10538 Overture. Hey,Jonh!
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This, to me, is THEE Electric Light Orchestra. I don't want to sound like a snob, but frankly I have had no use for the more mainstream ELO after this. Lynn and Wood struck that perfect note and it just does not exist in any other time. I suppose would like later stuff if I hadn't heard this. But HERE the songs are so personal, poetic, poingent. The music so different from what was going down, even given its obvious and acknowledged predecessors (the Beatles). This is one of the records I rushed home to listen to. One that I avidly played for everyone who came to visit.
So, I kind of miss it, now that I don't have a working turntable to play my old EMI Harvest record. So, when I stumbled upon and started reading Jonh's satyrical story "Tripping Down Blackberry Way", about a guy who obsesses on the Move after reading a magazine review, it reminded me to look up possible CD reissues. Wow! It seems there is a firestorm of controversy surrounding the newer remastered version with so much noise reduction a couple of reviewers on Amazon.com just puked all over the place. Many others, who sound like people who know their stuff, defend it. I do not recall noting the original as particularly bright and airy or sonically detailed. It was pretty dense and heavily overdubbed. It also had a really frustrating problem: it sounded like a mixing board had a scratchy pot, because every time the cellos were about to make an enterance, they were announced by a "kkkkkKKKK". Bad enough, but nuts-driving with headphones. I was going to ask if anyone knew if this was remedied on CD, but now I hope some of you will weigh in on the larger issue as well. Jonh, I'm looking across the pond to you. (By the way, Amazon had the newer "remastered" release for $7.99 and the older CD for $299.88. What's up with that?)
Also, Jonh, I went back and finished reading the story. Honestly, so true. Especially in those days a just-this-guy-you-know could get worked up in a vacuum reading music reviews and drawing it out to a logical/ridiculous conclusion really is breathtaking. Very much enjoyed it. I read a lot of reveiws, classical, rock and jazz, and scoured the deep-catalog fermaments (record stores) we had in those days for the most arcane. Now, you can turn to the computer and hear samples (though samples are sometimes misleading or not helpful).
Comments (15)
Wow! Where did you read that piece?? I wrote that in 1972 or 73. I suppose we should fill in the gaps for other MOGgers: the story - somewhat autobiographical - was about someone becoming obessesed with The Move on the basis of what he read about them but never having heard them. Because back in the jurassic period, a lot of British records never got released or imported into the US. In my case, I read about them via Nik Cohn in a US magazine. He loved them with more verbal velocity than Joe Boyd's description in 'White Bicycles' but the same message: this was the most amazing group in existence, better even than The Who. It was years before I actually heard them. I think I found a US release single of 'I Can Hear The Grass Grow" in a junk shop for 10 cents and I wasn't disappointed.
I'm with you on your opinion of ELO, though 'Mr. Blue Sky' is a fabulous piece of pop. I was even more dismayed that Roy Wood turned Wizzard into such a rubbish, superficial band when he was capable of so much more.
BTW, in the row of screens that show up when the video ends, is a great live version that segues into 'Do Ya', the subject of recent discussion and an excellent reworking by Neil Nathan.
I guess Mog has a mind of its own or maybe it's Rhapsody's. The Album was supposed to be ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA. that's what I typed in and it responded with that title. Where this STRANGE MAGIC title is concerned, I had nothing to do with it. But the original album was issued in the US as NO ANSWER, legendarily because someone from the US company called over there to ask what the title was. No one answered so he/she made a note, "No Answer". So, what do you think of the reissue?
That story is in The Da Capo Book of Rock and Roll Writing. After that discussion on the Master Musicians of Jajouka I was intrigued and looked you up. That was one of the results. Haven't really explored other results. Honestly, where do people get the time?
Yes. I remember digging up and listening to a little post-ELO Roy Wood and thinking it had to be a different guy. But, like you, I have always gone to the second hand marketplace where great discoveries and low-priced disapointments are available.
(You mentioned Real World and Womad labels. They certainly have put out some wonderful stuff.)
BTW I saw that live version with Do Ya, I think. I didn't know that stuff would follow onto my post. Nice, but for the post, I wanted to give a flavor of what the original performance sounded like at the time and show all the weirdness and hair. Also, I didn't want to post Do Ya. Actually, I think a live version is generally preferred because I really want to see them perform rather than the video manipulation. A really exciting show. The same song gets a more chamber performance in some other videos.
