Tag: The Moody Blues

We shall finish this rather long series with some live material from the canonical work of The Moody Blues.  My aim is to present some of my personal favorites, recorded during the period that they were contemporaneous at the time that they were released.

There is a really nice set of videos on YouTube about the Isle of Wight festival in 1970, but they do not fit into the format for this series because they were excerpted from a documentary about the festival and have lots of talk and not much music.  They are worth checking out, but this in not the venue.  When you do, check out the first on when they have some cameras on the back of the sound system.  Notice that many of those Hiwatt amps are labeled “WHO”, and a few are labeled “TULL”.  Yes, they also played there.  What a concert!

Last time we discussed the peak and decline of The Moody Blues and in particular the studio part of the album Caught Live + 5.  I was going to stop with their studio material at that point, but several readers asked me to complete the Mark II band by including the music and my critique of Octave, Mark II’s eighth studio album.

For details about the production, release, and artwork on this record, please use the link just provided.  I think that you can already tell that I am not wild about this record, but it does have its moments.

I do find it to be exceedingly weak in comparison with their canonical material, and the passing of the Mellotron and Chamberlin leaves it without the signature, hauntingly beautiful sound of The Moody Blues.  Another thing that really bothers me is that they had a studio musician to sit in, and to me that is the antithesis to the canonical albums.  His name was R. A. Martin, and he played the exceedingly annoying saxophone parts and some less annoying horns.  In any event, we should just jump into the music.

Last time we discussed Seventh Sojourn, considered by many to the finest album made by the band.  Tonight we shall examine the time after that record.

After Seventh Sojourn was released, The Moody Blues were the top record selling band at the time, and had reached their zenith.  Their success brought a huge world tour.  As a matter of fact, the tour, although broken up into a couple of legs commenced in October 1972, in the US (with at least 13 dates played in late 1972).  They then took a break until the European leg started in September 1973, playing at least 33 dates (some were back in the US).  They played another 12 at least sets in Japan, Hawaii, and California in January and February of 1974.  

Last time whe discussed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and this time we shall discuss Seventh Sojourn, which is the last of what I term the “canonical” Moody Blues albums.  I say this because there were some major changes after the record which we discuss, and their sound was never quite the same.

Many people consider this to be their finest record, and I do not intend to argue with them.  Although my personal favorite is still In Search of the Lost Chord, Seventh Sojourn is certainly a wonderful work.  I have an hypothesis about what that is so, and shall share it with you in a bit.

Once again Tony Clarke produced the record and Phil Travers provided the cover art.  It was a gatefold album, in accordance with the deal that Threshold Records had with Decca because of the expense of the cover format.  I also have an hypothesis about why they insisted on that format.

Last time we discussed A Question of Balance, and tonight we discuss their next album.  Released on 19710723, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was the seventh album by The Moody Blues, and the sixth one with the Edge, Hayward, Lodge, Pinder, and Thomas lineup.  As we shall see next time, by then they had pretty much determined that the original lineup were really quite a different band than the one that was created when Hayward and Lodge joined.

Although not my favorite album by them, it has some really high parts (punintentional).  It charted at #1 in the UK and at #2 in the US, not a trivial accomplishment considering the great music of the period.  Once again Tony Clarke produced it and Phil Travers supplied the cover art for the record.

The album is unusual in several respects.  First of all, the title itself, according to Wikipedia, is a mnemonic memory aide for the treble clef:  E, G, B, D, F.  Secondly, the cut “Emily’s Song” was written by Lodge for his new daughter.  Finally, it is contains the only work written by all five band members.

Last week we discussed To Our Children’s Children’s Children, and this week we shall listen to the next record, A Question of Balance.  I personally like this album very much, second only to In Search of the Lost Chord.

No band members were changed, the same five performing since the second album, this one being their sixth.  Tony Clarke produced, just as he had since the second album.  This album has on it one of their high charting singles, “Question”, and is just marvelous.  Many of the songs from this album became staples for live performances.  Phil Travers once again provided the cover art.  It is their second record on Threshold Records.

Last week we discussed On the Threshold of a Dream, and this week the next album by The Moody Blues, To our Children’s Children’s Children.

The band were the same lineup as from their second record, and after being released on 19691121 charted at #2 in the UK and at #14 the next year in the US.  This is really a very nice album, although not my favorite Moodies one.

This album follows the trend that The Moody Blues were an album rather than a singles band because the only single from it failed to chart.  We discussed this last week and came to the conclusion that the ideas that they were expressing were simply too complex for one or two songs.

I was going to take a break from this series and write about the 1969 TeeVee show Turn-On.  It aired only one episode, and some stations cut the feed during the show, and some Mountain and Pacific Time Zone stations never aired it at all.  If anyone knows where there are links to content, please let me know.  I am one of the few people to have seen the entire first (and only) episode ever to be aired.

Last time we finished up about The Moody Blues third album, In Search of the Lost Chord.  I really thought that this was a fine piece of music.  Their next album, released on 19690425 on Deram Records, it charted at #1 in the UK and at #20 in the US.  This record was really the one that locked their commercial (and artistic) success.

Whilst not as complex and the previous album (the five played only 12 instruments rather than the more than 30, although Hayward played both 6 and 12 string guitar, so the total really should be 13), it is very charming.  Whilst not a single song stands out as extraordinary, as a whole it is a marvelous piece.  Have you heard?

Last time we talked about the origins of The Moody Blues and some of their earlier work.  We ended on “The Best Way to Travel” from In Search of the Lost Chord.

I was called away to help my friend do something to get ready to attend a wedding the next day, so we shall finish that album tonight and start on the next one, On the Threshold of a Dream.  That was also a fine album.

I am very fond of The Moody Blues, although regular readers know that I am at heart a fan of The Who.  This short (probably two or three installments) was suggested to me by my dear friend Steve.  He and go back to the eighth grade, and we still speak almost every day, sometimes more than once per day.

To digress, I am very impressed with modern high speed communication.  We live almost 900 miles apart from each other, yet can communicate by telephone for essentially no cost since we both have unlimited cellular minutes.  When we were in the eighth grade, a landline station to station call cost around 25 cents per minute, end we lived only around 15 miles apart at the time.  How things have changed!

In any event, The Moody Blues were one of the older bands from the UK, having formed on 19640504, with the lineup appearing after the fold.  Mark I was not horribly successful, but Mark II were spectacular.