Letters I've written never meaning to send
Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.
03/03/68 : Days Of Future Passed - The Moody Blues
Our second visit with The Moody Blues this year - last time it was a bit of a mess, but not an unpleasant mess and I have absolutely no reason not to expect exactly the same here.
Hmmm - I wouldn't really describe this as a mess because it's much more consistent across the album. However, it may be consistent but that doesn't mean it's not very strange - it's basically some reasonably unchallenging classical music which, from time to time, is joined by some prog style lyrics. For most of the album, it just feels incongruous - after the first couple of tracks I had to check that Alexa hadn't just played me a random playlist instead and I couldn't decide what it was they wanted me to make of it all. Justin Heyward does have a nice voice though and on "Nights In White Satin", the one track where it all works well, it all works very well indeed. But as an album, the whole thing is just very, very odd.
We're at #27 in the charts this week on their seventh week of a seven week run, with this being as high as it got. But, unusually for any album at this time (let alone this weird one) this one came back. Even more unusually, it came back SEVEN times - last being seen in '73. What was going on!?! The top five this week were Bob, The Supremes best-of, TSOM, The Four Tops best-of and, for a change, something different - British Motown Chartbusters.
Which I'm going to spend some time talking about (because I've spent most of the year ignoring it). This album is a fine selection of Motown tracks, none of which are in any way British, but it's nothing more than a perfectly acceptable compilation album. Which does nothing to explain why it had a 54 week run in the charts, including a 23 week run in the top 10, peaking at #2. Along with The Supremes, The Four Tops and Otis spending so much time in the top five recently, there was obviously a huge appetite for US black music in the UK at the time. And I think that's one of my main takeaways from this year.
The highest new entry this week was The Equals (#32 - I didn't think I knew them but they did "Baby Come Back") and there are no new women in the charts this week.
Wikipedia tells me this is one of the first examples of prog rock albums - I'm not going to argue with them, but it doesn't feel all that proggy to me. It also explained the repeated trips to the charts - "Nights In White Satin" finally made it into the top ten in the US in '72.
"Customers also listened to" Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, EL&P and Traffic - none of which I'm big fans of, but I'm pretty certain I'd take them over this. To be fair though, this isn't horrible and there's obviously plenty of skill involved - but I just don't understand what they thought they were doing (except for "Nights In White Satin").
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