or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

With everyone from 2 Many DJs to El-P sampling and name-dropping Emerson, Lake and Palmer these days, you might be wondering whether the much-maligned kings of progressive rock warrant the almighty Second Chance. But in all truth, there aren’t too many bands less deserving of a critical rehabilitation than ELP. Before I explain why, rest assured that I have no intention of arguing otherwise here. And even if I were to, I can safely say that their Love Beach wouldn’t be the place to start.

Perhaps here I should note that I’ve never actually heard Love Beach. That’s right: I’ve never heard the album I’m writing about. And you’re just going to have to trust me. Now of course, writing about something you don’t know is hardly without precedence – certainly not in rock criticism, where encyclopedic knowledge is often valued above genuine understanding. As if to prove the point, rock critic emeritus Richard Meltzer admitted well into his career that many of his earliest record reviews were written without ever having listened to their subjects. The joke was that nobody could tell the difference.

Having already told you outright that I haven’t heard the record in question, I clearly have no intention of fooling you into thinking otherwise. It doesn’t matter, because whether you’ve heard it or not, Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Love Beach remains among the worst records in the history of rock n’ roll.

Now out with the dirty little secret: I fucking loved ELP in high school. Everything about them: the mullets, the endless solos, the forty-odd tons of touring gear. I couldn’t get enough of Greg Lake’s poesy (sample: “Death...is...Life!!! ”), Keith Emerson’s stage antics—which once included rubbing a Moog ribbon controller against his gold lamé-ed posterior—or the sledgehammer reworkings of classical pieces that put the “bomb” in “bombast.” If Good Taste was, er, lacking in ELP, I sure as shit couldn’t have cared less. No matter how many sections, sub-sections or pointless meter changes a song of theirs had—and there were many, I assure you—I treasured every last lick of it. You could safely say that I was about as undiscriminating a fan as those rich pricks could’ve asked for.

And you know what? I STILL stayed the fuck away from Love Beach.

Why? Well, let’s look at the band’s history for a moment. As one of rock’s first “supergroups,” comprised of King Crimson, the Nice and Atomic Rooster alumni, Emerson, Lake and Palmer enjoyed massive worldwide success during their first five albums, charged with carrying the progressive rock mantle more than anyone else—Yes or Jethro Tull included—in all its excess and glory. Following their triple-disc live album, Welcome Back My Friends To the Show That Never Ends (talk about brilliance – even the title goes on forever!), ELP took what was apparently a much-needed break from recording and touring at the end of 1974, ending what fans might refer to as the band’s “classic period.”

When the trio returned in 1977, it was, as is the case with these things, an event. The group released, about six months apart from one another, the much-heralded Works Volumes I and II, three discs of...outtakes, Christmas songs and solo tracks! Oh, and a 13-minute epic about pirates! And I can only imagine after a three-year absence the breathless excitement with which their fans listened to Keith Emerson’s Piano Concerto (up there with Brahms’ Second, I’m sure), ballads that even Neil Diamond would have rejected and the succinctly titled “When the Apple Blossoms Bloom In the Windmills of Your Mind I’ll Be Your Valentine.”

Unsurprisingly, the public didn’t really buy Works, Volumes I or II, perhaps a mite bit unsure of what to do with “Maple Leaf Rag” or “Show Me the Way To Go Home,” ELP-style (and really, who could blame them?). Following a disastrous tour recorded with 70-piece orchestra in tow, nearly bankrupting the poor slobs in the process, the group—never much for old-fashioned “inspiration”—were totally drained and debased. They wanted to and should have called it quits. But Atlantic Records’ honcho Ahmet Ertegun, unsatisfied with what at that point would have been a somewhat (in ELP terms) dignified exit when there was another dollar to be squeezed out, insisted they fulfill their contract with the label.

