Bumped.
A new thread for the 2019 American tour: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=873742
Bumped.
Here’s a very different “Mr. Blue Sky” cover - my thanks to Whack-a-Mole, who posted it in another thread.
I follow Postmodern Jukebox on YouTube, and I saw this when it came out last year. Not only do I really enjoy this version, but the singer is a doppelganger for my niece!
In the news…
Bumped.
ELO’s album Time turns 40:
I’ve always liked ELO. The tour for their Zoom album was an amazing live performance and even featured Rosie Vela. Wow, she’s still a knockout in her 50s. Here’s a cite:
Thanks for the link. I just put it up on the big screen, and so far the music is damn good.
I still watch that concert video fairly regularly – it’s a very good show. The video is from, essentially, a pre-tour dress rehearsal that they did in Los Angeles; the actual tour was cancelled at the 11th hour, due to low ticket sales.
I had tickets for the Chicago stop on the tour, which, as it turned out, would have been cancelled or postponed, anyway, as it was slated for September 12th, 2001.
(Rosie and Jeff were dating at that time, which I imagine is at least part of why she was part of the group.)
This may be of interest, too:
Stumbled on this for the first time the other day – an extra verse and a bizarre (interesting) ending.
This one is pretty recent and a great version:
I had first encountered that additional verse when Jeff released a remastered version of Face the Music in 2006; that verse appears in the “stripped-down mix” which was a bonus track on the re-release.
I don’t think that the song in the YouTube link you shared was ever released in that form by Jeff/ELO; it sounds to me like someone who is reasonably skilled in engineering started with the original album cut of the song, inserted the extra verse from the stripped-down mix (at about 4:09), and then used various instrumental bits from the original cut, and the ending from the stripped-down mix, to create a new ending.
Here’s that “stripped-down mix” – in addition to the extra verse, it’s notable in that it has no string section, no choral voices, and minimal synthesizers.
I like it! It might have been a good idea to have had that version on the original release – see if the lads can pull it off without the strings on every song. Thanks for passing that on.
You are most welcome! I like that version a lot; I think it gives a feel for what they would have sounded like in the studio, with just the five of them (not including the strings players), as a more straight-ahead rock/pop band.
Love the performance by Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem - thanks, WE!
I can understand what people like about their music, and I appreciate the artistry of rocking up an orchestra, I even bought a couple CDs way back when to give them a decent chance. But it doesn’t do anything for me.
ELO was my second-favorite classically inspired rock band. Back in the late 1960s, three Juilliard graduates and a couple of their friends formed a band called the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble. Their music made liberal use of cello, oboe, English horn, and French horn, and their compositions were sometimes based on classical themes, or used classical structures. For instance, their Four Seasons was a set of variations on an original theme.
They attracted the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who featured them in one of his Young People’s Concerts, entitled Bach Transmogrified. Here is the full video. (The NYR&RE appear at the end, around 44:00.) This is probably where I first saw the band. At 13 years of age in 1969, I thought the use of classical instruments to play rock music was pretty cool, and became a big fan of the NYR&RE.
Bernstein’s transmogrifications in the show include a rock song by the NYR&RE based on Brandenburg #5, and Bach performed on the Moog synthesizer. After a huge Moog console is wheeled out, the Little Fugue is played on tape in a performance by Walter Sear, much inferior to Wendy Carlos’ version. Carlos had, of course, played a big role in making Bach hip in the late 60s, with her Switched-On Bach albums (originally released under the name Walter Carlos before she transitioned). Bernstein actually refers to Switched-On Bach, so I wonder why they didn’t use Carlos’ version for the show. (Maybe she was too much of a transmogrification for broadcast television at the time.)
The principals of NYR&RE included Michael Kamen, who later composed the scores for dozens of films and TV shows (the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard series, From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, etc.) and Marty Fulterman, aka Mark Snow, best known for the theme of The X Files.
I have no indication the the NYR&RE directly influenced Jeff Lynne or Roy Wood, but it certainly seems to be a spiritual predecessor to ELO. Although nowhere near as popular or successful as ELO (they only released five albums, and broke up in 1972), I think they arguably produced a more successful and sophisticated fusion of classical and rock than ELO or any other band I know of.
ELO’s version of Roll Over Beethoven first got my attention, and with no new music coming from the NYRE (they dropped the “& Roll” with their fourth album, Roll Over), I became a big ELO fan. I bought all of their early albums (on vinyl, of course) and was enough of a fanatic to reproduce, by hand, the artwork on the t-shirt Lynne is wearing in the top photo here, and silk screen it onto a shirt of my own. (I may still have that shirt in storage somewhere.)
In 1978 I saw them in concert at the Capital Centre near Washington, DC, in the Out of the Blue tour. The giant space ship set started out closed, then its top half rose up with smoke and light effects as they started playing. Here’s a contemporary TV news report. I took photos and wrote a review of the concert for my local newspaper.
I began to lose interest as Lynne moved into disco. I discarded or gave away all of my vinyl about 15 years ago, and the only ELO I own now is ELO Classics. For a while, ELO, like Queen, another band I liked in their heyday, went through a phase of seeming uncool and passe, but the reputations of both have been revitalized in recent years, and I still have a fond place in my heart for them.
Small world – I was at that concert and loved it. I’ve got the concert program. Later, I was miffed when I learned they played to recorded music. C’est la guerre.
Leopold! Leopold!
Huh??