Moody Blues : C/D, S/D

They're great. I bet they influenced a lot of bands, even if those bands wouldn't name drop the Moodies as an influence. Hawkwind, Genesis, Even Joy Division / early New Order have audible Moody Blues influences.

In Search of the Lost Chord is great all the way through, and stands up to A Saucerful of Secrets by Pink Floyd, Forever Changes by Love, Odessey and Oracle by The Zombies, and really anything from that milieu.

But I agree that there's something seemingly uncool about them -- maybe just the idea of them. But then I listen to them and remember how great they are!

Also, Mike Pinder's playing is probably the most iconic use of the Mellotron anywhere in rock history.

C/D: Classic!
S: In Search of the Lost Chord, To Our Children's Children's Children; D: Most of Days of Future Passed, Their 80s comeback.

In Search of the Lost Chord was the first LP my grandma gave me when she found out I had a turntable. Still had bongwater stains on it.

For the record, I think it's great. Sorta what I imagined the Beatles sounded like before I heard them. "Voices in the Sky" is still one of the prettiest songs ever written.

I fucking loathe this song.

Your loss, but I never really payed attention to the lyrics. I'm sure a lot of people love it.

Love this song

last week ordered the 2cd set 'this is .. ' cos its the easiest way to just kick back and listen to the best stuff by the band when they were at their peak.
last night after some booze I pressed play and had the best 90 mins I have had in ages.
brilliant band.

yea they definitely had enough material for an absolutely killer greatest hits. TOCCC is the only Moodys album that I think is actually great from start to finish. though their filler stuff is plenty fine too sometimes

yea they definitely had enough material for an absolutely killer greatest hits.

"This is .." is clearly the best comp as it covers the glory years, and has edits/revisions so that it flows making it the best to experience the hits and more as opposed to diving in deep.
that said, every time I heard a song I just wanted to hear the full album that the song had been lifted from.
brilliant band.

you are proper ace Alfred, but you are massively wrong re this one.

It's okay. The world usually orients itself to me after a generation!

I’ve always felt that while “Nights in White Satin” was understandably the Moodies’ most iconic song—with its orchestral sweep, maudlin sentiment and earnest Hayward vocal—that it’s still a good distance from their best work. I’d say I feel that way about Days of Future Past generally tho “Tuesday Afternoon” is great and that BBC take of “Peak Hour” mentioned upthread is killer.

"Hawkwind, Genesis, Even Joy Division / early New Order have audible Moody Blues influences."

what? no.

also when I was a kid I thought it was "Knights in White Satin" and the song always conjured up images of knights with jousts on horses wearing stunning satin white capes, and in fact it still does. The alternative, sweaty naked hippies rolling around on satin sheets, is too gross.

Hey Alfred you will still be wrong in one generation fwiw

Hahahahaha I had a feeling this thread revive would be from Alfred’s “Worst Songs Ever” blog. You didn’t even mention the “Breathe deep, the gathering gloom” poetry bit.

Your loathing is my joy

You gloom has gathered.

Ah Alfred you’re cool in my book

https://amuseofire.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/martini-toast1.jpg?w=329

Just saw your "Brand New Key" entry. It wasnt until this week I knew about the song except the Wurzels "Combine Harvester" cover of it, and that there was an irish singer that even did that version of the song before them. Because I heard Rasputina's version or "Brand New Key" and I loved it.

Going through another period of listening to their Core Seven ... I think one of the more underrated things about them is that they have five fairly distinctive songwriters --- each of whom was responsible for some notable pieces. Hayward of course did a lot of the famous balladry. Lodge did more of the rock tunes ("Ride My See-Saw," "I'm Just a Singer"), Edge wrote the spoken word stuff ("The Dream," "The Word," "The Balance," my personal fave), and Thomas wrote "Legend of a Mind."

Pinder was responsible for some of their more interesting and experimental stuff -- "Out and In," "Lost in a Lost World," the "Have You Heard Pt. 1"/"The Voyage"/"Have You Heard Pt. 2" suite, "My Song." His voice was used for all of Edge's spoken word stuff (I love it, too, as it's almost perfectly theatrical). And of course, he did all the Mellotron parts, which is probably their most lasting innovation in pop.

In Search of the Lost Chord sounded good today in the rain, particularly The Actor.

Best UK psych band imo

I prefer the band that had that song about the show on tramplolines and the guy who did the somerset through the hogshead of real fire.

great band.
nice write up of the band in this months mojo.
I really need to get their 7th album to complete the set of their classic era releases.

