...why - it's difficult to find a way in when even on the best albums they can mix the sublime (e.g. Never Comes the Day, Are You Sitting Comfortably, Have You Heard on Threshold) with the utterly arse (Dear Diary, Send Me No Wine, The Dream, To Share Our Love).

Even the compilation albums are choc full of this kind of shite. Basically, Justin Hayward could have done with a little more balls/cockiness/ruthlessness and when Graeme Edge, Ray Thomas or, God forbid the bloody drummer wandered in to suggest spoken song poems/nursery rhymes/chugging pub band shite, should have told them where to stick their bloody white eagle of the north. Mind you, it didn't help that he went all MOR and shite himself in the 70s...

There was an album show on AM radio . I was a young nipper and my father had taken me to the boxing. TV ringside featuring a Maori boxer called Kahu Mahunga who, it transpired, had a glass jaw. But I digress. Anyway, on the way home I got Dad to switch the station to the album show which featured the whole of Question of Balance . From the Blood House to The Moody Blues.

The boxing match is a distant,unpleasant memory.

But I still hum those melodies from the recollections of that drive home.

but this weekend I was playing a CD entitled "Strange Pleasures:Further Sounds Of Decca" which I bought some months ago now, and had not played it much until now . Had it on cooking Sunday Dinner and three tracks by the Moody Blues had me dashing to the computer to check who it was. "Twilight Time" "Gypsy" "The Best Way to Travel". I had never paid much attention to the Moodies before, but these tracks slotted in quite nicely alongside Pete Brown and Egg etc.

..between arse and class was probably no greater with The Moodies than anyone else of that time.
Ray Thomas was responsible for some rubbish, but he did write "Dear Diary" and "Legend Of A Mind" two of my favourite tracks.
Graham Edges poems?...aah, I've got no defence for those.

'Ride My See-Saw'

They look great here.
I especially like the gentlemen in the tuxedo.

...was that they looked like hairdressers.

I love The Moody Blues albums up until Seventh Sojourn. Here's an excellent single (from 1967, I think) that passed me by altogether until it was featured in the movie The Dish.

http://open.spotify.com/track/0C6ml2rwSrwPIdJAX42G3R

OK it was Denny Laine and before they got all twee/pretentious.
Hairdressers? If someone like Ray Thomas ever came toward me in a barbers with a pair of scissors I'd be afraid, very afraid. He has the archetypal mass murderer look, of whom the neighbours would say he seemed a nice chap, kept himself to himself etc etc

is amazing. As is Days Of Future Passed. The rest is iffy

Moody Blues largely passed me by and my view is that it's generally about the front man.

I have mates who like them and are largely fanatical, but it is hard to derive an opinion on the band that is informed on their music and not on the lead singer.

Heppers is right, Justin looks like a hairdresser who has a wardrobe full of clothes from different cultures, not to understand them, but to look supposedly ace.

You then read the interviews and they confirm your opinion, that he is a pretentious nob.

You then can't even get at the music for thinking, you're a nob.

This happens to me with loads and the recent U2 / Bono thing confirms it even more.

Fans love them, by passers just think, tosser.

On a slightly different point, it's interesting that the older you get, the more easier it is to talk about things you don't like, rather than those you do.

Perhaps we should have therapy. Perhaps, we should have a Word Massive Day or a thread that allows only positive thoughts.

We could have it in a bring your favourite toy in on the last friday etc.

..that looks anything like J. Hayward.
Having said that, The Moodies did remind me of assistants in a not-quite hip boutique.
..and the Bee Gees looked like one big tooth.
..and Serge Gainsbourg looked like a toad.
Is it really a problem?

I love the spoken word tracks. The intro to On The Threshold Of A Dream in particular (computer voice) "OF COURSE YOU ARE, MY BRIGHT LITTLE STAR" (etc.) They were spaced out in a different way to the other spaced out bands. Probably on a pint of mild rather than hallucinogenics.

when a song about buddhism written by the keyboardist (who looked like he was more at home in a Vauxhall Viva, than a flying carpet) could get on an album

...is an absolute triumph. Like a little rock opera.

..when (especially in America) they were considered to be almost messiahs..to the point where disabled people would show up at their concerts to be "cured"..which led to this song.
(Rocks pretty hard too)

The first 7 albums are all brilliant, and I'll punch the man who says they're not. Please form an orderly queue.

I've never quite understood the issue people have with the spoken word parts of the early Moodies (signature albums). Not only did they interface well with the material of which they were a part, but they also served to compliment the fact that The Moodies were singularly responsible for introducing many people to the intricacies of symphonic music - so why not responsible poetry too?

As for a resurgence, I hope to be personally responsible for that in the very near future here in the States. Watch for a little thing called ODYSSEY - A Moody Blues Experience. . .