My all-time favourite record, age 14
If Nick Hornby is right and the defining characteristic of the music geek – apart from sneering contempt for other people's musical tastes – is the obsessive making of lists, then I became one at the tender age of 14. For it was then that I first put pen to paper and breathlessly compiled a list of my 10 All Time Favourite Records. I actually don't remember what nine of the songs on that list were but the coveted Number 1 slot was given to "Tightrope" by the Electric Light Orchestra.
ELO were the first band I was really nuts about. I bought all their albums and singles, read everything I could about them, memorized all the lyrics, wore the underpants, and they were the first band I saw live. For a long time that was the sort of thing you were supposed to be mildly ashamed of, but they seemed to have attained a little hipster cachet recently what with "Mr. Blue Sky" (I'd kill to still have my blue vinyl 45 of that) being used in trendy movies, and bands like The Flaming Lips and The Delgados clearly owing them a sonic debt. So I was 30 years ahead of the curve there.
But I digress. "Tightrope" is the opening track of their 1976 album "A New World Record" which is probably their shining hour, and at the time this seemed to me to be as perfect as music could get. It's a pretty simple tune but Jeff Lynne's production treats it like it was the Sistine Chapel and achieves the rare feat of merging Pomp Rock with Blue Eyed Soul. It starts off with a huge symphonic fanfare of strings and choir so over the top it would make Cecil B. DeMille blush, then segues into a jaunty and insanely catchy pop tune with some female backing singers that give it a touch of soulful sass. I always wondered who those girls were, ELO never credited them on the album.
A year or so after this came out I had my head completely turned by punk (I was a little late to the party) and it suddenly seemed a bit naff - it just couldn't compete with "All Mod Cons" — so I filed ELO away with my Marvel comics and flares as artifacts of a previous life. But like a lot of things from the past it's gone through the window marked "naff" and come back in again sounding not all that bad, quite good in fact. Probably wouldn't make my Top 50 today (no, I don't have a Top 50 written down) but that's nothing to be ashamed of.
Download: Tightrope - Electric Light Orchestra (mp3)
10 Comments:
That's cruel but bloody funny.
One piece of ELO trivia I've always remembered is the vocoder bit at the end of Mr. Blue Sky says "please turn me over" (the track was at the end of side 3 of "Out of The Blue" of course)
hey lee, lovin your work here (as always) - however, am i doing something wrong with your site feed? keeps sending me to a completely different blog - weirdness.
happy christmas to you and your family!
Thanks for pointing that out Steve. That other blog is a really early version of this one, I'm amazed it's still up.
I've fixed the feed now, it should be the right one.
How old are you, Lee? Across an ocean, in a city by a lake, I was listening to the same album over and over, along with a stack of Pink Floyd, Bebop Deluxe, Yes, Alan Parsons Project, etc.
And then I heard New Rose by The Damned and it was all over.
Of course, thanks to the marvel that is my iPod, mp3 blogs and file sharing, I've found myself rediscovering all those records again while compiling decade playlists. Nice to know someone else can come out of the closet with this shameful admission as well, mate.
Ha ha ha... I just bought the remastered reissue of this album about a month ago. I was in the car with the kids on the way to the record store and we heard "Living Thing" on the radio. Next thing you know I'm buying the CD. The kids love it, although the oldest daughter did comment on how it sounded an awful lot like the Beatles - I got a kick out of that!
What is with you Brits and ELO? Geez. Didn't they win the Eurovision contest?
Ok I'm kidding. I saw them on that spaceship thing tour in 78?
I'm still midly ashamed of it.
Grooving on the new blog - Merry Xmas.
Saw the spaceship tour, too - on our national broadcaster, via a televised concert, back in '78. I thought it was pretty rad. About a month later, they had a show on British punk rock on Late Night with Tom Brokaw or something like that, which featured the Damned recording their first album in a week, which was somehow considered improbable and highly unprofessional - which I guess it would be, if you were ELO. Or ELP.
wasn't it Jello Biafra that was inspired to start a band by the news that ELO planned to hologram themselves around the world, collecting the same revenue at each location as if they were there performing live, so disgusted he was by the concept of this musical travesty? so ELO was therefore influential in the formation of one of the most successful punk bands of all time. kinda ironic, no?
You know what, utterly unironically I still love that song. In fact, it was on my iPod not 30 minutes ago. and anyway, ANWR is a fabuluous album. It's difficult to write an album where pretty much any one of the songs on it could have been a top 10 single, especially where the songs aren't brainless crud.
ELO have always had this sort of looked-down-upon attitude by musos and fashion victims. I was only about 7 at the time of punk but even at 9 or 10 I loved stuff like XTC and The Jam, but it didn't stop me liking this as well.
So you know what? It's OK to like All Mod Cons (a great album) and ELO. And no one should be able to tell us otherwise.
Well, I remember a mate of mine who lived in a shitty little bedsit in Weston Super Mare and me and a friend used to go and keep him company as it could get pretty miserable, and he kept playing the ELO stuff and I really got into it, I am still not ashamed to admit it and in fact still rate them, As for Pink Floyd, I never liked them at the time but over the last 5 years or so i have really got into them.
It's funny while going through thousands of mp3's i have started doing something, I have never done before, deleting music. Finally I am able to get rid of tracks that just don't do it for me any more, I feel so grown up.
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