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Author
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Topic: Jeff Lynne/ELO, new album coming out!
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted September 14, 2012 01:12 PM
I was happt to hear that not one but two new albums from Jeff Lynne are coming out! One album is Jeff Lynne doing his take on old songs, (before Rock N Roll) that he enjoyed ... I believe it's called 'Long Road"
... however, it's the second one that interests me, "Mr. Blue Sky: The Very best of ELO".
What Jeff Lynne has done is completely re-record most of his big hits from the ELO history, and while this is exciting, I must say, (and this come from an extreme lover of ELO and Jeff Lynne), that it's problematic.
Lynne has stated that he wanted to do this as the technology that is now available will allow his music to have a sonic level that was not possible back in the 70's, and that part is certainly true ...
However, in some regards, the remakes are actually a step back instead of a step forward. Sometimes an audio clarity will bring out weaknesses in the overall spectrum that may not have been present in the originla recordings.
In his remake of "Living Thing" (by the way, you can listen to "snippets" of all these song remakes on his reluanched website advertising this album), the main string flurry, right after the line "It's a Living Thing", and in between, "It's a terrible thing to lose", on the original version, was a whole string section, while on the new recording, it's sounds like it's only one or two violins, and this does make a marked difference. It just doesn't sound right compared to the other string use in the song. I am happy, however, that Lynne did choose to keep most of the string section parts intack for most of the songs. There is also a somewhat embarrassing percussion mistake three quarters of the way through "Do Ya" that is obvious and I hope that Lynne corrects that before release.
... this is one of those strange things that happens when you take your own work and try to return to it a second time. For some reason, some of the magic is lost.
I remember on the re-release of George Harrisons classic album "All Things Must Pass', he did a re-record of his classic "My Sweet Lord" and even though it was the same artist, singing the same lyrics and all, the song just didn't have the same passion and brilliance that it originally had.
Now, I'm happy to see this new remake of the old ELO tunes, to be sure. There are some remakes on the album that do sound better than the originals, (and a remake of one of his songs that was left off of his last original ELO album "Balance of Power" entitled "Point of No Return" which is a revision of the original and it is defintely better), but it is also sad, in a way.
Bear in mind that the two great influences musically, lyrically ect. in my life were/are the Beatles and ELO (along with Cheap Trick in the close third!)
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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