![]() Honestly, I even loved the look of the simple black and white label Side 2 got a custom label.Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) is a British rock band that formed in Birmingham, England in 1970. Lyrics on a heavy paperboard sleeve Credits on the back of the lyric sleeve, and a band group shot that isn’t the laziest I’ve ever seen but isn’t far from it. Back cover: simple track listing and credits, and more skyline of a city completely unlike where I lived. I’m young and in love and my whole life is ahead of me, and it’s just going to be amazing. But I was never embarrassed by my love for this record, and when I put it on and (after “Tightrope”) I hear those opening notes and the sound of the telephone ringing on the line, it’s 1977 again. There was a lot of music I owned and had loved that I couldn’t bear to be associated with anymore, and I got rid of a lot of it, nearly starting over. I have had it ever since and despite possibly millions of plays on some of the worst equipment imaginable, it honestly still sounds pretty good.Īs I’ve said before, when I got to college, a whole lot of my high school persona, and that persona’s belongings, were cast aside. I probably bought this when “Telephone Line” hit I couldn’t be sure where but, as with most of my new records from that era, at the Two Guys Department Store in Schenectady. The sides both start out rocking, and close out with songs that are sorta mystical/otherworldly (“Mission” and “Shangri-La”), with no filler in between. I mean, every song, just out of this world great. (Lots of songs I can’t say that about.)īut the rest of the album is also killer. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a really, really good song, and that’s probably why, decades later, my deep association with it isn’t embarrassing. (No call waiting then, either, kids, and the next day I might get yelled at because someone else had been trying to get through on the line.) Once in that position and through the screening parent on the other end, whether friendship or romance, we might talk for hours. The phone wouldn’t stretch any further into my room. The cord on the upstairs phone was just long enough for me to extend it across the hallway, barely into the doorway to my room, and then carefully close the door I then had to sit on the floor with my back to the door. Phone wiring wasn’t yet modular in those days, and theoretically you had to have the phone company come and move any wires around, so when faced with a problem like not really being able to move the phone into my bedroom so I could talk privately, there was pretty much no solution. Back then extra telephones cost money we had one downstairs and one in the upstairs hall. It was a (literally) painfully romantic ritual, too - there was no telephone in my bedroom. And I did, all the time, nearly every night, for a long while. If I wanted to talk to someone, I had to gather up the courage to dial the phone, get through a parent, and then talk. There were girl friends and, amazingly, a girlfriend, and the telephone became the connection. ![]() That was the year, though, that things started happening. Everything about it is the romance of summer evening loneliness, the wish to connect - and when you’re 16, the wish to connect is everything. Starting with that lonely ringing tone, it’s the pure sound of trying to connect in the lonely, lonely nights. Well, “Telephone Line” is the national anthem of pining away. There were other girls I was interested in, deeply interested in, but being painfully introverted, I really had no way to express that or do anything about it, except to pine away. The previous summer I had had a few dates and spent an amount of time with a girl from my class whom I was infatuated with, but she had the good sense to say that was enough, and we remained friends. Now, let’s make no mistake - I had no love life at 16. You want to hit a romantically inclined 16-year-old boy in the heart, in the era when pretty much the only form of remote communication was the telephone? Write “Telephone Line.” (The first single from the album, “Rockaria,” wasn’t even released in the US.) “Do Ya” was a strong hit and definitely got my attention, but then in May, they released “Telephone Line.” Omigod. The first single, “Do Ya,” a remake of a song Lynne had previously done with The Move, was released in February 1977. Then, just as I turned 16, “A New World Record” came out. ![]() I stared and stared and stared at that beautiful, romantic skyline cover for hours and hours Like I said last time, as a teen in the ’70s, I was aware of ELO, and I liked their early hits a lot but that didn’t cause me to buy any of their albums. How to talk about one of the most important albums in my life? ![]()
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