14. The Orchestra--No Rewind
#14: The Orchestra--No Rewind (2001)
Top-Notch Tracks: "No Rewind," [HJ200 #28], "Can't Wait to See You," "Jewel and Johnny," "Over London Skies," "If Only," "Say Goodbye," "I Could Write a Book," "Twist and Shout"
Album Depth: "Let Me Dream," "Before We Go"
Weak Link: Lack of distribution by a major label.
Stand-Out Lyrics: "Stumbling through my back pages, what was I thinking of?"--"No Rewind"
"Parenthetically, thank God that you still love me! (Thank God that you still love me!)"--"Can't Wait To See You"
"I don't know how much longer I can watch you leave my life."--"Over London Skies"
"Every time I see the clouds go by, I hope they're heading to your part of the sky."--"Can't Wait To See You"
"Now his world is crashed in seconds flat. He's down on his knees."--"If Only"
"Jewel and Johnny walk to school each day, holding hands and no one bats an eye. All their friends are pretty cool that way. No one knows why both their mothers cry."--"Jewel and Johnny"
"I said remember me, I'm sorry, I was out of my freaking mind."--"No Rewind"
"Write a book on guilt and fear and blame, a catalogue of pain."--"I Could Write a Book"
"Is she looking to find herself, or all the things they say when they really mean goodbye?"--"Say Goodbye"
"Is this the way it's always gotta be? I keep loving you, you keep leaving me."--"Over London Skies"
"Johnny nearly threw a punch today--some jerk on the metro said a word. Jewel said, 'I don't care what people say. It's not like that's the worst we've ever heard.'"--"Jewel and Johnny"
"Before we go, before we're through, we've got to learn how to live together if it's the last thing we ever do."--"Before We Go"
Album on youtube: No Rewind (Except for "Twist and Shout," which can be found here.)
Or, there's this one:
Or, maybe this:
Album cover: 1st version: 2 out of 10. On the positive side, I like the font. On the negative side, well, everything else, This is the album cover on the cd I received in the mail in 2002. After a while, the group decided to try a couple of other album cover concepts. 2nd version: 5 out of 10. I like the brick wall with the image of the reel to reel on it, but it could use the album title on there somewhere. 3rd version: 4 out of 10. This one seems like they're trying too hard to be clever. It looks like an alternative cover for a 1980s Dave Edmunds album, and while I like those albums, the album covers are not something to aspire to.
Comments: According to the interwebs, this album was released in 2001. Was it, like "Rockin' the Suburbs" and "Mink Car," released on that infamous day of September 11, 2001? I don't know--the interwebs are vague as to exact release date of this album, probably because it wasn't released like a normal album.
I'm not sure when or how I heard about the album. (Memory can be a skeechy thing.) But, I do remember that I had to order the album online and wait for it to be mailed to me. According to my journal, I received "No Rewind" in the mail on February 19, 2002, which happens to be three days after witnessing the German women's hockey team blitzkreig their way back from a 5-2 deficit to tie the Chinese women's hockey team for a final of 5-5 at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
From the moment I first put the cd into the cd-playing machine I knew this album was a keeper. This was the ELO sound that had been missing for almost two decades! And it was immediate proof that Jeff Lynne didn't have a monopoly on the ELO sound. In fact, Jeff Lynne released an album under the name of ELO in 2001 titled "Zoom," and a side by side comparison of the two albums isn't even close. Only the three best songs from "Zoom" would make the cut on "No Rewind."
Yes, upon first listen it was easy to declare "No Rewind" better than more than half of the original Electric Light Orchestra albums. It's that good.
The songwriting on "No Rewind" is just about divided up equally between Parthenon Huxley and Eric Troyer. We met P. Hux earlier on this list back at album #33. Troyer songs, meanwhile, showed up three times on the HondoJoe Top 200 Songs list, at #171, #34, and at #28 with the title song from this album.
