Electric Light Orchestra

The first rock (or pop?) album I ever owned was a tape cassette of ELO's "Time." Why is this something to bring up now? I'm listening to it now, downloaded off Napster (the new subscription Napster that plugs into Windows Media Player, not the old copyright infringement Napster.) I think it had to be about 1981 or 1982 when Dad bought me the tape, and I listened to it endlessly. Later, when I got into buying vinyl records, I bought another copy of the album, since the cassette was no longer in very good shape.

Later, I converted much of my collection of records to CD, having bought my first stereo system, which included a Denon CD player, a Panasonic amplifier/core unit, and Bose speakers. I bought that stuff in 1986 as a junior in high school using money I made at the Pumphouse in Fairbanks, Alaska washing dishes - my first job. I still have the CD player and speaker, hooked up to the TV in the house in Maryland.

Something interesting about ELO, for those that have no idea who I'm talking about, is that the driving force behind the band is Jeff Lynne. Do you know who the Travelling Wilbury's are (or really, were?) Jeff Lynne is the one nobody seemed to know. The TW's were Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Tom Petty, although I bet this is the only time you'd see their names in that order. Lynne was friends with another Beatle, in that he and John Lennon were apparently pretty close. I read an article once that said John Lennon felt ELO was the pretty much what the Beatles would have become had they stayed together. I suppose that can be taken as good or bad, depending on how you feel about ELO and the Beatles.

I see this was a post pretty much entirely written for me rather than you, the reader. I hope you'll pardon my music-enduced trip down Memory Lane. I know every word of this album and have for over twenty years, and that just seems somehow odd.