Re: PETE/DAVIES/BOWIE & HAYWARD Too!

[daelliott@lucent.com (Dave Elliott)]

Joanna writes:
> YES on all accounts.  Pete is the supreme guitar man for me.  Wrong
> notes and all, I love the man.  Davies:  Classis, nuff said?!!  Bowie: 
> The supreme showman who can still rock The Warfield in SF!  and
> Justin.   AAAAAAhhhhh Justin.  Songwriter extraordinaire.  A genius. 
> Love everything he's done.  Besides Pete's brilliant works I choose
> Justin as the storyteller of the century.  Any Moody fans out there?

When I was in high school, I used to listen to the Moodies a lot as a
counterpoint to The Who.  The Who were angry and aggressive, and I could
blast Quad or WN on my stereo and feel those emotions.  The Moodies were for
late at night, when I was more pensive and reflective.

Hayward is a fine songwriter; easily the best one in the band.  And he is a
excellent stage performer as well.

I can't help but think that Moodies fell far short of their potential,
though.  After their hiatus in the mid-70s, they returned to crank out a
bunch of mostly non-descript albums, and each one of them was weaker than
the previous one.  And now they have no pretense of continuing on
artistically, but instead are content to do oldies shows every summer.

"To Our Children's Children's Children" was a beautifully crafted album full
of songs about space and time which flowed seamlessly from start to finish.
It was a pop version of "Dark Side Of The Moon" (or rather DSOTM was a rock
version of TOCCC, since TOCCC happened 3 years earlier).  To me, that was
where the Moodies could have made their mark, but they chose instead after
that album to slowly change their focus and settle in as a lightweight pop
band.  They were good at that too, but I believe that they were capable of
more.

To Pete's credit, he has never stopped attempting to break new ground with
each endeavor.  That is one of the (many) things that separate The Who from
a band like the Moody Blues.


Dave Elliott