So, three albums from ELO's classic years have finally gotten their due. It was a long ride to get to this point. These were almost released in 2001, and then again in May of this year. It felt like forever. But here we are... and we still have a ways to go before Out Of The Blue, Balance Of Power and hopefully more beyond that.
What I'm most excited about here is that these songs are finally back in the context of which they truly belong: their original albums. Best-of's have become so tiresome and no Best-of will satisfy everyone no matter how much research you put into it.
On The Third Day was probably the album in most dire need of remastering and right from the opening notes of the disc, you'll hear why. Complete night and day difference from the one and only previous CD version. We already have all but one bonus track on here, but that whole sequence (from the EMI First Light Series edition of ELO 2) is quite solid as is.
One big improvement over the 2001 remasters is Jeff Lynne commentary. One page with a few thoughts from the band's leader is fine. Track by Track commentary with a one sentence comment under the title just didn't work. Some of them were just outright strange.
On that note, I hope Mainartery is designing the rest of the catalog booklets. Of course, I think it'd be great to have the whole catalog done this way, but... we'll see.
Welcome to my CD collection, On The Third Day. You're a valuable edition.
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