This album comes from early in the career of Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), before they had most of their hits. But it may be more interesting because of that. Later on, the band would have more of a well-produced, orchestral sound, which limited how spontaneous they could be on stage. At this stage, they were more like a conventional rock band, including doing covers they never did on any studio albums: "Day Tripper" by the Beatles, "Orange Blossom Special" by Johnny Cash, and "Great Balls of Fire" made famous by Jerry Lee Lewis.
Most of what I learned about this album comes from the very informative Wikipedia page about it:
The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach - Wikipedia
In short, it was meant to be the follow up to the band's third studio album, "On the Third Day," released in 1973. But it suffered from various sound quality issues, both on and off stage. The band's equipment truck broke down on the way to the gig, so the band wasn't able to perform a soundcheck. As a result, the band wasn't mixed well in real life. Worse, when it came time to make the album, the wrong version was used, one labeled "Rough Mix, Do Not Use." Between these problems, the sound quality was so muddy that the album was initially only officially released in Germany. It only got released in Britain in the 1980s and in the US even later.
Then the album got rereleased in the 1990s, finally based on the correct tapes. This version sounded better. However, even this version still had issues. So Lil Panda worked from the rerelease version and used the recent computer technology that allows one to isolate the different instruments so he could do his own mix. That's the version you have here. I'm posting it because I could hear the improvement with this new version. So kudos to Lil Panda for working on this and sharing it.
This album is 40 minutes long.
02 Showdown (Electric Light Orchestra)
03 Day Tripper (Electric Light Orchestra)
04 10538 Overture [Instrumental] (Electric Light Orchestra)
05 talk (Electric Light Orchestra)
06 Orange Blossom Special [Instrumental Version] (Electric Light Orchestra)
07 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Electric Light Orchestra)
08 Great Balls of Fire (Electric Light Orchestra)
09 Roll Over Beethoven (Electric Light Orchestra)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15771069/ElectrcLghtO_1974_TheNghttheLghtWentOninLngBeach_atse.zip.html
The cover is the original cover from the official album. In the 1990s, the album was rereleased with a totally different cover, so this cover is rather rare.
I remember buying this from my local HMV store in the 90's never seen it posted anywhere before Many Thanks
ReplyDeleteLil Panda...what would you say you did to your version to make it the way you did? I always love to hear why people make the editing choices they do. I have the CD version and can hear a lot of differences...the main one being to me at least the cd has a much higher end. I'm not saying it's better...just different.
ReplyDeleteTyrell: What's on your mind Sebastian. What are you thinking about?
Quite a brainstorm, uh, Sebastian. Milk and cookies kept you
awake, huh? Let's discuss this. You better come up.
-RubberSolof
LOL
Lil Panda tells me he can't post responses due to technical problems with Google. (I've been there too.) So here's his response, which he e-mailed to me:
DeleteThe mix on the CD in general was like a think lump of lower frequencies, but not the very lowest. I opened up the top end pretty drastically and touched up the lower end. Then I used X+ cut out the vocals and re-eq'd them a second time so they stuck out. I was never going to able to break up that mass (cellos, bass, keys, lower guitar), so I just resigned myself to re-eq what I could. Oddly, the instrumental tunes really seemed to shine more than vocals, which I guess is some sort of function of the way the thing was recorded and mixed at the time.