Doctor Livingstone, I presume - stepping out of the jungle gloom

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

22/09/68 : In Search Of The Lost Chord - The Moody Blues

I am aware of The Moody Blues, but only from "Nights In White Satin" - and, even then, mostly from the Elkie Brooks version (which we've previously met).  So I'm approaching this with a sense of cautious optimism (but not without some trepidation).

Well, I wasn't expecting it to start with some narrated psychedelic nonsense, I can tell you.  And whilst it does mostly calm down after that, I'd struggle to say it exactly settles down - there's all sorts of stuff in there.  Some of it is quite Beatles-ish, some Mamas&Papas-ish, some Simon&Garfunkel-ish - it's all very late 60s though!  It is, however, completely bonkers and very dated, but I have to say I found it considerably more enjoyable than I was expecting - possibly I'm just deliriously happy because we haven't had a soundtrack or live album for a few days now!  I also learned what the lost chord is (and I'm so not going to tell you, but be prepared to be underwhelmed if you too search it out).  I'm really not convinced by the album cover though.

We're at #8 in the charts this week (I suspect the downward trend to continue) on their ninth week of a 21 week run, with it having peaked at #5.  After this run it took a year off and then came back for ten weeks randomly scattered throughout '70, after which it took 18 months off and then came back for one solitary week in '72 - how very peculiar!  The top five this week were Simon & Garfunkel, The Hollies, Tom Jones, Cream and The Seekers and the highest new entry was Bee Gees (#36), with the only other one being The Doors (#40).  And no new women put in an appearance this week.

Wikipedia tells me the album "is a concept album around a broad theme of quest and discovery, including world exploration, music and philosophy through the ages, lost love, spiritual development, knowledge in a changing world, higher consciousness, imagination and space exploration" - which of course I knew from just listening to it.  It also tells me there are lots of instruments used on the album - apparently it's approximately 33 including sitar, tambura, tabla, two types of flute (which appear FAR too often), autoharp, harpsichord and a Mellotron, which was very popular around this time (and Wikipedia also tells me it's used on What's The Story Morning Glory, most notably on "Wonderwall".  Back to The Moody Blues, this album was considerably more successful globally than I expected - #26 in the US, selling 500k copies and it also got to #6 in France.

"Customers also listened to" Justin Heyward (from The Moody Blues), Iron Butterfly (bits of this are very "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"), Jefferson Airplane and Buffalo Springfield - all of which I can very much do without.  As, if I'm being honest, is also true for The Moody Blues, but I enjoyed listening to this without necessarily enjoying the music - it just feels like an interesting window on the time.

15/09/68 - Tiresome and incongruous
29/09/68 - A well done not-my-sort-of-thing