Moody Blues on PBS

Justin Hayward and John Lodge singing Nights in White Satin

My wife and I would've gone to see The Moody Blues and their 50th anniversary (of Days of Future Past) concert this past July at Jones Beach, but we'd just gotten back from Cape Cod the day before and were still unpacking.  Fortunately, PBS captured one of their concerts that summer (in Toronto), and we recently saw it.

We've loved the Moody Blues since the late 1960s.  We rediscovered them in the 1990s, when we saw them (on PBS) at their Red Rocks concert in 1992.  We heard then, for the first time, some of their newer material like "Wildest Dreams" and "I Know You're Out There Somewhere," and a lot more.  We've seen them in several concerts in the New York area, and thought they were superb.

For a variety of reasons that I've never understood, The Moody Blues are not held in universally highest regard.  They're now scheduled be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, but that should have happened decades ago.  On a personal note, I submitted an article about The Moody Blues (I may still have it somewhere on a floppy disk or a faded print-out, I'm not sure) to Rolling Stone Magazine in the mid-1990s, and it was promptly turned down on the grounds that no one cared anymore about The Moody Blues.

But on another personal note, The Moody Blues have greatly influenced my own music - "Forever Friday" on Twice Upon A Rhyme wouldn't have been written without "Tuesday Afternoon" - and whatever poetry is in my writing, I attribute at least in part to inspiration from their lyrics.   If we're talking about top bands, no one compares with The Beatles (read Rob Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles and listen to the Beatles Channel on Sirius XM if for some reason you need to know why).  And The Rolling Stones pretty much are undisputed for second place.  But as for the rest of my Top Five, I'd easily include The Moody Blues among them, and sometimes ahead of The Beachboys, The Who, and The Eagles.

Anyway - if you ever loved them, they're almost as good now.  Their guitar-playing is fine, Justin Hayward hits all of his notes well (as a comparison, a bit better than Paul McCartney now), John Lodge is ok (not as good vocally now as McCartney), and Graeme Edge is fine on drums.  The back up band is excellent.  The songs are as fresh and poetic and what I think of as watercolor beautiful as ever.