Audio CD review:
Electric Light Orchestra - The Night the Lights Went On (In Long Beach)

Electric Light Orchestra - The Night the Lights Went On (In Long Beach)

Band: Electric Light Orchestra Title: The Night the Lights Went On (In Long Beach) Rating: Release Date: 30 May, 2005 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Daybreaker 2: Showdown 3: Daytripper 4: 10538 Overture 5: Mik's Solo/Orange Blossom Special 6: In The Hall Of The Mountain King/Great Balls Of Fire 7: Roll Over Beethoven

Customer Reviews Truly Elo's live presentation. GReat live perfomance, with Jeff leading the band, I would recommend this cd!. Why did they have to cut up "Roll Over Beethoven"???? I was extremely disappointed, however, to discover they cut the second solo section from "Roll Over Beethoven," completely ruining the buildup into the last chorus - very sad. I had this on vinyl as a kid and was very excited to find it had finally been released on CD. Interesting to note that someone went in and altered the original graphics of the inside foldout cover to reflect the new song lengths for the "restored full length versions [???] that were edited on the original vinyl" (check out the tiny type at the bottom of the center spread). And yes, the sound was quite poor on the original and there's not much of improvement here - garbage in, garbage out. But one can still sense the excitement that could be whipped up by this particular version of ELO (with Mike d'Albuquerque on bass and Mik Kaminski and Hugh McDowell on violin and cello respectively). It's a incredibly fantastic performance. Hopefully, one day, someone will go in and truly restore this album in it's "entirety. ". A cool period piece If you're a fan of early ELO you'll probably find it very interesting. If you're into "Turn To Stone" and that commercial ELO stuff (which I do like), this may not be for you. Note that it is not a lot of songs, if you're used to hours-long DVD concerts. The sound is OK, not great, but after all this is the Long Beach Echo-rena and in those days all the monitors were on-stage, not in-ear, so everything bled everywhere. "Roll Over Beethoven" is cool although I actually prefer the "ELO Part II" version on Live In Moscow I think it's called. My favorite here is "Showdown"-has a very Western open range OK-Corral kind of feel to me, a really nice version with an edge to the sound. . You can see a complete list of all Electric Light Orchestra discography, or go back to the Electric Light Orchestra tabs