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Electric Light Orchestra

16:16 / 13.03.07

In the "King of the World" thread...

Do you remember a really REALLY lame movie called Xanadu with Olivia Neutron Bomb playing a Greek muse tasked with opening a roller-skating disco club? The soundtrack was by ELO (very much an acquired taste, that band) and had a really uplifting song at the beginning called "I'm Alive", which totally rocked.

This indicates to me that at least one person on Barbelith at least has time for this band. And it warms my heart. Perhaps there are more?

Very popular act in their day, then Xanadu seemed to pretty well kill their career (although they made three records after that). Bandleader Jeff Lynne would go on to produce everybody including the Beatles, and nobody would talk about ELO after that except for every time someone used "Mr. Blue Sky" in a film trailer. They've just finished remastering and rereleasing the albums, though.

Anyway, what I find so satisfying about ELO is the sense of almost ridiculous melodrama. Most of the songs are based around pretty standard pop conceits: I can't reach my baby on the telephone, I love you but you don't love me, I am in love with you and very pleased indeed about it. But there is a certain theatricality to it, with strings pushed up to the front of the mix, tracks backed with full choirs. There's a track called "Tightrope," which is as sunny a 70s record as you could want, but it has this bizarre, foreboding and Batmanesque string and synth intro.

I've always felt that Lynne was an amazing craftsman who wanted only to manipulate you into feeling broad, sweeping, unsubtle emotions with music. The lyrics are impersonal and vague; these are not songs about him, they are songs about you. And by the time the cellos swell on the chorus to "Telephone Line," you start to feel as if not being able to reach the object of your affection on the phone is, in fact, one of history's ten greatest tragedies.

Essentially, I think ELO is superhero comic book music, and I love it for that. Anyone else want to share in the ELO love? Or, conversely, explain in no uncertain terms that ELO is absolute hackwork shit?

Xanadu is shit, though.

lord nuneaton savage

20:04 / 13.03.07

Love 'em.

Where I'm from every Friday is ELO day. To be marked with the consumption of alcochol from 1.00pm and boogie-ing round the front room to 'Don't bring me down'.

Great tunes, fabulously crafted. A guilty pleasure, maybe, but a bloody great big cream horn of pleasure, none the less.

11:47 / 14.03.07

I love 'em too. I can't be very articulate about my love for them, but I compared Black Mirror to them in the Arcade Fire thread and it occurred to me afterwards that I might not have been clear that I see that as very much a Good Thing.

Then again, I like Supertramp so my support might well be damning in itself.

13:07 / 14.03.07

I've only got the obvious ELO album, Out of the Blue. It's stunning, one of the few albums that provides adequate precendent to The Flaming Lips Soft Bulletin (which is one of my all-time favourites). So if I like that record, is any one able to direct me to others of theirs that I'd enjoy?

13:10 / 14.03.07

Face the Music is a truly excellent album, and one that should be in every ELO lover's collection.

17:12 / 14.03.07

My college SO played them constantly. Which means of course I have some fairly interesting responses hardwired to the songs.

A quick iTunes query returns I have no ELO, a fact which I find shocking. Will fix it immediately.

18:07 / 14.03.07

Despite being indirectly responsible for this thread I actually know very little about ELO, thanks everybody for the info, I shall now go and hunt for more of them...

18:27 / 14.03.07

I can't remember much of their music, other than Mr Blue Sky, but this cover very nearly filled one of the spaces in the Your Life in Ten Songs thread.

It reeks of my early childhood.

08:12 / 15.03.07

one of those bands who against all odds and common sense have been rehabilitiated musically and are seen as kind of cool by hipster youngsters who missed it the first time around, along with supertramp, elton john and probably leo sayer. i blame the scissor sisters myself.

despite this, well, lush production, good ear for a stolen line in beatles melodies and ideas but without the edge, epic lp covers. how could they go wrong. mr blue sky is awesome, i totally agree.

now, are tusk era fleetwood mac also due for critical reappraisal?

Janean Patience

08:41 / 15.03.07

It reeks of my early childhood.

I got that too. Not because there were ELO albums in the house (we were a Dylan family) but because of the resemblance it bears to this:

And forget Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac. I'm ready to get back into Tango In The Night.

lord nuneaton savage

10:01 / 15.03.07

Tusk = misunderstood avant-garde coke-rock masterpiece.

