Customer Reviews

Go Now

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know many people who heard or had this album when it came out. I bought it in 1965 and kept it as one of my obscure favorites for many years. I still regret letting it go just a few years ago. Although very few of the songs on this album are memorable and none evokes the later sounds of The Moody Blues that were tremendously popular, this album deserves its place as a point of contrast between the group's early and later work. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to most of these songs and still like most of them. Go Now, I Go Crazy, Can't Nobody Love You, and a few others are my special favorites. I've enjoyed finding and listening to albums that were not mainstream. This is one of those.

My first exposure to the EARLY Moody Blues was the awful-sounding US LP "GO NOW". I'm bemoaning the "electronic stereo" remix, not the music! At least that was (more or less) a legitimate "album" (in the way US butcher-versions of great UK albums were in the 60's). THIS has no point in existing-- a seemingly random sampling of 45 and album tracks thrown together to make a quick buck (and I've seen a number of these over the years).

Let me be clear-- I've grown to LOVE the Denny Laine incarnation of The Moodies-- and to share my enthusiasm, I highly recommend anyone track down a copy of the complete version of THE MAGNIFICENT MOODIES (the one with all the 45 and LP sides-- 25 songs in all).

The guy below is correct in that this IS a different band than the overblown, pompous, pretentious dinosaur... that the Moodies turned into. BUT, that is the only thing that he is correct about. NOT boring, but very jazzy and soulful and a great timecapsule of a certain time period in British R&B that I particularly enjoy. If you want stupid opuses about elves and... like that, then stick to what you know.....if you want something a bit more earthy and real then this is your baby here. CLASSICS all around. ... if "Go Now" don't move you, you're already dead.

I would strongly recommend anyone familiar with only the post-1967 Moody Blues to listen to this album.

Only by doing so is it possible to truly appreciate the difference that recruiting quality songwriters and musicians - one with the added bonus of being blessed with an exceptional voice - can make to an otherwise lacklustre band.

The departure of Denny Laine and Clint Warwick would have gone almost unnoticed had it not resulted in the marked increase in the quality of the band's output and success following their replacement by Justin Hayward and John Lodge, and the obvious inspiration that these recruits were to the up-until-then latent songwriting abilities and heavily-concealed musical talents of the three members that remained from pre-1967 - Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas and Graeme Edge.

Listening to this collection by what amounted to little more than an average covers band, you could not possibly imagine the immense potential that lay hidden. Therefore, unsurprisingly and thankfully, it is the Hayward/Lodge etc line-up that people identify as the Moody Blues.

In short, the impressive catalogue of the Moody Blues, from 1967 to the present day, is neither added to nor enriched at all by this offering from the Moody Whos.

The Moody Blues as we know them are great art rock band, whose most well-know members are singer/songwriters Justin Hayward and John Lodge. The Moody Blues of THIS collection are a boring R&B/Pop group fronted by Denny Laine (who later joined the band Wings.) Hayward and Lodge weren't members yet when this stuff was recorded. But this and a number of other collections of this material, many of which are enticingly cheap, make no distinction, in hopes that fans of the real Moody Blues will be suckered into thinking they are getting that band.

This is old news to many, but I felt the need to clear this up in case anyone thought this was the Moody Blues of "Nights in White Satin" etc. This earlier incarnation is so different from the band we know and love that I don't consider it the same band.

This stuff is interesting for die-hard Moodies fans (like myself) who are completists and are interested in the band's early roots. Ray Thomas, Mike Pinder and Graeme Edge, who would stay on board to contribute excellently to the band we know, all play (fairly well) on this album. But most of the songs here are generic, and sound an awful lot like each other (and other pop songs of the day.) Mike Pinder co-wrote some of the songs, and Ray sings lead on one of them ("Ain't Necessarily So") but Laine is the primary influence here. There are a few decent songs (such as the hit "Go Now") but the set is basically a bore, and is only really useful as a history lesson for serious fans, as to what the group was like before Laine and bassist Clint Warwick took off, Hayward and Lodge joined and one of the greatest art rock bands of all time was truly born.

Denny Laine is one of the great voices of the Rock era and this album reflects the soulful origins of the original Moody Blues. The later non-original Moody Blues became an overblown group without true musical definition.