Unknown Soldier

ELP's Love Beach must rank as one of the worst albums ever recorded, I shuddder just thinking about it.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

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I bought Love Beach for 50 Cents recently, with the plastic and 99 cent price tag still on. I have to admit that it was worth it for the T-Shirt, Jacket, and Jogging Shorts flyer. I actually like a lot of ELP's albums, but that one was branded Cut Out before the mark down. The Officer and an Gentleman suite on Side Two was barely passable, but not much.

Key

I have Love Beach on vinyl as well. easily one of the worst records i've ever heard. I listened to it once.

Unknown Soldier

Listen to it again and you'll realize its even worse than you thought. The only other album by a critically acclaimed major player that was as bad as Love Beach was Clash's Cut the Crap.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

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I just listened to Side Two of Love Beach again. The first two parts are OK, but I must have been that forgiving when I first heard parts three and four. Actually, the Piano solos made me go back to something far more better...The Nice's Five Bridges Suite.

Cut the Crap at least had "This Is England." I'm still trying to find something good about the rest except for that it did dabble with some electronic sounds, but not too successfully.

Love Beach, however, had nothing as great as that in my opinion.

Both were bad, but they were at least making the best of a bad situation.

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This went from discussing about Asia to throwing in something about The Clash. It's going all over the place! (Laughs!)

Key

I feel like the whole album is just about "the one he loved" and it's ok if one song is like that, but every damn song? Really?

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I would have to take a listen to Side One again, but I think there was an instrumental at the end of that.

From what I understand, Love Beach was both a contract filler and an attempt to go Stadium Rock. It was seriously getting to the point when bands like Genesis were crossing over to the Mainstream, and that Rock in general (especially in the US) was already moving there due to business decisions. so it was possibly made with that kind of goal in mind. Hence all of those songs about "the one he loved," meaning "ELP have been neutered for your programming pleasure." A financially disastrous tour with an orchestra that had to be just ELP for a number of dates (Reading the Mojo Prog issue) in my opinion was also a possible extra incentive to go the safe route. After some time away from the music world, two Works collections that saw diminishing returns which saw #2 go Cut-Out in the US with ease, and the 1977 (?) tour were possibly some major signs to change, but it was like a Late 20-something trying to fit into the Jeans of their Teen years.

The song that cracks me up is "Taste of My Love" where almost every Non-PC Rock and Roll Backstage Fantasy Cliche was thrown in, as if that was going to get the FM Radio programmers in the US playing the album. I don't mind those songs, but coming from the usually literate ELP with Pete Sinfield writing the words, that screamed of Last Ditch Attempt.

It had to take a break to get them all to cross over in one way or another. Fans knew that Love Beach was half-hearted, even the suite on Side Two.

On the original pressings, it also should be noted that there was no Producer listed. If that was not a major hint, nothing was.

Kind of makes you wonder if there were already Cut Out pressings made during the second week of its release. Certainly not, but that album gave that kind of feeling. From my experience, it's rare to see a US pressing that does not have that "cut" on the cover.

silverwick

The album that disappointed me most

would this make a new message chain?

Howard the Duck

Genesis' Calling All Stations

gawd!

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.