Customer Reviews

Strange Magic: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a nice mix of seventies classics and the more pop-inspired eighties work kicked off by "Discovery." But we already know the songs, so rating a greatist hits compilation is mostly song selection, how the work is presented, and goodies like extra tracks and liner notes. Once again, ELO has pulled together a greatest hits collection omitting possibly the best rock instrumental ever, "Fire on High." Also missing is some very solid work from Xanadu ("I'm Alive," "All Over the World," and the title track). If "Fire on High" weren't such a gem in the ELO catalogue this may be less bothersome. After all, it's not like Jackson Browne's audacious omission of "Boulevard" in his "best of" effort, or Fleetwood Mac overlooking "The Chain" and "Gold Dust Woman" in theirs. Still, it's a double-CD that claims to offer the best of ELO, but doesn't really. The cynic in me says this leaves room for "Best of II..." Either way, it is a nice expansion of the prior "Greatest Hits" CD, so if this is your first foray into the world of ELO, I'd say go for it.

One of the best (yet strangely underrated) post - Beatles bands to come out of the 1970s' was undoubtedly Electric Light Orchestra. Led by the heavily Beatles influenced Jeff Lynne, their unique mixture of rock and roll and classical music separated them from other '70s' mainstays such as Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. At their best, their work came pretty damn close to matching the Fab Four's work their peak, and even when they didn't, you could still count on them to release great music.

That being said, thet two disc collection "Strange Magic: The Best Of Electric Light Orchestra" contains all of Electric Light Orchestra's classic hits, the bulk of which include "Can't Get It Out Of My Head", "Evil Woman", "Livin' Thing" (my personal favorite), "Strange Magic", "Telephone Line", "Turn To Stone" and "Don't Bring Me Down". Also added are several lesser known tracks such as "Rockaria", "Last Train To London", "Rock 'N' Roll Is King" (my all time favorite) and "So Serious" (a great song from 1986's often panned "Balance Of Power").

If you already have all these excellent songs, than the main reasn to buy this cd is the great remastering job. Just listen to how clear and crackling the strings sound on "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and how full the drums sound on the driving intro to "Don't Bring Me Down". It doesn't sound any better than this.

Another great reason to buy this cd is for the great booklet that comes with it. It features track info, a beautiully written essay by Ira Robbins and some great photos (I agree with the reviewer that says Jeff Lynne looks like Tim Curry).

So, in conclusion, I highly recommend the purchasing of this cd. It's the best ELO compilation available, and until they release one with "Xandadu" songs, "Tightrope" and "Fire On High", it will remain so.

ELO is a very special band that has been completely and unfairly forgotten in recent years. I hardly ever hear their songs on the radio any more, but looking at this stellar line up of songs on this collection, you have to wonder why this is so. Out of the 30+ songs on this set, i believe only about 3 or 4 didnt crack the top 30. That is incredibly impressive, but yet all it seemed to earn Jeff Lynne was a trip down forgotten lane. ELO is one of the few bands that you can truly escape with...the music packaged with their clever album art made for a total rock music experience like none other. This music is great, and hopefully this low for a 2-disc set price will attract many new listeners. One testament to how good the ELO catalog is...this is a 2 disc set and everyone (myself included) still think they could have added a third disc with ease! From the string of quality hits with ELO, to his production work with Tom Petty, the Traveling Wilburys, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson et al., Jeff Lynne not receiving a lifetime achievement award is almost a crime. This collection is an important piece of the rock era that should not be overlooked, and hopefully when the new ELO album "Zoom" comes out in 2001 people will re-discover this great band.

ELO evolved from another British group, The Move, which was successful in the late sixties with such hits as Flowers in the rain and Blackberry way. Bev Bevan, Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, all previously with The Move, created ELO. With other new members, they recorded their debut album, which yielded the UK top ten hit 10538 overture. After that, there were a series of line-up changes but the biggest change came because Roy and Jeff disagreed about the way that ELO should develop. Roy and two others quit and formed their own group, Wizzard (essentially a rock'n'roll group, updated for the seventies) who had a couple of UK number one hits (See my baby jive, Angel fingers), but is now best remembered for the top five hit, I wish it could be Christmas every day.

With Roy gone, Jeff was free to do what he wanted. He added classical music influences to a basic rock sound, making something unique and distinctive, though this vision took a few albums to be fully realized. ELO had a long string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic in the seventies, particularly from the albums A new world record, Out of the blue and Discovery, but were unable to sustain that success in the eighties. Their last UK top ten hit was in 1981 and they only came close once after that - in 1983, with Rock'n'roll is king. In America, their fortunes faded equally dramatically but they had already recorded a body of work that is well worth listening to.

