Track Listing

1. Daybreaker
2. Showdown
3. Day Tripper
4. 10538 Overture
5. Roll Over Beethoven (1)
6. In The Hall Of The Mountain King/Great Balls Of Fire
7. Roll Over Beethoven (1)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63274 in Music
• Released on: 2003-07-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Customer Reviews

A good live album that won't appeal to everyone
This album is a bit of a mixture. It is early ELO with a lot of excitement and energy but neither the polished pop songs that Jeff Lynne would later write or the orchestral sound that you will hear on the studio albums. That said, if you definitely like ELO and especially if you like the sound of the first three albums, you will enjoy what you hear here.

Pre-pop muddled live album, good for completists
As the track listing suggests, this is ELO before they began hitting the singles charts, while they were still rough and raucous heavy-metal-with-cellos. It's from early 1974. They're promoting "On The Third Day", the band's heaviest album, and hadn't yet softened their sound with a real orchestra as they would later that year for "Eldorado", which would make them easy listening stars. Consequently, this is much like "On The Third Day", all chunky cello accompaniment to loose, screechy rock songs and of absolutely no interest to people who like the band for "Mr Blue Sky", "Telephone Line" etc. However, if you're into the early ELO, this is a pretty good buy.

It originally came out in various scattered territories as a thrown together live album in place of actual appearances, and though the CD has a more modern cover with the later style ELO logo, inside you get the original cover in all its dreadful glory, proof of how much of a cheap throwaway it was considered. The band don't appear to have had any say in the matter, and in the printed interview they complain that on the night of the recording they hadn't even had a chance to do a sound check. It's not a polished performance, and so is charitably said to show "energy" or "fire" which actually means they make an undisciplined din which barely manages to stay together. Still, there are moments of genuine excitement, such as the terrific version of "10538 Overture" which manages to merge into "Ma Ma Ma Belle" in the middle.

This is presumably a typical ELO set list of the time, with just two Jeff Lynne songs (plus the instrumental "Daybreaker" which is a chance to warm up and show off the hideous sound of the Minimoog) and a bunch of covers. Either they'd given up trying to play the rambling prog rock of the second album "ELO 2" or they'd never managed it in the first place: these are pretty straightforward rock'n'roll songs. Buy the album for "10538 Overture" but don't have too high an expectation.

Oh, that they were still here
"Longbeach", the only officially released live recording of the band in concert has finally found it's way to the rest of the world. Originally just released in Australia, South Africa and Germanty I believe, it demonstrates ELO's ability to create music from music. Winterland '76, Wembley '78 as well as BBC recordings are now available but none of them quite match this album for the pure exitement of hearing versions of ELO's own music as well as the likes of The Beatles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Mr Grieg himself. He would surely have appreciated the modernised verion of his norwegian classic. The line up at the time of Lynne, Bevan, McDowell, D'Alberquerque, Tandy, Edwards and Kaminski was one of the best around and though some may not agree, the overall sound of the band that Lynne was in the process of generating and developing is already starting to come through in each track. Even if you are not really a fan of ELO's distinctive sound, if you only buy one live album in your own lifetime try and make sure it's this one.