Bergo '45 Song of the Week #52 - Dwight's Pick for 6/29/14:
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"Concerto For A Rainy Day" by Electric Light Orchestra from Out Of The Blue (1977)
Jet/United Artists Records
Written and produced from front to back by primarily one man in just two weeks, Out Of The Blue is Mr. Jeff Lynne at his greatest. Side three is made up of four separate songs which together comprise one complete piece, the "Concerto For A Rainy Day". In no way will you find a more perfect example of what I believe a great album should be." - Dwight Lewis
This is a weekly dive into the musical mind of Bergo '45. Each week, a new song is chosen by a different member of the band. Check out the playlist to see all of the past selections. Grab a towel and give it a listen....
Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) were a British rock group from Birmingham, England, who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO was formed to accommodate Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne's desire to create modern rock and pop songs with classical overtones. After Wood's departure following the band's debut record, Lynne wrote and arranged all of the group's original compositions and produced every album.
Despite early singles success in the United Kingdom, the band was initially more successful in the United States, billed as "The English guys with the big fiddles". They gained a cult following despite lukewarm reviews back in their native United Kingdom. By the mid-1970s, they had become one of the biggest-selling acts in music. From 1972 to 1986, ELO accumulated 27 Top-40 hit singles in both the UK and the US, with 20 Top 20 UK singles and 15 Top-20 US singles (as charted by Billboard magazine). The band also holds the record for having the most Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 hits, 20, of any group in US chart history without ever having a number one single.
ELO collected 19 CRIA, 21 RIAA and 38 BPI awards, and sold over 50 million records worldwide during the group's original 13 year period of active recording and touring.
Side three of the release is subtitled Concerto for a Rainy Day, a four track musical suite based on the weather and how it affects mood change, ending with the eventual sunshine and happiness of "Mr. Blue Sky". This was inspired by Lynne's experience while trying to write songs for the album against torrential rain outside his Swiss Chalet. "Standin' in the Rain" opens the suite with a haunting keyboard over a recording of real rain, recorded by Jeff Lynne just outside his rented studio. Also heard at the 30 second point of the song marking the beginning of The Concerto is thunder crackling in an unusual manner voicing the words "Concerto for a Rainy Day" by the band's keyboardist, Richard Tandy. At around the 1 minute mark the staccato strings play a morse code spelling out ELO. The band used the song to open their 1978 Out of the Blue concerts.
"Big Wheels" forms the second part of the suite and continues with the theme of the weather and reflection followed by the more optimistic third part "Summer and Lightning". Apart from its inclusion on the Out of the Blue album, the song has never appeared on any of the band's compilations or as a B-side until 2000, when Lynne included it on the group's retrospective Flashback album. "Summer and Lightning" is the third song in the suite. The raining weather theme is continued throughout the track though the mood and lyrics are more optimistic. "Mr. Blue Sky", an uplifting, lively song celebrating sunshine, is the finale of "Concerto for a Rainy Day" suite. It is the only piece from the Concerto to be excerpted as a single.
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