The Big Orchestra Show
featuring former members of ELO and ELO Part II

At Precisely 9pm the lights dimmed and ELO was onstage playing. No two hour delay. No shitty opening act. I was outraged. You call this a rock and roll show? Where is the scorn for the audience? Where was the arrogance and disrespect? The band just played the hits, one after the other. You probably know them all though you may not know you know them. For my taste it was not loud enough. It didn't loosen the wax in my ears. But for the Copa crowd, Andrea and my brother it was just loud enough, like a really good stereo turned up. The singing was done by Kelly, the bassplayer who looked kinda like a hari-krishna, Parthenon, who was the guitarist, and Eric, who had the uncanny ability to make himself sound exactly like Jeff Lynne, at will.

 The legendary Mick Kaminski, as low-key a superstar as there is in Rock and Roll played his famous blue violin and Bev Bevan smiled and laughed during what was to be his next to last show with the band. Halfway through the show they were joined onstage by the American Pops Symphony conducted by Louis Clark who has been arranging Jeff Lynne's pop songs into respectable mini-symphony's for almost the entire history of the band. Hearing a rock band playing live with an orchestra is an experience, but like many musical experiences after awhile you are just lost in the music and whether there are five or fifty people on-stage does not seem to matter.
 

So that put it into perspective for me and also helped me to understand the ELO phenomena. It is a meeting of musical forms and for many people ELO is as close as they will ever get to classical music. Personally I perferred Jon Lord's Concerto for Group and Orchestra played by Deep Purple and any members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra they could get to show up for the gig, but that is something entirely different because the rock band and the orchestra seem to battle each other like Roman Gladiators rather then actually play together like ELO. Many people are surprised the members of ELO is still together and wonder why. In terms of being a pop band that had a bunch of hits and makes a career out of playing them over and over again then the answer is "why not?" It's a job. It's a living and people want to hear the songs. But in the case of Bev Bevan who has been playing these songs for twenty years, then I can understand him leaving the band, especially if the possibility exists for reforming the original MOVE. But if the band rather then continuing to be a nostalgia act, continues composing, performing and re-invents itself not as a pop band, but as a group that awakens its audience through the merging of different forms of music, perhaps closer to Roy Wood's original vision of the band, ratherthan Jeff Lynne's, then ELO or Orchestra or whatever they decide to call it, is OK by me.

I would suggest getting rid of the Part Two or Part Three or whatever ridiculous compromise Bev had to make to Jeff Lynne. Let him sue. Should the band carry on the original concept of Roy Wood  then they should be entitled to the name of Electric Light Orchestra and any rights to the name claimed by Jeff Lynne Inc. They might even convince Roy to join. Or how about a MOVE-ELO tour with Roy Wood in both bands? You could probably scrape up enough members between the two bands for a semi-plausable WIZARD and make it a three band bill.
Well if you don't know what I am talking about it probably won't seem like a good idea.

But if you are a Jeff Lynne-ELO fan then you won't even miss old Jeff. If you are a Roy Wood ELO fan...well don't get your hopes up. But with my pal Parthenon Huxley in the band there is the possibility that something pretty cool may happen.

All in all it was a pretty great experience. I got to hang out and talk about the stock market with Bev Bevan, one of my childhood heroes. I got to watch Mick Kaminski fighting off hordes of sex-crazed groupies. I got to hang out with Parthenon at yet another cool place that I probably would not have gone to otherwise. I ate and drank for free and only lost about a dollar gambling. About the only sore point of the trip besides fighting with my wife and GTE was when the guys in the band said I bore an amazing resemblance to their manager. ...Ridiculous.
-Matt Barrett