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Post by soonerorlater on Apr 1, 2016 12:32:59 GMT
I must admit that I've been giving this debate some considerable thought. As a fan since the early to mid 1970s (but by no means the very beginning), I've effectively grown up with each album from Face The Music onwards, as it's been released. That I think is the reason why I don't believe any one album has actually aged that badly - they are all obviously products of their respective time and in seeing them that way I think that they're all pretty durable.
Having said that, allow me to 'twist' the argument a little by suggesting that it's actually the style of certain songs that has aged badly, in particular some of the vocal effects and even more specifically, the dreaded vocoder! For me there was trouble ahead as soon as I heard the vocal effects added to Mission on ANWR. There's even an alternative mix of the song on the Flashback compilation that lifts some of them back out. In the sleeve notes of Flashback Jeff Lynne also admits that another song on there, the previously unreleased Tears In Your Life (recorded in 1982 and finished in 2000) was "originally sung through a vocoder but I decided to sing it in three part harmony instead". It's almost as if Jeff himself has finally admitted that the vocoder is no longer for him either!
To be fair the use of the vocoder to bookend Concerto For A Rainy Day is genuinely magnificent. The opening to Standin' In The Rain and the closing of Mr Blue Sky see it work as it should and could do but why couldn't it have been left at that? Sweet Talkin Woman, Believe Me Now, Big Wheels and The Whale all amount to overkill. I love those songs but I'll always feel that they would have sounded better if he'd just sung them straight and left the vocoder at home that day.
Sadly, it wasn't to be a one-album trick. I was teased mercilessly at school for liking ELO on the strength of the 'silly noises' in Confusion and The Diary Of Horace Wimp. Thank goodness no-one listened to the whole Discovery album and came across Midnight Blue. Another quick play with it on (Xanadu's) All Over The World and we seemed to be done with it. Oddly enough, I quite like the vocal effects used on Time. Somehow, they're different - Prologue in particular sounds great.
So it's the vocoder that has done ELO few favours as the decades pass us by. Think white flares, satin jackets, bubble perms and Kojak Lollipops and you can't go far wrong with where it all sits in the history books.
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Post by IvanDSM on Apr 3, 2016 2:59:27 GMT
I must admit that I've been giving this debate some considerable thought. As a fan since the early to mid 1970s (but by no means the very beginning), I've effectively grown up with each album from Face The Music onwards, as it's been released. That I think is the reason why I don't believe any one album has actually aged that badly - they are all obviously products of their respective time and in seeing them that way I think that they're all pretty durable.
Having said that, allow me to 'twist' the argument a little by suggesting that it's actually the style of certain songs that has aged badly, in particular some of the vocal effects and even more specifically, the dreaded vocoder! For me there was trouble ahead as soon as I heard the vocal effects added to Mission on ANWR. There's even an alternative mix of the song on the Flashback compilation that lifts some of them back out. In the sleeve notes of Flashback Jeff Lynne also admits that another song on there, the previously unreleased Tears In Your Life (recorded in 1982 and finished in 2000) was "originally sung through a vocoder but I decided to sing it in three part harmony instead". It's almost as if Jeff himself has finally admitted that the vocoder is no longer for him either!
To be fair the use of the vocoder to bookend Concerto For A Rainy Day is genuinely magnificent. The opening to Standin' In The Rain and the closing of Mr Blue Sky see it work as it should and could do but why couldn't it have been left at that? Sweet Talkin Woman, Believe Me Now, Big Wheels and The Whale all amount to overkill. I love those songs but I'll always feel that they would have sounded better if he'd just sung them straight and left the vocoder at home that day.
Sadly, it wasn't to be a one-album trick. I was teased mercilessly at school for liking ELO on the strength of the 'silly noises' in Confusion and The Diary Of Horace Wimp. Thank goodness no-one listened to the whole Discovery album and came across Midnight Blue. Another quick play with it on (Xanadu's) All Over The World and we seemed to be done with it. Oddly enough, I quite like the vocal effects used on Time. Somehow, they're different - Prologue in particular sounds great.
So it's the vocoder that has done ELO few favours as the decades pass us by. Think white flares, satin jackets, bubble perms and Kojak Lollipops and you can't go far wrong with where it all sits in the history books. I heavily disagree with your stance on the vocoders. Believe Me Now and The Whale are very atmospheric song, and the vocoders play a HUGE part on that. If they didn't have vocoders, they'd just be generic 70s pseudo-prog album filler, but with the vocoder bringing magic to them, they're integral parts of OOTB. As for Big Wheels, I think the vocoder serves as a great link between it and Standin' In The Rain as well as a soothing way to change the mood between the songs. I don't remember the vocoder on Sweet Talkin' Woman, and can't listen to it as I'm listening to another album right now (Brian WIlson's Smile, which I've been addicted to recently) Come to think of it, I disagree with everyone here about this topic. This might be a generational conflict.
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