Monday, March 22, 2021

The Moody Blues - Fly Me High - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1972)

I just posted a version of the Moody Blues album "Days of Future Passed" with the orchestral elements reduced and some other songs from the time period added in. While I made that, I had to consider what I wanted to do with the songs from that time that didn't fit. So I created this stray tracks album as kind of a byproduct. I figure I might as well post it at the same time.

Most fans of the Moody Blues would agree that their classic, peak period was from 1967 to 1972. That's exactly the time frame for this album. As far as I can tell, the band doesn't have many stray tracks. (Or if they do, they keep them locked up in their vaults.) PJ at the Albums I Wish Existed blog made a similar album with many of the same songs. But this has some differences, especially because I used four 1967 songs for my version of "Days of Future Passed," and thus they aren't included here.

All these songs are officially released, except for "Beautiful Dream." That one comes from a 1968 concert that was broadcast on French TV. I've already posted that entire album at this blog. The sound quality of that one is the same as the rest. I removed the audience noise to make it fit in with the studio tracks.

In my opinion, if you consider this album as a whole, it's just as good as most of the band's studio albums from 1967 to 1972. For instance, some of the songs here could have been hits, like "Fly Me High." And "A Simple Game" actually was a hit for the Four Tops, even though it was written by the Moody Blues. It barely made the charts in the US, but it reached the Top Five in Britain. 

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Fly Me High (Moody Blues)
02 Leave This Man Alone (Moody Blues)
03 Please Think about It (Moody Blues)
04 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Moody Blues)
05 Beautiful Dream (Moody Blues)
06 King and Queen (Moody Blues)
07 Gimme a Little Somethin' (Moody Blues)
08 What Am I Doing Here (Moody Blues)
09 A Simple Game (Moody Blues)
10 Mike's Number One (Moody Blues)
11 The Dreamer (Moody Blues)
12 Island (Moody Blues)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gyVBL

The cover art is based on a concert poster. The poster is from a 2007 concert, which is way off chronologically, but I figure the artistic style is timeless. The poster is rectangular, so I had to crop it to get it to fit the square space of an album cover.  The band name is exactly how it was in the poster, but I changed the text at the bottom.

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