(yes I understand)

 

I get into a habit of putting things on repeat until it becomes the background of every thought I have, and this album, Electric Light Orchestra's Discovery, their eighth studio album that was released in May 1979, is now the soundtrack of every idea, dream, misnomer, etc. I have in my skull.  Every song on this thing is pure delight:  caveman-electronica, disco for cornfields, sad but happy synth-pop.  It presages the early 80s of Human League and Icehouse and OMD and Ultravox and so many other English postpunk New Wave aesthetes.

But ELO was and is for losers.  They never fit into a category that would have them, and this album is so blissfully unhinged and perfectly recorded I feel totally aligned with my 14-year-old nothing self pushing it into the 8-track in an old Chevy Malibu.  It is everything, it is nothing.  Here's the thing:  I shoplifted the 8-track version back in the day.  No kidding.  From Ayr-Way, the store that would eventually become Target, and it was a two-piece lift.  ELO's Discovery and Fleetwood Mac's Tusk.  Both albums are masterpieces no one mentions anymore, so I feel the need to elevate at least this one.  What is it about shoplifting anyway?  Seems so stupid the risk of course now, and yet the title of this blog after all is, well, incredibly stupid you-know-what, and I guess shoplifting is a manifestation of that feeling of wanting nothing to mean anything and everything to mean you're OK.  That you can just take it and go and have that thrill with no repercussions.  I did get caught eventually, stealing a hardback copy of Stephen King's Dead Zone from that same store a few months later.  And I never did it again, and never wanted to.

But still:  that feeling and this triumphant soundtrack.  It all goes together.    

I have it on right now.  It is March 1, 2022, I am 56 years old, and the windows are open.  60 degrees, that smell of pre-Spring thaw, and I am avoiding the President's State of the Union because I just can't anymore.  Still, this music makes me feel sorrowful and yet completely optimistic.  

The best songs:  "Shine a Little Love," "Confusion," "Need Her Love," "Last Train to London," and of course the sexiest silliest ELO song ever on AM radio, "Don't Bring Me Down."  Hell every song, but there's such a crazy nostalgia woven into the syncopation and synths, that elegant whine in Jeff Lynne's beautiful voice.  Lushness that takes over.

And finally just this lyric here, this one:    

Can you understand (yes I understand)
Can you feel it's right (I know it is)
Will you be the same (I'll do it all again).