CANARIO / ALL I WANT IS YOU

I find it difficult to review this single without a smirk on my face especially as this comes from the much maligned ELP anti-classic "Love Beach". It even features a picture sleeve with those cheesy grinning beach bums, with open neck shirts, sink plug medallions adorning hairy chests and interminable Hawaiian palm trees waving listlessly in the breeze. The single is a close up of the infamous cover, and it's better as you cannot see the cliches of beach grass and surf; the desert island cliche. Dang, that album is a bonafide stinker, so releasing a single from it is almost prog suicide, but here it is.

Side 1 is the best song on the whole album, the wonderful Emerson dominated instrumental Canario, showing what the band were still capable when they were'nt selling out to cheesy love songs; side 2 is a cheesy love song, one of the many that permeate and infest the album, the sappy love ballad by Lake, All I Want Is You. The female audience apparently loved this type of drivel smeared tripe. Both tracks are perhaps the very best of "Love Beach" so in essence this little single could effectively replace the detestable album entirely. Perhaps that makes this a worthy purchase alone; and it certainly is a collectors item.

The single is a curiosity item. You don't need to play it, just have it in your collection for a laugh to bring out occasionally and show your friends, "hey guys, I have the single from "Love Beach!" Your friends may retort, "no... really???" In all seriousness this single is a 1 star collectors item that should be dug out of any bargain bin for the simply perplexing reason that it actually exists.

Canario is an adaptation of a piece by Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo, from the latter's concerto "Fantasia Para Un Gentilhombre". Unfairly overlooked due to being hidden away as the last track on side 1 of the ill-fated Love Beach album, this excellent instrumental was wisely chosen to be released as a single in the same year as the album. I say "wisely" not because it did well commercially, which I don't think it did, but rather because it is by far the best track from that otherwise weak album and deserves to be heard on its own without having to sit through five rather dull Greg Lake rockers (one of which is All I Want Is You, which is the B-side of this single), before you get to this little gem.

In my opinion, Canario works much better as a single than Fanfare for the Common Man which was edited for single release. I usually don't rate singles when the material is identical to what can be found on a full length album, but in this case I will make an exception as I want to give this one more star than I gave to the album.

A great instrumental number!