Search - The Move :: Looking on

Primeval "ELO"-- a flawed "experiment"?

Henry R. Kujawa | "The Forbidden Zone" (Camden, NJ) | 02/01/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In the wake of The Move's SHAZAM album, singer Carl Wayne departed & leader Roy Wood recorded a solo album, BOULDERS (which saw release in 1973). When he returned, he invited friend Jeff Lynne (who'd replaced him in The Nightriders / The Idle Race) to join, and the 2 hatched the idea of creating a new band to replace The Move, which would include classical instruments and experimental ideas: The Electric Light Orchestra. LOOKING ON was the first result, though their record company (at least temporarily) nixed the idea of a name-change, purely for "commercial" reasons".



This is one WILD album. As much of a major shift as SHAZAM was from earlier Move records, LOOKING ON is an even bigger departure. Both Wood & Lynne, whose earlier sound & styles were quite similar, come across doing & sounding almost completely unlike anything either of them had done before! Loud, heavy, ponderous, explosive, and downright bizarre are a few words that come to mind. This album is NOT an easy "first listen"! There's the ominous "Looking On", the growling-yet-bouncy "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues", the ethereal "What?" and the noisy "When Alice Comes Back To The Farm", with its almost honky-tonk piano. Things get extremely strange on Jeff Lynne's "Open Up Said The World To The Door"-- you have to HEAR this one, you still won't believe it! The one almost "normal" track is "Brontosaurus", a single recorded earlier, and I believe the only song here that includes departed bassist Rick Price. "Feel Too Good" makes for a relentless, hard-driving 9-minute finale. (But watch out for the "surprise" epilogue!) I've long considered this a "flawed experiment"; when they returned for their next outing, MESSAGE FROM THE COUNTRY, everything they were working toward seemed to fall in place!



This reissue includes a number of bonus tracks; mostly good songs in their own right, though wildly at odds with the style of the album they're backing. For new listeners, of course, they may wind up being the "best" part of the CD-- depending on taste."

Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne !

michael r. webb | elkton, maryland United States | 06/20/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is the first of three times that Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne would work together and it's a good introduction to the experimental sounds they would use for The Electric Light Orchestra. One can also hear the radically different musical styles that would Split ELO down the middle. Lynnes songs "What?" and "Open Up Said the World at the Door" are complex and grand while Woods songs are hard driving,loud proto-metal. One can almost tell that from the very start that these two guys had very different ideas in their heads about music but that still doesn't take anything away from the brillance of their input. Pay close attention to Roy Woods songs on this album("Looking On" and "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues) and see if you can notice how much they sound like something a Grunge band would play(SoundGarden?). This is a first rate album and I recommend it very highly. I wish these two guys would have stayed together and created more brilliant work."

THEY ARE SELLING OLD EDITION CAT NO. REP 4281-WY INSTEAD OF

Maria Jose Senin Campillo | Seville, SPAIN | 02/04/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"(EXCUSE ME, I'M WRITING YOU HERE BECAUSE THE "A TO Z WARRANTY PAGE" DON'T WORK, IN ANY OF THE OPTIONS I CANNOT SUBMIT A CLAIM THERE, I HAVE WRITTEN 3 TIMES WITH NO ANSWER, I'M DESPERATED)



Hi, friends at Amazon

I received the cd last 22th January, in perfect condition, but it's an old edition of the same album, it's not the same as it's shown in the photograph and described in the webshop.



The picture says clearly "REMASTERED & INCLUDING 10 BONUS TRACKS", and below, in the tracklist OF THE DESCRIPTION there are 17 tracks. The CD THE SELLER sent me has only 12 tracks and I had it yet in my collection, and says in the cover "plus 5 bonus tracks", instead of 10, as described in the offer.



I ask the seller kindly for a refund, or if he could send me the right edition and I said I'll send him the wrong one in return, but no answer from the shop (mudenburg) yet...I'm a good customer of Amazon and I think I don't deserve this treatment."