RIP Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues

[CrimsonFox]

Moody Blues singer Ray Thomas dies at his home in Surrey | Daily Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5243871/Moody-Blues-singer-Ray-Thomas-dies-home-Surrey.html)

Poor guy

FInally voted into the Hall of Fame and doesn't even get to go to the ceremony.


Great flautist

[CrimsonFox]

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[Thomkal]

At least he knew about the Hall of Fame before he died. :( RIP loved their music

[Abe Sargent]

Whoa!

I have every Moody Blues album. I prefer my rock detailed and progressive rather than simplified punk-junk. So I was a huge MB fan. I still think Days of Future Passed is one of the best rock albums of all time. I sung Nights in White Satin at my prom for karaoke, and I don;t think more than 10% of people had heard the song before, but I still got a standing ovation from everyone. It's pretty prom-tastic.


I love SO MANY MOODIES songs, from the folk-stylings to their early electronic-rock in the 80s.

They are very much an album band, not a singles band.

Here are my favorite songs from each of their albums, starting from the genre shift in Days:

Days - Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)
In Search of the Lost Chord - The Actor
On the Threshold of a Dream - Lovely to See You
To Our Children's Children's Children - Watching and Waiting
A Question of Balance - The Balance? Minstrel's Song? Melancholy Man? Question? Probably The Balance or Question. See below
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour - One More Time to Live, best chorus in Moody Blues history. But My Song is....MY SONG. So awesome. See below for more.
Seventh Sojourn - Isn't Life Strange? For My Lady? You and Me? See below

This ends the Decca studios era. The bolded final three albums are massive quality where it;s just hard for me to pick a song at random on such a good album, particular Question of Balance and EGBDF.


Octave - Steppin; in the Slide Zone (Skip this album unless you are a purist or completionist)
Long Distance Voyager - NERVOUS!!!! Or maybe Gemini Dream sometimes (This is my fav album of this era and has a lot of stuff I really like.) But really Nervous, which has at times, been my favorite MB song.
The Present - Sitting at the Wheel
The Other Side of Life - Your Wildest Dreams
Sur la Mer - I Know You're Out There Somewhere
Keys of the Kingdom -Is This Heaven? Feels like a throwback song to the early era, with a lot acoustic fun-ness. (Randomly was my favorite album of this era, but no longer).
Strange Times - English Sunset I suppose
December - I don't rate Christmas albums. Go away. See also Chicago.

[Abe Sargent]

An in an homage to this very influential symphonic/prog group, here, let's have a little My Song:


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[Groundhog]

I never liked the Moodys as much as I expected to when I checked them out given how much I loved symphonic prog of the early 70s, but they have some wonderful songs - The Actor and The Story in Your Eyes are probably my favourite two. Seventh Sojourn is probably my most listened to album of theirs.

[Abe Sargent]

For reference, the two songs Groundhog mentions:

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And then Story, which feels a little more traditional from EGBDF:

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I hear you. It''s from an amazing album. But I've always been a little more partial to I'm just a Singer in a Rock and Roll Band for my driving MB rock anthem. Which is of course from Seventh Sojourn, so I;m sure you know it well!

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[Abe Sargent]

Desolation
Creation
Evolution

Pollution
Saturation

Population
Annihilation
Revolution

Confusion
Illusion
Conclusion
Starvation

Degradation
Humiliation
Contemplation

Inspiration
Elation
Salvation

Communication
Compassion
Solution

This, by the way, is the chorus I spoke of earlier in One More Time to Live. You can see it begins with a sort of run down of all of the awful things happening right now. Humiliation, Degradation, Pollution, etc. Then it swaps at Contemplation to think about the bad stuff, moves into answers, and then concludes with Compassion into Contemplation. Blows my mind.

Here's the song in case you care:


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[CrimsonFox]

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[Abe Sargent]

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Still one of my favorite pieces! Probably my favorite Moody Blues' "hit" that everyone know.

[Abe Sargent]

The last week for me has been all Moody Blues all the time. Work! Play! so Moody!


Right now I've been putting the entire album, "On the Threshold of a Dream" on heavy repeat, especially the last three songs.

Here you go:

Have you heard (Part 1)
The Voyage
Have you heard (part 2)


You need to listen to all three of them together. So I have found a piece on Youtube that does, but it also puts the The Dream - Poem first. So you can get all four songs in this one stanza.

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Enjoy!

[Ksyrup]

My parents saw them last night in Dallas.