Lost Chord is pretty much exactly what I thought Sgt. Pepper was gonna sound like before I heard it

still think "Voices in the Sky" is the prettiest thing ever

when my grandma found out I was into collecting records she gave me a bunch of her old LPs, including 5 of the 7 good ones

finally picked up the other 2. I don't exactly love the Moody Blues but I know those 7 are always seen as sort of a set and it bothered me I didn't have them. though the price of used vinyl has skyrocketed in the last 10 years these are still cheap and plenty available.

now that I'm listening to them properly I think they're great. Days of Future Past seems a bit overrated and is almost too goofy to take seriously (outside of 3 really great tracks, maybe the Indian-sounding one as well). but the other six are quite excellent. it is amusing to me how a lot of popular music just reflects the popular drugs of the time. in that sense their music is plenty appealing to me. I dig the floaty psychedelic vibes. my grandma was (and as far as I know still is) a massive stoner so I can see why she spoke so highly of these boys.

one track I'm surprised not to see mentioned on this thread is "Are You Sitting Comfortably" - that flute/woodwind melody over Heyward's voice is just pure bliss

yeah, i still need to get the 7th of the set.
instead i picked up this 2cd compilation of their classic era which blends all the big tunes together (including edits that are unavailable elsewhere) making it the best compilation ever.

https://www.discogs.com/The-Moody-Blues-This-Is-The-Moody-Blues/release/6173718

ahh .. i said the same thing 2 years ago.
well, at least i am consistent.

"face piles and piles of trials with smiles"

How many of their albums are concept albums? A lot of bands get an inaccurate reputation for this but that's three in a row so far.

a friend pointed out that "On the Threshold of a Dream" is their last one on Deram records before they moved to Threshold, and it clearly should have been called "On the Threshold of a Deram." sadly he probably pointed this out more than forty years ago and i still to this day can't think of those records without thinking of that.

The "Have You Heard" two-parter is such bliss. What a great band.

Threshold is my favourite of their albums. It's not Hayward's peak, but Pinder's songs are very consistent. With Have You Heard, it's amusing how closely they pattern the arrangement after A Day in the Life.

All of their albums from Days of Future Past to Every Good Boy are putatively concept records, although each successive record is less tied into the concept other than the cover, title and maybe two or three of the lyrics.

Huh, I never noticed that but it's definitely true. I don't think Seventh Sojourn has any concept at all. Maybe I'm just missing it.

current favorite is "You Can Never Go Home". there's this bent mellotron chord that just hits me in the gut.

Yeah, by 1972 they were so exhausted that just getting a record in stores was enough of a unifying idea.

Pinder’s compositions sort of snuck up on me. I originally sort of wrote them off but almost all of the deep cuts I fell for were either written by him (Out and In) or featured his voice (The Balance) or his next level Mellotron work (Beyond).

this is a good resource if you're wondering about what Mellotron sounds they were using:

https://www.planetmellotron.com/revmoodies.htm

my local shop has some of the post-7th Sojourn LPs for very cheap, still not sure if I want to check them out. of all the 60's psych/art rock bands I think they were the least able to adapt to the 70s, even the stuff they did do in the early 70's has a very 1968 vibe to it. either way I grabbed the Caught Live LP (for $2.99) and will probably be listening to it tonight

Surprised that "The Voice" hasn't popped up as a needle drop in something like "Stranger Things."

otm, I love Long Distance Voyager so much, love that they just went all in on synth-pop for the next decade and totally pulled it off, maybe the most graceful transition for a psych/prog band from the sixties into the eighties?

how many psych prog bands even tried? I guess Pink Floyd did. Genesis technically started in the 60s but I'm gonna say they don't count.

Long Distance Voyager is indeed a surprisingly good album but I think it's their only one post-7th which is worth listening to at all. not that I've heard many of them. I have Octave and pretty much never want to listen to it.

In the very long Classic Artists documentary (which is great) there was a 90s performance of a song with an absolutely gorgeous flute solo and I had no idea of that was early or late material, I haven't got past the 60s yet.

I had the Yes documentary (which oddly treats Relayer like it was no big deal) and I really need to see the Jethro Tull one because these are usually at least 4 hours long, I wish there was much more but I think they only did Yes, Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, Cream and Jimi Hendrix. A shame.

In the Moody Blues documentary it was shown that Ian Anderson was considering joining the band for a while but they got another flute player

I think this was in the 90s too

its so weird that the Moodies were still a fairly well known pop culture phenomenon even well into the late 80s. did those later singles like "I Know You're Out There Somewhere" and "Your Wildest Dreams" actually get a lot of airplay? or were all the classic tunes still popular? (I certainly remember hearing them quite a bit in the 90s) just wondering because even their good ones tend to be landfill LPs nowadays, they're one of the few prog/psych bands of that era which just didn't seem to get re-evaluated at all.

Those two songs were both pretty big Top 40 hits, got MTV airplay etc.

They were all over the radio, iirc ("Your Wildest Dreams" hit number 9). As was America's "Magic," Alan Parsons "Eye in the Sky," etc. All sorts of future lite rock staples of that era. I heard an Air Supply song on the radio the other day, and I turned to my teen and said: this is what pop music often used to sound like.

My kids listen politely to the old man's tales of how great mid-70s music was.

Days of Future Passed remains a classic.

America had MoodysFever: "Gemini Dream" and "The Voice" got into the Top 40 in '81, and Long Distance Voyager actually hit #1 on the album chart.

raise your hand if your intro to the moodies was their cameo on the simpsons.

🙋