being very prominent as musical genres in this recording. The remastered 2017 version of the album is expanded to a double-CD by the inclusion of the complete Works Live, an extended version of Emerson, Lake & Palmer in Concert.
Songs
"When the Apple Blossoms Bloom...", "Tiger in a Spotlight" and "Brain Salad Surgery" had been recorded at the 1973 sessions for the album Brain Salad Surgery but did not appear on it. Keith Emerson's cover of "Honky Tonk Train Blues" had been released as a single in 1976, reaching #21 in the UK pop charts. Volume 2 also included a stripped-down version of Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas". An orchestral version of the song had previously been released as a solo Lake single in the UK in 1975 and became something of an annual Christmas standard there.
Reception
The album was not as commercially successful as the band's previous albums; it reached No. 20 in the UK and No. 37 in the US. Three tracks from the album were released as singles: "Tiger in a Spotlight", "Maple Leaf Rag", and "Watching Over You". In a contemporary review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice facetiously remarked that it is "news" when "the world's most overweening 'progressive' group" makes an album "less pretentious than its title", but questioned whether it is "rock and roll". In a retrospective review, AllMusic's David Ross Smith felt that it was "highly underrated" and wrote that the album's "brief pieces sustain interest; there really isn't a weak tune in the set." The two Works albums were supported by North American tours which lasted from May 1977 to February 1978, spanning over 120 dates. Some early concerts in 1977 were performed with a hand-picked orchestra and choir, but the idea was shelved after 18 shows with the band due to budget constraints. The final concert with the orchestra and choir took place on 26 August 1977 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal that was attended by an estimated 78,000 people, the highest attended Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert as a solo act. According to Lake on the Beyond the BeginningDVD documentary, the band lost around $3 million on the tour. Lake and Palmer blame Emerson for the loss as the use of an orchestra on tour was his idea.
