Customer Reviews

Night Light Went on (In Long Bea)

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

 

 

If you ever owned this muffled mess on vinyl, you'll be pleasantly suprised by the sound quality on this new version. It is 100 times better! I've read an interview with the band, and apparently the truck with their equipment broke down. This put them behind and they never had a chance to do a proper sound check. The master tape that was used for the old vinyl version was marked: DO NOT USE - BAD MIX. Why it was still used, I'm not sure. Apparently, a way better mix of this concert surfaced and here we are!
One thing different about this new version, they cut about 30 seconds from the little jam piece between Showdown and Daytripper. It was always one of my favorite spots on the album so I noticed it right away and was a bit bummed. The funny thing is, four songs on this new release are supposed to be unedited versions we never heard on vinyl and then they gotta cut 30 seconds out of another. I don't get it. Anyway, if you're a big fan of the first three ELO albums or just a big ELO fan in general, this is worth getting!

I had this on vinyl as a kid and was very excited to find it had finally been released on CD. 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. 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."

If you're into "Turn To Stone" and that commercial ELO stuff (which I do like), this may not be for you. If you're a fan of early ELO you'll probably find it very interesting. 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

Given ELO's enormous popularity and spectacular live shows, it is surprising that no live records were ever released in the US or UK during their heyday. The only live re-lease that is widely available was recorded in 1974 (before Eldorado) and only released in a few countries in Europe. Apparently that released was marred by bad sound quality. Twenty-some-odd years later, a new and better recording of the concert surfaced and the album was re-released.

As you can probably surmise from the score, I just love this thing. The biggest surprise for me is Lynne's guitar work. Listening to the band's studio records you would never know he was this good or at least this rockin'. Also, the rest of the band is great. Probably the best bit here is the 3-minute jam session (yes, ELO jamming) that the band tacks onto at the end of "Showdown," but there are a lot of great moments. There's the part where the band slips a bit of "Do Ya" into the middle of "10538 Overture," with the latter song's melody played as a counterpoint to the former's thunderous power chords. There's a manic version of "Daybreaker" here, as well, complete with crazed drumming from Bevan. Finally, whoever came up with the idea of constructing a medley from Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and "Great Balls of Fire" is some kind of mad genius.

The main reason why this album is great is that it shows that the entire concept of ELO was pretty sound. If you need proof that ELO could rock, then this is it.

Found this gem in the import section of a Music Plus store back in '77. Was already an ELO freak, and had seen them live earlier in the year touring the New World Record album. For the first few months of listening to this album, I was taken with their versions of Great Balls Of Fire and Daytripper. But I found that after a few years, the part I looked forward to the most was a section at the end of Showdown referred to in an earlier review as a little jam session. This is one of the few Moog solos I've ever heard in concert. Being a keys player myself, this was very inspiring for me. It went for more than just half a minute. How very disappointed I was to finally have this album on CD only to find it missing this section. In the age of digital compact disk, with much greater content storage, (like the whole Out Of The Blue album on one disk)...and they actually HAD to cut something from this concert? Wow.

I bought this cd in England and felt deeply in love this cd at the moment I layed down in the cd player. Its just one of the best cd that is played live, even with the sound problem it still good worth spend some money to own it!
Every single song its terrefic in the meaning that the permoformance of each song by the E.L.O band is not good its just EXCELLENT.
The cover of DayTripper its really good, as we know that Lynne was always a Beatles fan since always.
In the Hall of the Mountain King/ Great balls of Fire is for me the best song of the album, the instrumental song its just a classic song from Edvard Grieg that we heard from On the third day cd and the complementation from this excellent piece of art ends with Great Balls of Fire a tremendous cover of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Roll Over Beethoven, all the fans from E.L.O should already know that E.L.O in almost all their live permorfance loves to play this song, its just a beatiful song and no words to describe this master piece made by Chuck Berry, an old rock & roll song that will endure for many long time.
The three covers in this cd makes you fell that you should own this cd, also if you like E.L.O performance in a live tour, you also have to own, Wembley, Australia and others cd. And if you are not used to listen E.L.O lives performance, perhaps I should recomend to you the E.L.O BBC Session thats its a jewel for all E.L.O`s fan.

GReat live perfomance, with Jeff leading the band, I would recommend this cd!