Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Love Beach

This album sucks. And it stinks, too. So, the venerable master Eddy Cilia - in whose school I trained - will be happy that someone still remembers one of his most memorable outbursts; I don't recall the occasion for such a statement, but those are trifles.

The great Roberto Caciotto and Giancarlo Radice, who in 1982 wrote the essential «Note di pop inglese», agree on this point. They made me hate Emerson, Lake & Palmer, just like Kiss, before even listening to them.

Instead, Eddy taught me to hate Sigue Sigue Sputnik, but that’s another story and I'll tell it to you soon.

Allow me to introduce myself, as is polite when entering someone else's home for the first time. I am Trashman and I write only about vile works, essentially garbage. But being a person of exquisite taste, my judgment is and will always be the result of prejudice. The vile works on which I will spit my judgment, I have never even deemed worthy of a listen or a look.

But I know that «Love Beach» sucks and stinks.

Because the cover sucks and stinks. The most ignoble ever made, and surely some fool richly rewarded photographer Jim Houghton for the obscenity. Three chumps such that Enzo, about to embark on a sex tour in Poland, resembles Professor Gian Luigi Beccaria.

I don’t know which is Emerson, which is Lake, and which is Palmer.

Anyway...

The first on the left, dressed in white, is the ugliest of the three. He thrusts his pelvis forward as if to flaunt the "package", and right at that height, on the right thigh, there is a disturbing, indecent bulge. From the waist up, better not to speak. Shirt completely unbuttoned on a chest covered with thick hair, topped by a necklace with an indecipherable pendant, all crowned by a face with the dumbest grin I have ever admired.

The one in the center stands out for the red shirt, unbuttoned and knotted at the bottom, as is the custom of the most voluptuous porn stars, but imagining a statuesque breast is one thing, quite another to be faced with a chest that is anything but statuesque, again covered with abundant hair, with the same necklace and indecipherable pendant, all crowned by the second dumbest grin I have ever admired.

And blessed be the cut&paste function.

On the third I have no reason to linger, I only criticize the half-buttoned shirt, from which the inevitable, flowing fleece peeks out.

So tacky that even the cast of «Love Boat» refused to appear. So tacky that not even the photographer who captured Eric Clapton on the cover of «August» managed to do worse.

I can't bring myself to pull out the vinyl, the wall of prejudice is insurmountable. Try to handle that vinyl yourself.

But I have unwavering certainty that «Love Beach» sucks and stinks.

And as if that weren't enough, they also titled an album «Welcome Back, My Friends, to the Show That Never Ends - Ladies and Gentlemen Emerson, Lake & Palmer».

So, for thirty-nine years, this album has sat in my record collection, like leaves on trees in autumn.