Did Kevin make some mention of The Electric Light Orchestra in an issue of Your Heart Out? If not, then I am sure he will at some point.
For a long, long time I would not contemplate listening to ELO. Why would you, after all? Too busy studying cool. Or something like that. Pointless and silly, but there you go.
The funny thing is that ELO are one of my earliest Pop memories. Or at least are a part of one that I can just about dredge from my memory: lemonade and cakes in Malcolm’s house in town, his brother bringing in a copy of Out Of The Blue, and spinning it several times in one evening. Us dancing like loons dressed in blue corduroy flares and wing collared shirts, out of our heads on sugar. I guess we’d have been 11. Old enough to know better? You decide.
I downloaded Out Of The Blue again last night, fuelled by that re-emerging memory and from listening again to The Delgado’s version of ‘Mr Blue Sky’ from the BBC Sessions. And as fine as The Delgados were, and as much as I adore Emma Pollock, it’s just not a patch on the original. Seldom has the sensational thrill of summery expectation been as sublimely captured as in those five minutes. And as always when replaying something from a long lost past, it always shocks me just how familiar the songs sound. I did not realise that I knew Out Of The Blue so well. But I did. I do. It’s like suddenly meeting someone you haven’t seen for over thirty years, remembering what a wonderful person they were, and wondering why on earth you lost touch in the first place.
So I’ll just mumble some incoherent apology about different paths and absence making the heart grow fonder and just go enjoy the music.
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