Music from the yesterdays and today!

If Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was heralded as a major musical leap forward at the time of it's release in the heady days of 1967 and still figures as one of the greatest albums of all time, then you may think that it would follow that everything else that was released afterwards just didn't match up to this musical monolith it terms of scope or quality. Well, without wishing to try and re-write history, there are other albums made around the same time that deserve to be heard by a wider audience too. Sergeant Pepper they may not be, but then again nor was anything else released by The Beatles, so perhaps we should be looking at other offerings and base our judgement on purely on the music contained within and just enjoy it for what it is.

One thing that Sergeant Pepper did do for a lot of bands that were plying their trade at the same time was give them the opportunity to take a break from the necessity to produce hit singles all the time and to stretch out on albums and use a bit of imagination for a change. All of a sudden these bands could take themselves more seriously and be taken more seriously by the record buying public. Pop music was growing up and was becoming less 'disposable' in the process.

One such band that took up the challenge of becoming a force to be reckoned with was The Moody Blues. This Birmingham based R&B band, whose track record up 'til then really only consisted of hit cover of Bessie Banks' 'Go Now', had been trying to find success on the singles chart with little success. The departure of singer Denny Laine and bass player Clint Warwick probably didn't help matters much and it must have looked like a pretty bleak future ahead for them. They recruited John Lodge on bass and were then directed by Eric Burdon towards a guitar playing singer songwriter, whose best known exploits was as guitarist in British rock 'n' roll hero Marty Wilde's backing band. The guy's name was Justin Hayward and with him in place there was at least a solid base for coming up with original material. The band's UK record company Decca, who were never that hot on promoting their acts, by this time, were not really interested in them, so when the suggestion came that they record a modern take on Dvorjak's 'New World Symphony' for a stereo demonstration album to showcase the new Deram label that was about to be launched, Decca must have felt that at least it kept the band occupied until their contract ran out and they could be quietly dropped from the label.

But, fortune had started to smile on the band, as the person appointed to assist on the project with the arranging and conducting of the orchestral backing, was to prove to be a great ally and help turn the proposed album around from a modern take on an existing classical suite to an album of original music from the band interspersed with original music from the London Festival Orchestra. And so it came to pass that the ensuing album 'Days of Future Passed' set the band on a path towards international success, helped considerably by the enduring hit single 'Nights in White Satin'.

So then, after all that, what next? How do you follow up a unique album, get the orchestra back in again and have another bash? Well for the Moody Blues there was a solution from within the band and was one that would turn them into their own mini orchestra and make them self sufficient from then onwards. Keyboard player Mike Pinder had worked at Mellotronics- Streetley Electronics who were responsible for the production of the wonderful Mellotron; the orchestra in a box, the first sampler and mainstay of many bands during the transition from Psychedelia to Prog Rock. It had featured on 'Days of Future Passed' and allowed the band's parts of the album to link in with the orchestra's contribution to make it seem as though the two involved parties were playing together, which they weren't. This instrument was now pushed out to the fore and was utilised to the max on the follow up album and beyond. That album was 'In Search of the Lost Chord' and it is on this outing that the band were at their most psychedelic sounding. Afterwards they headed towards their own strand of the prog rock idiom and so 'In Search....' really does stand alone.

The album starts with 'Departure' which goes from a spoken word intro via the rising tones of the mellotron until it collides with the first 'proper' song 'Ride My See Saw' which was lifted as a single at the time. It's worth mentioning that although this song is a great Moody Blues cut, the b-side was even better and inexplicably absent from the album, 'A Simple Game' was it's title and it deservedly got recognition some years later when The Four Tops covered it and had a hit. Anyway, following on from 'Ride My See Saw' is 'Dr Livingstone, I Presume' composed and sung by flautist Ray Thomas and is light and airy in tone before things get a little bit more serious with the following songs. 'House of Four Doors parts 1 and 2 sit either side of another Ray Thomas song called 'Legend of a Mind' and it is on this sequence of songs that the band hit their stride and give the best indication of where they would be heading in the future. 'House of Four Doors' alludes to the search referred to in the album title and allows the band to stretch out and experiment with musical ideas on a grand scale which all hang together nicely. 'Legend of a Mind' provides a contrast and contains a wonderful flute solo from Mr Thomas and is a song that has deservedly kept it's place in the band's live repertoire ever since. 'House of Four Doors part 2' rounds off this extended suite of music and then follows 'Voices in the Sky' which is another light and airy song that was the intro to side two of the album when vinyl ruled the earth! Up next is 'The Best Way to Travel' which once again shows the Moodies in full imaginative flight with lots of pitch bending mellotron and panning effects for good measure. 'The Actor' is another great tune, that has a melancholy tinge to it and more great flute playing from Ray Thomas. Then follows 'The Word', a spoken word piece by drummer Graham Edge, which segues into the final track 'Om' , which is possibly the most dated sounding of all the tracks, but ends the album beautifully.