CAUGHT LIVE + 5

This album might be a textbook example of an album that is for fans of the group only. The live performances on here are a bit rough and the recordings aren't the best, but as a fan of this band's psychedelic period, I thought it was really interesting to hear them try to pull off their heavily overdubbed studio recordings in a live situation. This album was recorded when the Moodies were at their best; ie the four albums that run from Days of Future to Children's Children. After those four albums they slowly morphed into a decent pop band, unfortunately after they went pop much of their old psychedelic magic was gone.

One of the nice things about this album is that without all the studio sound layering you can clearly hear what great musicians many of the members of The Moody Blues are. The big surprise is drummer Graeme Edge, who usually sounds buried in the mix somewhere below the Moodies' omnipresent tambourine. As it turns out Edge can rock and he sounds surprisingly a lot like Keith Moon. The song Peak Hour in particular takes off like a rocket and wouldn't sound out of place on the punkish live Who album Live at Leeds. Guitarist Justin Hayward's more intricate finger picking and RnB inspired riffs come through in a much more forceful manner as well. On the down side, a lot of the vocals sound pretty bad, one singer in particular, I think it's Ray Thomas, can barely sing and almost talks his way through his vocals.

In addition to the live material there are also five studio songs on this album that sound like they were written when the Moodies were transitioning from being an RnB pop band to a progressive psychedelic band. Once again these songs are probably a lot more interesting to fans of the group than someone who is not familiar with them. Personally I really enjoyed hearing most of these forgotten studio songs, they are 'groovy' 60s British RnB, but with the classic Moodies psychedelic sound.