ELO in Tacoma

[GuitarGeek]

too bad there's no style points in music appreciation

Well, that's the way it is. It's the same way with a band like Def Leppard or Genesis. A lot of people who got into Genesis during their mega-popular 80's period never bothered to investigate their early stuff. At least at the time, I think a lot of people, at least Stateside, were unaware that Peter Gabriel had started his career in Genesis, etc.

I remember, in the 90's, Joe Elliott using the excuse that "We'd have maybe a dozen people going, 'YEAH!' and 10,000 people going, 'What the hell is this?!'" for why they never play anything off their first album in concert. And, unfortunately, he's probably right.

[mozo-pg]

Someone in this thread mentioned Time as a favourite. I bought, at a very reasonable price, all of ELO's albums in a box. Nothing elaborate, just hard paper sleeves and the CD's. I never thought Time was that strong but it does sound like signature ELO. I hear the Beatles influence and there are some of the typical ELO hooks. It's not top shelf ELO but it's still enjoyable. I really enjoy Jeff Lyne's vocals - for 1981, it's not really a bad effort. I can say that my favourite ELO record is Eldorado. I consider this near perfect song writing with excellent melodies and great creatively. Every song is strong, near perfect. The string of On The Third Day, Eldorado, and Face The Music are a major trifecta of rock history. If I had a chance I would go see them in a flash. I would prefer the original line up though. I watched ELO at Wembly recently and it was consistenty good. Such found memories of my youth.

[mozo-pg]

Some of the vocals on Time, remind me of Roy Orbison. Specifically, on The Lights Go Down. I do miss the prominance of Cellos and Violin on this album.

[GuitarGeek]

Some of the vocals on Time, remind me of Roy Orbison. Specifically, on The Lights Go Down. I do miss the prominance of Cellos and Violin on this album.

Mentioning Roy reminds me of a clip I saw, several years after the fact, but it was from the time when they were supporting that first Traveling Wilburys album. I forget who all is in this bit, but I remember there's definitely George and Jeff, and I think Roy too. Anyway, so George is talking about how nervous he was about singing in front of Roy. Without missing a beat, Jeff chimes in with, "You were nervous?! How do you think I felt?! I had to sing in front of Roy Orbison and George Harrison!". I always thought that was hilarious.

But yeah, I do hear the influence of Roy and maybe also Jerry Lee Lewis on Time. The Lights Go Down has always sounded like a Jerry Lee thing to me, while Is This The Way Life's Meant To Be has that Roy vibe to it.

As far as the relative absence of the strings on that album and Secret Messages, I think Jeff was getting bored by that format. I think he wanted to try new things, and with the advent of some of the new synths that were available, I think he felt like he push the strings back. There's also the possibility that given over the use of strings as "sweetener" during the disco era, as he moved into the 80's, Jeff may have felt that was sound ELO was going to have to leave behind if they were to continue making records.

[3LockBox]

If you want to hear a near perfect Orbison take, listen to Endless Lies from Balance of Power, which was originally recorded for Secret Messages. In fact, SM has a different version of Endless Lies as a bonus and I think it was better.

I think Lynne wanted to update ELO's sound and given the theme of Time its probably appropriate that synthesizers supplanted strings and horns. Going back and listening to his '80s album's I do miss the string arrangements, especially on Balance of Power, where pesky '80s production acoutre ma du jour like the preponderance of reverb and squonky sax date the songs to the year if not month the album was released. As nostalgic as everyone seems to be for the classic '70s sound, I don't think anyone misses those '80s production tropes in ELO. As stated in an earlier post, I think that continuing to eschew string arrangements on Zoom was a missed opportunity.

[ThomasKDye]

There's still a fair amount of strings on "Time." I like the little violin run between verses in "Yours Truly, 2095" and the strings add a lot to "Rain Is Falling."

[SteveSly]

There's still a fair amount of strings on "Time." I like the little violin run between verses in "Yours Truly, 2095" and the strings add a lot to "Rain Is Falling."

I am a big fan of "Time", in fact it is one of my favorite ELO albums.

[3LockBox]

There's still a fair amount of strings on "Time." I like the little violin run between verses in "Yours Truly, 2095" and the strings add a lot to "Rain Is Falling."

They sound like synth patches to me but I could be wrong.

[GuitarGeek]

They sound like synth patches to me but I could be wrong.

No, those are real strings.

As nostalgic as everyone seems to be for the classic '70s sound, I don't think anyone misses those '80s production tropes in ELO.

I was gonna suggest that Jeff was one of the people responsible for the "80's production" that everyone hates so much, but look at his credits on Wikipedia, other than ELO, he actually didn't produce much music during the first half of the 80's, which is kinda when those tropes were sort of set in place. And the stuff he did later in the decade, like the stuff he did with Tom Petty and George Harrison, don't seem to be quite as "80's sounding" (apart from the occasional drum machine) as what everyone else was doing at the time.

[3LockBox]

I think there was a record company mandate that all AOR music must have saxophone back then.