This compilation contains all ELO's big American hits except those from the Xanadu soundtrack. So Xanadu, I'm alive and All over the world are all missing - they are frequently omitted from ELO compilations on both sides of the Atlantic though they can be found on the superior British compilation, Ultimate collection. Other classics here are Living thing, Mr Blue Sky, Hold on tight, Roll over Beethoven, Telephone line, Rockaria, Don't bring me down and Shine a little love and all the other classic tracks that you would expect to find. Brits and expatriate Brits should note that some UK hits are missing including Wild west hero and Diary of Horace Wimp, but I'm assuming that they were not hits in America (I haven't checked). They can also be found on Ultimate collection.

This is the best compilation released in America but as I've indicated already, the appropriately titled Ultimate collection (a British import) is far better - if you can get it at a reasonable price. If not, buy this together with the Xanadu soundtrack or any other albums you need to get any missing tracks you need. Of course, you may not be interested in any of the missing tracks, in which case this will suit you just fine.

STRANGE MAGIC is a collection of some of ELO's best hits and album tracks. It is by no means comprehensive, but it does give a very good overview of the genius and beauty of ELO's artistic output. Here you will find music that ranges from sublime ballads to sweet pop confections to crunchy rockers to complex art suites. All of ELO's 11 studio albums are represented on STRANGE MAGIC...the only glaring omissions being ELO's three hits from the XANADU soundtrack. Fortunately, "Calling America" from BALANCE OF POWER is included here, in contrast to its exclusion from the otherwise exellent ELO AFTERGLOW box set. ELO hit the TOP 40 with 20 different tracks during its remarkable career. Seventeen of these are on STRANGE MAGIC, plus great album tracks such as "Roll Over Beethoven," "Showdown," "Daybreaker," and "Rockaria." This collection makes a fabulous introduction to ELO, one of the finest art-rock/pop bands to ever grace the world's airwaves.

Anyone who loves pop music will do well to pick up this 2 cd set. It serves as a perfect introduction to ELO. I crams nearly all of ELO's biggest hits on to 2 fully loaded cds. Yeah, there's some great material not included on this set, but it comes as close as any 2 cd best-of is going to get to capturing ELO's brightest moments. (Some songs this set didn't have room for that I happen to love are: Tightrope, Fire On High, Midnight Blue, Stepping Out, Waterfall, Nightrider and So Fine) After purchasing this, if you want more, check out these great albums: Eldorado, Face The Music, A New World Record, Out Of The Blue, Discovery and Time.

...where's the three Top 20 hits from Xanadu(I'm Alive, All Over The World, Xanadu)? I guess because that soundtrack was on a different label they couldn't use those songs here. So I suggest that you get STRANGE MAGIC & XANADU(side two is all ELO songs), and that should be fine for most fans. Oh, and you may want to pick up the remaster of ELDORADO as well. I think that if you're not a huge fan like me, these discs will suit you just fine. Stay away from the ELO single-disc hits collections--they don't do the band justice.

Note: For an even better overview of ELO's career, including all the UK hits, get the "Light Years" 2-cd set. ELO had several Top 10 hits in the UK that don't even show up on "Strange Magic"!

Often when writing a review of a band, it is easy to class them into a musical genre. With Electric Light Orchestra, however, it is not. Their music is unclassifiable, leaving them open to soak up fans from all musical arenas - pop, electronica, techno, rock, orchestral symphony fans...

And it was this undeniably unique mixture of styles that made the Electric Light Orchestra so popular in their seventies heyday. I consider ELO to be second only to the Beatles in the way of the most influential band of the last fifty years. It is of no surprise when listening to the earlier tracks collected here that Jeff Lynne was a major Beatles fan, and their first few musical outings seemed a hybrid between Beatle mentality and something you'd expect played at Carnagie Hall. The results are mixed, but did manage to create some memorable moments, most notably "Roll Over Beethoven" which is presented in its full 8-minute glory.

From the album "Eldorado" onwards, Electric Light Orchestra solidified both their sound and prowess. "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" epitomises every 1970's high school relationship, whilst "Evil Woman" from 1975's "Face The Music" record inadvertently marked the music world's turn towards disco-tinged progressive rock instead of middle-of-the-road AC numbers. This trend continued with the sublime "Strange Magic" after which this compilation is named, and the string of hits from the 1976 "A New World Record" LP, including "Telephone Line" and the Bee Gees-esque "Livin' Thing".

