Listmeister listens -- Electric Light Orchestra

[Romanelli]

[dihansse]

[Listmeister]

The Story of the 21st Century Man
(based on the album Time by Electric Light Orchestra)

"Remember the good old 1980's, when things were so uncomplicated. I wish I could go back there again..."

Time by Electric Light Orchestra

He is not named, but call him the 20th Century man. One night in 1981, he lay dozing in the evening. He is visited by the being Twilight, who speaks in an electronic voice. "Just off the borders of your waking mind, there lies another time where darkness and light are one... I have a message from another time." And the man sees visions of the future. Not certain if he is awake or dreaming, he agrees to go. He only meant to stay awhile. But whatever actually happened, he find himself here, now, in the year 2095.

He misses Her, the woman he left behind. He obtains an IBM robot ("she looks a lot like you"). She is endowed with significant artificial intelligence (an IQ of 1001, and she's also a telephone), but his conversations are disappointing. "She's only programmed to be very nice, but she's as cold as ice whenever I get to near." All she says is, "Is that what you want?"

He decides to leave her alone, and buys a one-way ticket to the moon. ("Fly, fly through a troubled sky up to a new world shining bright"). He has a vague hope that he would find Her there. He's just as lost on the moon. "As I gaze around at these strangers in town, I guess the only stranger is me." Twilight appears again, now as a friend who understands his situation but advises that it's too late to cry, but "you've come so far, now you know everything, my friend. Stop and see the wonders of our world." The cities on the moon are beautiful, if a bit decayed, with ivory towers and plastic flowers. "I wish I was back in 1981, just to see your face, instead of this place. Now I know what you mean to me. And I wonder, is this the way life's meant to be?" His heart breaks, and he returns to Earth.

Back on Earth, he looks out at the world he finds himself in. Noise in the city, children, and then a thunderstorm strikes. He hears a bout a new Time Transporter. He can't use it, but there is some hope. "The rain is falling. Will it wash away these lonely tears?" He tries to telepathically send a dream to Her in the 1980's. He believes he sees Her in the night, "a lonely little sidewalk dancer", but she doesn't reply to him when he tries to contact Her. She was not there the next morning.

He contemplates his situation. "I believe things are going wrong, and the night goes on and on." Perhaps his only dreaming after all. But if he is dreaming, how can the world he is in be so strange? Watching the news, he learns of meteor showers, a cure for rocket lag, a justice computer, someone broke out of a satellite, all these strange things. "Here is the news. I want to go home, I want my baby back. Here is the news: I WANT TO GO BACK!"

He finds Twilight again, who encourages him to accept that this is where he is. He is a 21st century man now. "Rise above the city, fly across the land, you can do most anything, you 21st century man." He becomes a celebrity, then a joke, then a nobody, but "you should be so glad, so why are you so lonely?" But if you really want to believe this is a dream, hold on tight to that dream. "When you see the shadows falling, when you hear the cold wind calling, hold on tight to your dream." Encouraging, but it's not quite a promise to take him home.

So he rides on the rails of tomorrow, and wanders the fields of his sorrow. Time.

[Romanelli]

Did you write that, Listmeister?
_________________
May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

[Listmeister]

[Romanelli]

[Listmeister]

And now for the actual review.

Time by Electric Light Orchestra

BEA Ranks:
10th of 1981 (between Fire of Love by the Gun Club and Dare by Human League)
129th of the 1980's (between Fire of Love and The Sensual World by Kate Bush)
846th of all time (between Celebration Rock by Japandroids and Blink-182)

Ranked highest by:
Listmeister (me) (best of All Time), TrekkiELO (best of All Time), Clouds2095 (best of All Time),
NowhereMan (best of All Time), KC Man (best of All Time), haterabbit (best of All Time)

I'm not going to try to be objective about this. I love this album, it's my favorite of all time.

Now, hang on, you're saying. You can't possibly like it more than Dark Side of the Moon, which, I notice looking at your List is your #2 album.

Excellent question. I'm not going to claim that ELO is better musically than Pink Floyd, but what it does have is a damn good story. It's even a better story than the one in Pink Floyd's The Wall, which is kind of a downer has almost no time travel in it.

Albums with story behind them tend to go to the top of my list. The Wall, Tommy, and American Idiot all grace my top 20. The Black Parade (My Chemical Romance), The Resistance (Muse) and The Archandroid (Janelle Monae) are among my favorites since 2000. Plus, I worry that I have a disproportionate number of musical soundtracks in my lists. But of all the story albums, Time is far and away the most interesting.

I explained the story as I see it in a previous post. Now let's talk about the individual songs.

[Bubble bubble creak, vague atmospheric music, electronic voice] is how it starts out, doing that crescendo-from-low-volume intro we've come to expect from ELO. The short introduction leads into Twilight, which has an amazing interplay of instruments and vocals. It then fades into what later came to be known as 8-bit sound, a kind of early-80's video-gamey kind of thing.