Troyer is credited with writing "No Rewind," "If Only," "I Could Write a Book," "Say Goodbye," and co-wrote "Let Me Dream" with violinist Mik Kaminski. Meanwhile, Huxley wrote "Jewel and Johnny," and "Can't Wait to See You," and co-wrote "Over London Skies" with former bandmate and ELO drummer Bev Bevan. And then the two of them joined with Kelly Groucutt to write the concluding song on the album, "Before We Go." All of the songs are great. (I will not debate this. It is fact.)
The album also includes a cover of the old rock and roll staple "Twist and Shout," but does so with a bit of a twist. The Orchestra's version starts off slowly, patiently building up steam before finally exploding. And the end of the song, at least on the original 2001 edition pressings, features a little snippet of the gang singing the words, "Listen to this next one!" before diving into the next song, "Can't Wait To See You." (I had a heck of a time finding this version, but finally did. It's at the link above.)
And speaking of things that are hard to find on the interwebs, when I turned to the song lyrics sites to get lyrics for these songs, I was a bit flummoxed. Almost all of the lyrics for this album on those sites seem to have been posted by people who either haven't actually listened to the songs, or by people for whom English is not their native language. I've found mistakes on these sites before (and I've found things I've been singing wrong for years), but the stuff posted for these songs is just ridiculous.
"No Rewind" by The Orchestra is my favorite album of the 21st Century, and it's proof that great albums don't always come from popular or established artists. Great albums can come from the unknown and unheralded.
Up next: J. R. R. Tolkien or Muhamad Ali? (For real, this time)
As I listened to this album, two thoughts kept going through my mind. First, I could see why Jeff Lynne was keen to get all of the rights to the name for Electric Light Orchestra, because these guys definitely pull of that ELO sound, and the quality of the songs is right up there with any ELO album. Second, I don't understand why the guys in The Orchestra felt like they had to keep clinging onto the ELO name. They were good enough to make it in the biz with any name they wanted. Why use a name that only reminds people of a band you used to be in? It makes you sound like your band is a cover band with no new songs of your own. Why not chose something that sets you apart from your old band? You say yourselves in the titular song, "You can't rewind your life," so why are you still hitting that rewind button? You are a great band on your own! How good? Good enough to possibly become better than ELO ever was! And that's a really difficult thing to do.
ReplyDeleteNow, having said that, I will say that I think the biggest problem I have with The Orchestra is that they only put out the one album. Come on, guys! You created what one famous music critic said was his "favorite album of the 21st century!" You can't have that much talent and just stop at one album. Yes, I realize that Kelly Groucutt died in 2009, and that would have slowed the production of new music for a period of time. But No Rewind was released in 2001, and you had 8 years of Grocutt during which you could have made at least four more albums. Is one album every two years too much to ask? No. It isn't. Because that's what you did when you were in ELO, dammit!
And now I feel better.
This is another one of those albums that I'm pissed at myself for not listening to more during the last 20 years. It's now going to be a regular on my playlist--except for Twist and Shout. I found the song to be the one that I liked the least, yet I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was a mind worm that produced way too much frustration for me. I'd hear the beginning and think, "Okay, they're going to go with a slowed-down, sentimental version of the song where the singer is lamenting the passing of the days when he and his lover would dance to The Beatles version of the song. But then in the middle of the song they switch over to a more uptempo, positive feeling performance of the song, and then they go back to the sentimental version. I'm not saying that it isn't a great song. I'm just sayin that it's too Jeckyll and Hyde for me. Still, the rest of the album is so damn good that I'm willing to listen to listen to "Twist and Shout" if that's the price of admission. My favorite song would have to be "London Skies" followed by the rest of the songs. "London Skies sounds so much like an ELO hit that I keep expecting to hear Jeff Lynne's voice join in at some point. Yes, I know I just said to move on from ELO, but "London Skies" sounds so much like a classic ELO hit that I wouldn't be surprised to hear it included on an ELO greatest hits album.
Oh, and I'd like to include this last note for Parthenon in case he ever reads this. I would like it very much if, for the next album by The Orchestra, you feature a nice big round spaceship on the cover. 'Cause I like me some spaceships!
Nardo