Customer Reviews

Looking on

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

Fans of The Move's earlier pop-oriented material will likely be in for a surprise when first listening to Looking On. Their previous release, Shazaam, with its greater empahsis on a heavy guitar sound and experimentation with exotic instrumentation, hinted at the direction the band were to take with Looking On. However, while there are heavy moments on Shazaam ("Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited", "Hello Suzie"), they pale in comparasson to the primal thunder of "Looking On", "Turkish Tram Conductor Blues" (great title!) and "Feel Too Good". The title track could be an outtake from a Black Sabbath album of the same period except for its superior lyrics and song construction. However, the song's stiff, tacked-on psuedo jazzy coda is totally unnecessary, in my opinion. This album's dense and overly-compressed sound may not make it the favorite of audiophiles, but it seems to contribute to its overall power. While not a masterpiece, this is one of the better early-70's hard rock albums.

Odd that this should be considered as "inferior" Move-- it's actually their most spontaneous and heartfelt work. This release adds loads of extraneous stuff to an album that doesn't need it-- it was perfect upon its release almost thirty years ago and remains so now. Give it a listen-- you won't be disappointed.

(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.

The first thing that comes to mind when listening to this CD is "Black Sabbath".The second thing is "why does Shazam get better reviews than this?" This CD sounds great. Too bad the bonus tracks have nothing to do with the album.

this is usually considered to be their worst album but looking on is not without it's charms . perhaps the fact that most songs on this album are quite long scares away some and it can be somewhat bombastic at times, but along with cherry blossom clinic from the great shazam album of earlier that year(1970) the roots of elo can clearly be seen in songs like open up said the world at the door, what , and the title track. in some respects the title song owes a lot to free jazz , early heavy metal, and west coast bands such as maybe quicksilver messenger service.as per shazam, a lot of different styles and influences are interwoven into the total album.bev bevan's drums and the effects added to them are perhaps a cliche now or at least quite familiar, but must have been pretty impressive at the time.i believe that jeff lynne in particular was at his peak on this album and its brilliant successor, message from the country( along with his great and underrated pre-move band, the idle race, who i thoroughly recommend. roy wood's amazing assortment of ideas and instruments are here also, his vocals are very loud and good on this recording . plus there are several non lp cuts added so i recommend it even if its their worst album its still quite good

I bought this cd for my brother since he could not find it anywhere. I knew i could find it on Amazon and at a great price. He let me borrow it and I have to say it is blast from the past. I heard of the move before but forgot all about them. These are the guys who formed ELO later on. Some of the songs sound like the Beatles and Grand Funk. This is a band that has probably been forgotten but should be rediscovered. If you never heard of the Move then check them out. You will find yourself back in the 70's.

The Move were like few other. Looking On is a fun, fun rocker of an album with blistering vocals and powerful guitars and drums. Lyrically, it is, well, whatever, but musically it is quite tight and lots of fun. I highly recommend this to those who want to hear some good, loud pre-ELO music. Most of it was recorded in the late 60s and early 70s. There are some earlier out-takes included, though they don't really sound much different than the officially released versions.