Face The Music

Someone did me a favor by stealing my earlier copy of this CD. I ended up buying another one from Amazon.com, and this time around is better than the first time!While ELO was becoming a huge commercial success, but just before they quite figured out how to make a big orchestra rock and roll, that's when Face The Music appeared. The album had elements that would appeal to fans of ELO's earlier music (including the famous reverse-tracking intro to "Fire On High"), several songs that were clearly pop-oriented for mass appeal, and a handful of lovely but seemingly gratuitous short string interludes between songs.The net effect was rather like meeting another family one time while on vacation somewhere. Afterward, overall, you may have vaguely pleasant recollections of them, if reminded of a few specific details about how the kids behaved or how the mother fixed her pasta salad or how the father loved to tell stories about his career in grocery wholesaling...but their last name just never springs to mind in the course of a typical day.Face The Music is like that. There's no way you can ever forget hearing "Evil Woman" or "Strange Magic" or "Poker" or "Night Rider." But you may forget that they were all on the same album, along with other excellent material like the painfully beautiful "Waterfall" and "One Summer Dream." There wasn't a clinker in the bunch--with the possible exception of "Down Home Town," which must surely be an acquired taste.So...why am I glad someone stole my first CD of this album? Because, for largely incomprehensible reasons, when CBS released Face The Music on CD the first time, they butchered it!The intro to "Fire On High" was gone. So were those seemingly gratuitous orchestral interludes...which, once made conspicuous by their absence, actually turned out to be the glue that held the songs together as a unified whole.Fortunately, between those Dark Ages and now, someone prevailed upon CBS Records to put back the missing material. It's now the same album as when it was originally released by United Artists way back in 1975, lovingly transferred to digital form. It's been made whole again!The only drawback to the CD is that you can't truly play it backwards on average CD players, and thereby listen to the supposed secret message that seems to have so terrified the CBS executives.For those who haven't heard it and don't have analog means of reversing the track, you're missing things like footsteps running backward down a hallway, and a pingpong ball eerily bouncing in reverse time. Then comes a warning--seemingly intoned by Peter Ford-Robertson, although not credited--that says: "The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back." (Which is the meaning, from Greek, of the word "repent." Not exactly a satanic message, if I read my New Testament correctly!) And in the old days, of course, if you didn't turn back right then, the needle would drop off the end of the groove.This CD is the best opportunity to hear Face The Music the way it was meant to be, and the way you remember it being. Just like traveling back in time to get reacquainted with those nice folks you met on vacation once upon a time...

Crack noted in the middle section when opening and closing case - BUT - no other issues. The CD played GOOD in the CD player (no issues noted). Grew up with ELO (Thanks to my brothers trusting me to play the music on a record player back in the 1960's). GOOD music to listen, Sing-a-Long and dance to. Will - NEVER GET TIRED - of ELO.

Pressed on sturdy 180 gram vinyl! This one of my favorite ELO albums along with On The Third Day and A New World Record.Fire On High is a wonderful instrumental with different musical textures and changing tempos. This song used to scare the bejeezus out of me with the backwards message at the beginning! One Summer Dream is another one of my favorites as well as the legendary Evil Woman. Poker is a good rocking song, too. Strange Magic is wonderful slow "ditty" (as Jeff Lynne would say).I had previously bought Face The Music on cd and the folks who mastered the cd had apparently "fell asleep at the wheel", as the intro to Evil Woman was erroneously burned (or cut) as the ending of the song Waterfall. So, if I wanted to listen to Evil Woman in it's entirety I had to select the song Waterfall and skip towards the end of that song. These little things irritate me. So I bought the vinyl album....PROBLEM SOLVED!!!

This is the last album by ELO before they started to out BeeGee the BeeGees. You can hear some of the future disco-cancer starting to infiltrate the ELO sound on this album, but generally it is a worthy successor to Eldorado. I bought all of the Move/ELO albums contemporaneous to their release in the late 60s and early 70s and this was the last ELO album before the lost me to the blatant pop stuff that followed. The best of ELO was the first two albums. On The Third Day was when Jeff Lynne decided on the more commercial approach to his music and it certainly worked. Though the band's greatest success occurred with the albums subsequent to Face The Music, it was for me, the last one worth owning.

They asked me for a review, so. I got this album when it first came out back in about 1974. It is a good solid album from start to finish, If you Liked "Evil Woman" you'll like this album. All the songs are of the same caliber as the hit song,This album is much better than the Euro-Disco-Trash that ELO began farting out in the late 70's and early 80'sI mean, you listen to the radio and you hear garbage like, "Brrruce, Don't let me down, Brruddce" PURE TRIPE!! compared to the excellent music on "Face the Music" and a couple more albums that followed it which were also very good.Fortunately, ELO died a well deserved death, which freed Jeff Lynne to go on to do some realy good work with the Traveling Wilbury's, and George Harrison.But to me, this is their best album, back when they were a Unique Orchestral Rock and Roll Band.

This was another very successful album for Jeff Lynne and the boys but how successful this album was took Jeff Lynne a little by surprise. He opted for a more electric sound, reinforced by strings of his newly constructed and most enduring band.Face The Music had all the offerings of a brilliant album and took Jeff and his band to new heights and Lynne's respect from musical colleagues both as a producer and songwriter began to really kick in. The famous Jeff Lynne sound had begun to appear, namely on the beautiful Strange Magic the amazing rocker Poker the lush Waterfall and the sensual One Summer Dream. As for the instrumnetal opening track Fire On High, words fail me. It's astounding and the perfect track to open the album. In addition ELO found great worldwide success in Evil Woman, massively successful and it further invited the listener to see what the bands next step would be.The seeds of evolution had been sown but no-one not even Jeff Lynne could have dreamed of the success that awaited him.