Well that's interesting about the book. 1/ It's edited by a guy I know. 2/ I knew nothing about it. 3/ Let me reach for my lawyer.
The editor Clinton Heylin wrote a really good book on the history of bootleg records and anothe ron Orson Welles.
I was a big fan of the Move and when this came out in the US I bought the import because a lot of imports were available at the time.And the official US album hadn't been released.
I didn't know it was called No Answer until I got the CD. I really don't see the differance from the CD. I got the CD for the extras.Except when listening to analog vs digital the actual album wins. I have always loved the interplay between Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood and was disappointed when they parted ways. I do like ELO until the Out of Blue Album however I think this first record is one of the most incredible records I have heard, It is not an easy record to listen to and certain songs have become favorites over the years.I don't think they toured the US with this record but for me this is the defining record of the Move/ELO.I have seen the Jeff Lynne ELO many times live until Out of the Blue when I saw that they were using taped music to enhance their live show.
C - I hear you about not easy to llisten to. Although I revel in difficult music, I drive others out of the room screaming. I've been watching YouTube videos of Carla Kihlstedt and I'm ordering Two Foot Yard. Remember the Flock? Their self titled first album and Dinosaur Swamp are old staples of mine for clearing the room. Really heady stuff. Charles Ives, who famously admonished a man in the audience who booed Carl Ruggles' Sun Treader that he should, "stand up to strong music like a man." A review of one of my Ives records proclaimed, "Sure-fire lease-breaking stuff!" And we were just discussing the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Different is good. As long as it's good and different.
So you prefer the analog phonograph record to the CD of this one?
Jonh - Maybe your accountant knows about it. I don't know why I had a funny feeling when I mentioned it. I think they use that book as a text book some places. What I read was an online sample which was all but two pages in the middle. But I got the gist.
yes i remember the flock, never saw them live but have both albums on vinyl. prefer the vinyl when I can. I grew up on Frank Zappa have all 52 releases and on Detroit garage rock and Motown, so i have a very eclectic taste.
Great. Have seen the Mothers twice. Really mad about his death. Pointless.
I like this "10538 Overture" that ELO plays. Never heard it before.
What caused Frank Zappa's early death?
It was prostate cancer in 1993 just two and a half weeks shy of his 43rd birthday. I understand that he was averse to going to the doctor and might have lived longer had he gone sooner. He was born in Baltimore, where I come from. I've read that he was a self-taught musician and composer and that he issued more than 60 "releases". How does one define a release?
Here's another example from that first ELO album. Haunting. The lyrics, mellody and cellos just pull at your heart strings, so to speak. I have chills.
That's quite a strong lead voice that guy has, accetuated perhaps by how hidden his face is. Those things you mentioned pulled vigorously at my heart strings as well (seriously).
Decades ago at some midnight movies show I saw a black and white independent movie from the early 1960s written and I think directed by [our] "Zappa."
Roy Wood's voice is a definite asset to this song and this album where employed. It has an etherial aspect, supported visually by his white hair and beard (which turned brown again after leaving ELO). The pathos of the lyric and the melody with swelling accompanyment changing through dissonance to resolution, And That Voice! I woke up during the night twice and in the morning today and the first thing I heard in my head was thist.
Spike, I must say, I didn't know of any Zappa-directed movies before his c0-directed 200 Motels in 1971. You might be thinking of Run Home Slow (1965) for which he provided the music. I never saw it. Don't know whether it was b&w. If you recall a scene in which the original version of "Duke Of Prunes" was played over a certain memorable scene. In Zappa's own words, "In this scene, a nymphomaniac cowgirl is getting "plooked" by a hunchback, next to the rotting carcass of a former donkey. Really."
He did the music for The World's Greatest Sinner (1962). In that same year. he also appeared, and this really impresses me, on the Steve Allen Show, playing the bycycle. Steve Allen was a great mensch and tasty musician.
Spike 1, thank you for compensating for my oft-derelict memory. Zappa composed the score for The World's Greatest Sinner, it seems. That four-part
Steve Allen video is a perfect balance between difficult Arte and crass entertainment.
Yeah. He mentioned that movie and one of his first records put out on a local label. How's Your Bird. So it was educational for me.
Here's that Whisper In The Night video that got withdrawn above, for reasons I do not know.