The new version of the album is indeed a more considered presentation of this music, feeling more substantive and also less cramped, spread out across two discs. Thanks to all you great fans who’ve been asking to hear the original double album for a very long time.” I enjoyed recording there so much, I wrote enough tunes for a double album! Anyway, this will be the first time ‘Secret Messages’ has escaped intact. The sound of the room was just how I liked it. It was Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, Holland. We tried out a different place to record. “‘Secret Messages’ was the first and last time I ever used a digital multi-track tape recorder. And it is an enjoyable and surprisingly warm sounding listen given the new information in the inside gatefold from Jeff Lynne himself: The fact that many of the stores didn’t even know about the album was kind of pathetic.Īnyhow, the new reissue is pretty sweet featuring six tracks that were cut from the original record back in the day. This new release is out on a major label, Sony / Epic / Legacy, so it should’ve been everywhere. I do order online quite a bit but that is something I usually reserve for indie artists selling their music directly from their websites, doing Kickstarter or Pledgemusic campaigns and such. But as convenient as that can be, that’s not as much fun (yes, fun!) as the rush of choosing your album from the shelf and taking it home to play in anticipation. Sure, I could’ve pre-ordered the album so it arrived at my doorstep on the day of release. well… they are in the business of selling recordings so you’d think they’d stock at least some of the obvious things (ELO is not the only one suffering from this short sighted approach).Īnd thus here we get to the grumpy old man portion of our show where I whine about changing times and the impact of the Internet on the music business (blah blah, blah, yada yada yada). Now I do understand the problems these days stores have with not being able to return albums. So, you’d think they might sell a couple albums if they stocked ’em…. The Oakland Oracle Arena holds something like 18,000 ELO fans and the night I saw them the place looked pretty much sold out. I rushed over and grabbed the other copy - again, only two in stock.Ĭonsider that: I got one and Frank got the other. The other day Frank sent me a text message after he bought his copy there. The biggest record retailer here in San Francisco which should’ve had at least five or 10 copies of this album apparently only ordered two which sold out instantly and it took several weeks to get more in stock. A bit more unsettling was that the stores didn’t even really seem to know or care about it. And there we received a big surprise: no new ELO was to be found. Nonetheless, my ELO buddy Frank and I waited patiently for the new album to come out and on release day expected to find it in our favorite record shops (yeah, some of us total fanboys still like going to a physical store to buy stuff). At minimum it would’ve been fun if they had included a song like the album’s hit “Rock and Roll is King.” The one omission was the glaring lack of music from an album that had been announced as being re-issued coincident with the tour: a restored, expanded version of ELO’s 1983 opus, Secret Messages. I saw the opening night of this current ELO tour in Oakland, California and it was near perfect in that regard. This new expanded orchestral production presents this complex and multi-layered music live in a manner similar to how Brian Wilson brought his most intricate studio creations to life on the concert stage in the early 00s. This is a fine 21st Century show featuring band co-founder, main visionary and composer Jeff Lynne presenting studio-faithful renditions of his music in a live setting to large audiences arguably for the first time ever. Twitter Facebook Email Print LinkedIn Pinterest SMS WhatsAppīy now you probably know that a new incarnation of the Electric Light Orchestra is on tour in America for the first time since the early 1980s.
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