"Yours Truly, 2095" is about a guy who is trying to make a relationship work with his girlfriend, who, and this is the twist, is an IBM computer. It doesn't work. The relationship, I mean. To emphasize the weirdness, they throw in a bit of electronic fuzzyness "I lovve you, finferely, moft truly." Tandy's piano leads into the next song, "Ticket to the Moon", a soulful ballad, one of Lynne's best. "I've got a ticket to the moon / I'll be rising high above the earth so soon / and the tears I cry might turn into the rain / that gently falls upon your window / you never know." It's a pretty sad song, really. Then violins introduce "The way life's meant to be". (Yes, Romanelli, there are strings on this album). All three of these songs have an arc emphasizing how disappointing the future turned out to be, once you got there, but "The Way Life's Meant to Be" has more of an upbeat musical quality, with the la-la-las from the background vocals, which hauntingly advise "stop and see the wonders of our world."

No album is perfect. "Another Heart Breaks" interrupts the flow of the music, and brings the record to a three minute 46 second long screeching halt. It's a boring mood piece. If this were a film, you could do an awesome montage with this as background music, showing how truly awful the late 21st century is.

Side Two begins with "The Rain is Falling". It's a turning point in the narrative of the story, where the hero moves toward the acceptance stage of grief. "The rain is falling. Will it wash away these lonely tears?"

The transition to the next song is rather abrupt, and features strings (cellos, I think), and then it goes into a heavy dance beat that sets the mood for "From the End of the World." When he sings about seeing a "lonely little sidewalk dancer," you can see the dancer spinning around to the music. "The Lights Go Down" has some interesting xylophoney-percussiony things happening in an otherwise dull song.

I love living in the 21st century. It's kind of my catch phrase that I'lll say whenever I hear of a new gadget or something science fiction-y happening in the news. "Hey Listmeister, did you hear that they found a planet in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri?" "I LOVE living in the 21st century!" The next two songs, "Here is the News" and "21st Century Man" are about life in the 21st century as seen by a guy in 1980 trying to write from a 2095 perspective, with some culture shock and lonely melancholy thrown in. The picture he paints, of computer-controlled things (even the court systems) and easy travel to the planets, actually sound cool in spite of the sadness behind his words. Many of his statements seem precognitive from a 2016 perspective, especially the line about "One day you're a hero, next day you're a clown," in this era of viral celebrity, instant fame or instant infamy.

The "Hold On Tight" song was the only one I was familiar with the first time I heard the album (which would have been in 1990). It had been used to advertise coffee in the late 80's "Coffee gives you the energy to dream it, and then you're ready to do it. Hold on tight to your dreams!" So, that kind of tainted my appreciation of the song for years afterward. It's not a bad song, kind of snappy, the bit in French adds a touch of exotic flavoring to the song

The outro closes with "You should be so happy, you should be so glad, 21st century man. Though you ride on the rails of tomorrow, you still wonder the fields of your sorrow. Time!"

Listmeister Ranks: Best of 1981 (ahead of Paradise Theater, by Styx)
Best of the 1980's (ahead of Paradise Theater)
Best of All Time (ahead of Dark Side of the Moon)

p.s. That Proxima Centauri thing? Totally real!

[Rhett]

Time. Ah. I love love love this album. Bought it as soon as it came out and have never stopped loving it.

[Listmeister]

I don't think Jeff Lynne and company realized that they had produced what some would consider (and by "some" I mean "I") the best album of all time. If he did, he would have had a hard time following it up. But what came next was a worthy successor.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Secret Messages by Electric Light Orchestra

BEA Ranks: 56th from 1983 (between The Wild Heart by Stevie Nicks and The Crossing by Big COuntry)
581st from the 1980's (between Chronic Town by R.E.M. and The Good Earth by The Feelies)
3,558th Overall (between Sci-Fi Lullabies by Suede and The Letting Go by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy)

A few years after I had absorbed Time, and it was a permanent part of my music listening rotation, and I had started working and had a little disposal income for the first time in my life, I started frequenting record stores (although they sold mostly CD's at that point.) One of the first CD's I bought was this follow up to Time, so I have been listening to this one for years also.

While Time is a concept album, and as such as amazing, Secret Messages is, when taken song for song, the equal of anything else in ELO's catalog. But Secret Messages is also a concept album, and if it has a story, it's a spy thriller.

"Secret Messages", the song, starts with another of those ELO fade-ins that I keep going on about, but as a mid-tempo rock song, it gets the album going. "Loser Gone Wild" varies from slow tempo to mid-range tempo, shifting at the same time from first person (the sadness in the slow tempo bits), to taunting in the third person, "There goes another lose, another loser gone" in the faster bits. That's kind of interesting, I think.