The second disc of this compilation opens with "Turn To Stone", perhaps the group's best composition ever captured on record. The tracks from the group's opus "Out Of The Blue" are great, but I remain to this day very fond of the tracks recorded for the "Discovery" album, of which four are included here. Electric Light Orchestra lost a number of fans at this stage in their career; released in 1979, "Discovery" tipped the scales very much in the direction of disco which agitated a large population of their fanbase. However, the songs do not mark that much of a musical difference from "Out Of The Blue", or indeed any album about three albums back. "Shine A Little Love" is still the stomper it was twenty-odd years ago, and "Confusion" is a severely underrated gem, as are "Do Ya" and "Twilight". The tracks from their subsequent albums "Time" (the band's most coherent "concept" album, notable mainly for the rollicking "Hold On Tight"), "Secret Messages" and "Balance Of Power" don't quite hit the mark. The band was running out of steam, and sadly it is reflected in the music.

Still, this 2CD set runs the gamut of Electric Light Orchestra's career and offers the tastiest and fairest cross-section of their work available. It is lovely to see a compilation at least acknowledge the latter part of the group's career, regardless of whether the music they produced lived up to prior expectations, and it was nice to see the band's three biggest albums "A New World Record", "Out Of The Blue" and "Discovery" given their dues with four tracks from each. The sound quality is another plus, a vast improvement on the budget releases of their work in the late '80's (it is a travesty to hear such classics as "A New World Record" slaughtered behind muffled sounds and ludicrous volume levels). The only gripes I have with this collection are minor - firstly, the cover art is a poor representation of ELO. Their album covers were half the joy, with exciting and envelope-pushing concepts and images which; recent compilations have been poor in the cover art department. Also, where is ANY sign of Electric Light Orchestra's contribution to the 1980 cult classic "Xanadu" soundtrack?! Granted, Jeff Lynne distances himself from the project, but an ELO compilation isn't really complete without "I'm Alive" or "All Over The World", two sizeable hits from the soundtrack. Even Lynne's blase lead-vocal interpretation of the title track, a hit for Olivia Newton-John, would have been a welcome inclusion simply to document that period of their career...

Still, nevermind. It's not the cover art one buys an album for, but the music contained within. And ELO's five-song contribution to the "Xanadu" soundtrack is such brilliance that it warrants purchasing the recently reissued soundtrack CD anyhow. "Strange Magic" is essentially the must-have package of Electric Light Orchestra's music for both the casual and die-hard fan, compiling the best of their almost twenty-year output and epitomising why they single-handedly changed the face of popular music as we know it.

Quite literally, I cannot get ELO's music out of my head right now. I picked this up after doing a Kazaa search and finding gems like Evil woman, Strange magic, telephone line, turn to stone, and living thing. So I set out to find a compilation with all these songs. Id heard ELO was a great band, but being only 21, I really just missed the greatest music by about 5-7 years.
I am definitely in as classic rock discovery phase and enjoying every second of it.
I have one thing to say. BUY THIS ALBUM.
If you have a disco nostalgia, the first CD will cover you, if you like prog rock, synthesizers, or symphonic bands like Chicago, ELO will probably please you. The strings are a fantastic addition to their music and really gives it a fun depth that so many current songs could really stand to use now. I look around the net and notice ELO isnt as popular as they damned well deserve to be. This is very sad. The first CD is of course the greatest, with the classic masterpieces, Roll over beethoven, Cant get it out of my head, Boy Blue, Evil WOman, Strange magic, Living thing, and my personal favorite: Telephone line. Such emotional fun, timeless music. Disc two definitely reflects ELOs downfall, as each track gets progressively worse and the strings and cellos this band is so well known for, gets exchanged for straight up rock. Good in its own right but...you just cannot begin to compare it to the older stuff. Still, This album is highly recommended and definitely demonstrates the sounds of 70's that I really wish I was alive to experience.

If you love E.L.O. or classic rock music but on a budget, then the Strange Magic collection is the best way to start your music collection, it contains 29 tracks from 1972-86 with classic hits like 'Can't Get it Out of My Head', 'Evil Woman', 'Strange Magic', 'Livin Thing', 'Telephone Line', 'Turn to Stone' and 'Don't Bring Me Down'.

And we also have some of the lesser known tunes like 'Ma Ma Ma Belle', 'Showdown', 'Boy Blue', 'Do Ya' and more and while the 1st CD gets 5 stars, the 2nd CD only gets 3 stars cause the second half of the CD is when E.L.O. was losing its steam and while some of the songs from the 80's are good, it pales in comparsion from the 70's stuff and my only complaint is that this CD doesn't have some great songs like Fire On High, Tightrope, Standing in the Rain, Birmingham Blues, Loser Gone Wild and Bluebird but it's really no big deal, this CD is recommended for a new fan of E.L.O. rather than a hardcore fan who owns a bunch of E.L.O. albums.