Lindsay Buckingham is the Lee 'Scratch' Perry of soft rock.

13:15 / 15.03.07

I actually did grow up in an ELO house, and my young mind reeled from the inside of the Out of the Blue record sleeve, which has an even MORE epic painting of the inside of the "spaceship," manned by ELO in spacesuits. It's a bit like the Death Star if Darth Vader had suggested installing colored lights to spruce up the drab grey.

Seth: I'll have to try that sometime. Thinking about it, Out of the Blue/Soft Bulletin seems to make a certain amount of sense. Similar color schemes on the covers, even.

Face the Music was already mentioned, but you might also want to try a New World Record. It's the one right before Out of the Blue and is similar but not quite as...opulent.

14:37 / 15.03.07

the inside of the Out of the Blue record sleeve, which has an even MORE epic painting of the inside of the "spaceship," manned by ELO in spacesuits.

Didn’t it also have some kind of cut-out cardboard model dealie? I seem to remember something along those lines. Not that I ever cut it out, no no nooo.
I miss those big old gate-fold sleeves.

I also remember liking (at least some tracks on) Secret Messages, although I think they’d gone a bit ELQuo by that stage.

15:03 / 15.03.07

Yeah, it was kind of like the Space Needle, if the "bulb" at the top had kind of slid down to the middle of the spire instead of the top. The remastered edition of Out of the Blue came with a tiny, flimsy, CD-scaled model, and I thought I would give it a shot.

That bastard is in the garbage now.

Secret Messages is okay in bits. Ditches all the grandoise spectacle of 70s ELO and goes for very clean, extremely polished and precise 80s rock and comes off kind of bland.

23:47 / 15.03.07

Before today I was only ever familiar with ELO from the occasional time that Mr. Blue Sky was played on the radio and from Doctor Who's "Love and Monsters." It was around that time that the 'lither Cube mentioned liking them quite a bit, so I made a mental note to eventually check them out.

I saw this topic this morning and decided to pick up "Out of the Blue." So I did, and I don't regret it in the slightest. I still haven't listened to it thoroughly yet, but there are definitely a load of memorable tracks after only one listen.

I keep coming back to Sweet Talkin' Woman time and again, if only for the strings/guitar/voice synthesiser opening. It's just such a beautiful piece of music and despite my (probably ignorant) instinct that voice synth is inherently naff, it simply isn't in this particular song. Will post more again later once I've listened to the record in more detail.

Lagrange's Nightmare

08:58 / 21.03.07

Haha yes I also grew up in an ELO household. Although the best i can manage is their 'best of' collection, haven't graduated to any of the actual albums. They always struck me as a kind of singles band, how do they fair over a whole album?

The song i am most familiar with is Livin' Thing and i gotta say i still love it.... even with the whole anti-abortion thing.

00:54 / 23.03.07

I absolutely love ELO. I've heard A New World Record, Out of the Blue, Discovery and Face the Music, and they're all great. I love the excess, and few songs can match the exhiliration of 'Do Ya,' which makes me want to jump around the room every time I hear it. I think they're sometimes written off as a kitsch band, you pull out Mr. Blue Sky, marvel at its weirdness, then move on, but a lot of the deep tracks off their albums are great. I'd point to the thoroughly bizarre Mission off A New World Record as a great example.

If you're new to the band and want to download some samples, here's five more can't miss songs:

Fire On High
So Fine
Night in the City
Standin' in the Rain
Turn to Stone

16:14 / 24.03.07

At the show I attended last night Ok Go did a cover of an ELO song.

03:56 / 25.03.07

Livin' Thing's not really about abortion, although I guess the "baby" before the chorus kind of suggests it. Anyway, Jeff Lynne doesn't seem get any more political in ELO songs than polution = bad, war = bad. And even that's pretty rare.

They always struck me as a kind of singles band, how do they fair over a whole album?

There isn't really a huge difference between "singles" and "album" tracks on the records, either stylistically or quality-wise, I feel. I think at their height they were making records such that every song could theoretically be played on the radio, given a bit of editing for time.

Still, they're not just singles collections. Clearly Lynne was thinking about them as capital-A albums as well, and they have a generally have a nice, strong tone-setter faded-in opening (incidentally, each song Patrick mentions above begins a side) and usually puts the most melodramatic song as a closer. As a double album, each record side on Out of the Blue has a "finale;" effectively, it ends four times, and it's kind of cool.