One More Time to Live is my favorite song off of EGBDF too.    Although, You Can Never Go Home is also a favorite.  The Dreamer (the bonus track on the SACD version) is also really, really cool.  That, along with the BJ's (ummmm...little side note here...I'm referring to the Blue Jays - the Hayward/Lodge collaboration - not actual BJ's, which of course rule in ways that a Moody Blues album never could)...anywho, EGBDF and the Blue Jays are the two albums that I get totally lost in when I listen to.   Not to say the others aren't great, but those two just seem to take me somewhere else. 

 

Every time I hear ITCOTKC I think "Didn't I hear at least half of this on a Moody Blues album." I am by no means a King Crimson expert but for all the claims that they originated the prog sound, I point back further.

 

There is no sacrilege from you.

..I love KC , this is even one of my top 3 bands but i always think prog started with Nights in White Satin among a few others back in 1967...........

Yes, the Moodies were there big time at the birth of prog!..and first hour- KC members for sure listened to the Moody Blues a lot!

 

Their song-writing dropped further on each successive album.  Question wasn't bad but it's best track, Melancholy Man, wouldn't have stood out on any of their first 4.  They gave the Beatles quite a run as my favourite band in the last 60s/early 70s but by the time they finished the string with EGBDF & 7th Sojourn, I had moved on to Yes, Geesis, Tull, Floyd & ELP. 

 

I still enjoy listening to the Moodys and it's nice to hear that that others are keeping their music alive.

 

Of all of the solo albums that came out in the mid70s, BlueJays was the closest to the Moodies.  I've always kind of looked at it as another Moodies album which isn't too far off now since Hayward and Lodge are the only ones singing and writing now (with Edge still tapping behind them).

 

But my favorite solo has to be Ray Thomas' Hopes, Wishes and Dreams.  I love his voice and his viewpoints in his lyrics.  It's a shame he only came out with two solos and after LDV, didn't really write much and then retired seven years ago.

Guys ... that was one of the springs from the couch ... not a note or a chord!

 

So that big spring was a "Coiled C Chord"?

 

All kidding aside. The Moodies, like The Kinks, Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, were a part of the forefront of "pop artists" that wanted to make more music than just "pop songs" for radio. And many groups ended up trashed around and dropped because of it.

 

Luckily, things improved and the late 60's and early 70's were a haven for a lot of things, many of which we now call "progressive".

 

The Moodies, were progressive in one essential element, and in a way they should get a lot of credit for it. And it was that they really were the first symphonic piece around, and not just a play symphony for one song ... a massive symphony for a very long song. So, it deserves its place, as progressive by nature of the time that it came out and ... nothing out there was done like that, or that well, or that poetic.  Not even the Beatles!

 

I think they lost it some as time went by, but in essence, those first 5 albums were very important, and I think that the fame got to their heads a bit, well it got to the Beatles and Rolling Stones too, and the quality went down a bit. But it still stands up as a standard bearer to what you can do with music and an orchestra that too much music these days ... STILL ... does not do! Talk about being progressive! 40 years and still nothing out there like it, except some folks using a synthesizer to make do and make believe that it is an orchestra and be as vacuous as anything you ever saw or heard or discussed here!

Also, the idea of a band having a solid series of seven albums in a row that are pretty well-regarded by everyone is incredible. I don't know if too many of the other big names around here can lay claim to that.

 

The point of backmasking was to influence the listener with backwards satanic messages uncounsciously..(If you played the record backward you could hear the messages, but even played the right way, the message would somehow affect you because the brain would decipher it)

 

That  made this album sound very creepy.. I was young and very suggestible..

 

Now I know better... but it still is quite a nostalgic trip to hear it :)

 

Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' was also accused of backmasking.. But that is probably no news...

 

 

See http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=67184 - my post on another forum. I couldn't agree more. The Moody Blues are far too overlooked on this site for the most part. 

 

I couldn't agree more.  It seems most comments either claim them near the top of their personal list or claim they don't even belong on a prog list.

 

For me, the Moodies were the first to make me feel like I was listening to what would later be called prog.  Decades later, I still play their albums with frequency.  I have probably played their classic seven several hundred times each.  No one has come close to the concept album as they have.