Thus in 1978, ELP unleashed Love Beach on a world that would never understand. It’s here that I digress to admit to Dirty Secret #2: nearing the end of my fascination with ELP, I had a dream that I was in Second Coming Records in Cambridge, MA, where I shopped then. In that dream, I purchased Love Beach...with a fucking BAG OVER MY HEAD. I remember the shame with which I carried the record to the counter and the disapproving look on the clerk’s face. As I look back, there’s no question about it: this record was haunting me in my subconscious. Love Beach was following me.

(If that dream wasn’t strange enough, in researching this review, I came across this website in which I discovered yet another who had been persuaded to buy Love Beach in the REM state. Truly, ELP are the Freddie Krueger of progressive rock)

On the basis of the cover alone, you might understand my preternatural fear of the record; in front of what looks to be the chintziest “island” set in history, replete with what appear to be fake palm trees and sunset, stand our heroes, Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer, their bare, medallion-emblazoned chests failing to distract our attention from their polyester-panted crotches which I am certain are stuffed with only the finest of imported produce. As Ian Penman so aptly put it, the trio looked as if they were being chased by a Giant Barry Gibb.

But even in their prime, the Bee Gees never unleashed a composition as rewarding as Love Beach’s “Taste Of My Love,” co-written by Lake’s former King Crimson cohort, lyricist, Peter Sinfield, which features a lyric imploring the protagonist’s tastee to “climb on my rocket.” In case it isn’t completely obvious at this point, we’re talking about a band that, to put lightly, doesn’t exactly specialize in lyrics about the intimacies of love. Sure, they’d written a few ballads here and there, but by and large, ELP composed 20-minute suites about evil carnivals of the future and prehistoric armadillo tanks (really), not fucking the shit out of some groupie in a hotel room. But it won’t surprise you to learn that subtlety was never ELP’s greatest strength.

Love Beach has other exciting tracks, I’m sure—the cut-rate classical “Canario” and the epic “Memoirs of An Officer and A Gentlemen” (gerbils beware) to name a few—but based on the evidence, there’s no reason to go out of one’s way to find out.

If you think me snarky for picking on a band at their lowest point, understand that we are talking about a band I owned every other record by, and who made considerable millions from their success. A band whose singer reportedly kept live lobsters in his bathtub to satisfy his seafood habit. Who was said to have installed urinals in his home so because, as one writer put it, “he was fed up with the sheer drudgery of lifting and lowering toilet seats” (See, I can relate to that. When you’ve just polished off your eighth lobster, the last thing you want is to be bothered to lift a toilet seat while urinating. That’s why I love ELP: they’re classy ). Based on all the evidence available bar the music itself, we can safely say that Love Beach was, if not the group’s masterpiece, its essence to be sure. Even ELP’s most vitriolic detractors must confess to the group’s considerable showmanship, chops and pop-sense. But with Love Beach, the band was even stripped of that, leaving only the foul stink of, in industry parlance, “contractual obligation.”

As I wrap up this review by shamelessly introducing something contemporary to the proceedings, it occurs to me that perhaps there’s something a little sad about not having groups like ELP to kick around anymore. There’s nothing fun about ripping apart the newest Faith Hill record or even remarking that Christina Aguilera looks like a whore in her videos, largely because it’s all so market-tested and focus-grouped. It’s not even a good time to debate how artistic or pretentious the non-title of Sigur Rós’s new record is. It doesn’t really matter.

ELP? They were hubris incarnate. No one was telling them to wear those medallions, eat those lobsters or stick those knives into the synthesizers on-stage. To these three uneducated, working-class guys, making a fool out of yourself was just part of how an entertainer behaved – taste be damned. Or flouted, even. You did it for the fans, who in turn reinforced your belief that you were some kind of cannon-straddling Wagnerian hero.

Love Beach, alas, was hardly the apex of that aesthetic, merely the nasty hangover from too many years of that delusion – “Pomp and Circumstance” played on an out-of-tune euphonium. To be sure, such an unhealthy surplus of self-esteem was a good time in its day, but by Love Beach, even that wasn’t much fun.

But it sure was funny. Or so I’m told.