"Bluebird" is getting faster now, and the songs have been speeding up as the album goes on. Already, the album is going somewhere, building to a climax. "On and On" is not faster, but there is still a sense of increasing intensity. The emotional energy is building as they harmonize on "Ooooh, take me on and on, ooooooh, until the world has gone."

"Four Little Diamonds" pulls out the stops with a good solid rock song about a woman who cheated the narrator, "and if the law don't get her than I will." In the narrative of the album, this is the beginning of Act II when the hero/narrator realizes, hey, my troubles aren't my fault, they're her fault. She ruined my life. But I still love her. It's not clear what the repeated refrain, "Four Little Diamonds" is referring to, but I think it's not supposed to be clear. It's a Secret Message, you see.

"Stranger" has Tandy doing some very interesting synth work, punctuating each line with what I will call "slow vibrato" although that's probably not the correct musical term. The song itself is about the dangers of looking "into the eyes of a stranger", and the realization that you are also a stranger to that other person you've just met.

"Danger Ahead" pushes the rock and roll even further than Four Little Diamonds. There's tension, adrenaline, you should be alarmed, is the message, "Believe what they say there's danger in the air! Beware, there's danger ahead! The Endless Summer is dead! Look out, there's danger ahead!"

We kind of get a break with "Letter from Spain." For me, it's the weak point of the album because it interrupts the flow, downshifting the gears into slow ballad mode. The next song "Train Of Gold", builds up the momentum again, slowly increasing the intensity and the tempo as the song goes on.

Then they step on the gas. The drums and guitars start up and the album races to it's climax, "Rock and Roll is King." Jeff Lynne, it has been complained, tends to overuse production techniques, but this song is a masterpiece of production in the broad echoes on the chorus line "She says Wham-a-lama-bama-lama," and later "that's how it's meant to be-buh-be-be-be.

It's easier to criticize than to enjoy. When I listen to this album, I fall under the spell of each song and just enjoy it. I might move in rhythm or sing a long, but I'm having a good time. That's what a good record does. Each of the songs (with the possible exception of "Letter From Spain") are wonderful, and each, including Letter from Spain, has it's own sound.

Listmeister ranks: #2 of 1983. #7 of 1980's. 56th of All TIme.

[Listmeister]

The Electric Light Trio

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Balance Of Power by Electric Light Orchestra

BEA Ranks: 84th of 1986 (between Tutu by Miles Davis and Epicus Doomicus Metalicus by Candelmass) ;
840th of 1980s; (between Delicate Sound of Thunder by Pink Floyd and Devididos por la Felicidad by Sumo);
5,240th of All Time (between Kerosene Hat by Cracker and Lil' Beethoven by Sparks)
Ranked highest by TrekkieELO, 3rd of All Time.

So, Kelly Groucutt, the bass player, left the band, and it was down to just Jeff Lynne (Guitar and Vocals), Richard Tandy (Keyboards), and Bev Bevan (percussion). Bevan had been there since the founding of The Move, even before Lynne joined. This would be the last studio album of ELO for 14 years.

For a change, the album doesn't begin with a fade-in, but goes right into "Heaven Only Knows", which is pretty good rock song, followed by "So Serious", another rock song with almost the exact same tempo and tone. "Getting to the Point" is a ballad about a breakup. It's kind of the 'Let It Be' for their final album. "Secret Lives" sounds dated, built around an 80's style synth vibe.

So far there isn't much here that's interesting enough to comment on, especially when you compare it to the last two albums. The songwriting is fairly competent, but the music is kind of tired. These guys have been playing together for 13 years by this point, and the spark just wasn't there.

"Is it Alright?" kind of breaks that trend a little. It's a positive, energizing rock song, where he's encouraging his friend ('Joe') to believe in himself, feel better, and get back on his feet. "Sorrow About to Fall" and "Without Someone' is a pair of highly-produced mood pieces, but that's alright, because it works; it's the sort of thing that Electric Light Orchestra has gotten really good at.

"Calling America" goes back to the "Pretty Good Rockers" that the album started with, but this is better than the first two, more enjoyable, there's some spark there. "Endless Lies" can't decide what it's trying to be (ballad? breakup song? epic? rock song?). It doesn't work.

"Send It" is a lot of fun. It's Rock-a-billy with ELO's style, and the most interesting percussion effects of any ELO song.

The album is bittersweet. There are moments of awesome, and moments when you could tell they just weren't into it. The best songs (Is It Alright, Send it, Calling America) stack up to the best of their catalog, while the rest is just mediocre, not terrible, but not exciting either.

Listmeister Ranks: 4th of 1986 (between Graceland by Paul Simon and Raised on Radio by Journey)
29th of 1980s (between "Weird Al" in 3D and The River by Bruce Springsteen)