Kelly Groucutt – Kelly
Released on vinyl in 1982, and then reprinted on CD circa 2001 as a fan club exclusive and again as a general release in 2009, Kelly is the sole solo outing for the late Kelly Groucutt, whose musical claim to fame was as the bassist and soaring backup vocalist for ELO and, later, ELO Part II / The Orchestra. Groucutt had the help of most of his bandmates in recording his album, with the most conspicuous holdout being Jeff Lynne himself; perhaps not surprisingly, the entire album is very much in the style of ELO’s halcyon days (namely the mid/late 1970s). Groucutt was already an integral part of the ELO sound from that period, and Kelly can almost be seen – or heard – as an audition for the opportunity to take an even wider role creatively within the group.
As always, Groucutt’s vocal range is beyond merely impressive, and his singing voice doesn’t thin out when he edges toward baritone or falsetto. Having seen him play live with ELO Part II, I can vouch for the fact that the man could, quite simply, belt out a tune – and with his vocal abilities, he could belt out nearly any tune you can think of. But Kelly also shows off his songwriting abilities, and it’s quite evident that Groucutt was paying very very close attention to how songs were put together in ELO’s signature style; much of this album could fit in seamlessly on nearly any ELO album between Face The Music and Time (the ELO album whose release immediately preceded Kelly).
Songs like “Am I A Dreamer” (presented here in both demo and finished recordings) and “Sea Of Dreams” seem like they could’ve been strong candidates to become classic ELO songs. Groucutt also clearly shared Lynne’s love of classic ’50s rock – his background vocal arrangements are very reminiscent of Lynne’s work, but they also have just a hint of doo-wop to them. “Midnight Train” and “Black Hearted Woman” show ’70s roots, but the former especially highlights the unique rapport between Groucutt and ELO violinist Mik Kaminski, who provides hoedown-worthy fiddle work as well as coaxing “train whistle” effects out of his violin. The two would later form OrKestra, which would later be absorbed by ELO Part II.
There is, however, one huge problem with the re-release of Kelly that’s distressing: the sound quality. I’m assuming that the original vinyl release of Kelly didn’t sound like this does: the CD winds up sounding like it was mastered from a very well-worn cassette tape. Disappointingly, most of the songs sound tinny and hollow, with almost no bass frequencies… which is almost a slap in the face to the memory of someone who was, in fact, a bass player. Actually, I have a confession to make: back in the heady days of Napster, before this album was re-released, I downloaded several individual tracks from someone’s vinyl-to-CD-R copy of Kelly because I’d heard of the album but had never actually heard any of the songs… and to be brutally honest, the commercially-released CD sounds like it was mastered from those very badly-recorded, lo-fi MP3 tracks.
I give high marks for the music: Kelly Groucutt was willing, ready, and capable of taking a more direct creative role in the future of ELO, but – again, to be brutally honest – by this time Jeff Lynne had almost certainly realized that his future fortunes rested with holding the publishing rights to ELO’s output, and therefore wasn’t about to let go of the “central / sole songwriter” role. Which is unfortunate, because his sideman was clearly ready to help out. (I have to say that this also makes me reconsider Lynne’s more recent complaints, in some of the remastered ELO catalog’s liner notes, about bearing the heavy creative burden of the group alone; having heard Kelly, I call BS. More creative energy was there if he had only permitted it. I’m not going to say that a Lynne/Groucutt songwriting partnership would’ve 
been another Lennon/McCartney, but it might have kept ELO on track or extended the group’s life span.)
Now I’d just like to see someone honor Mr. Groucutt’s memory by carrying out a proper remastering of his one solo album. These are great songs – I’d just like to hear them in a sound quality that befits the quality of the songwriting and performance on display here. (Feel free to do the same with OrKestra’s unreleased-on-CD album too, while you’re at it.)
… Read more
- Am I A Dreamer (3:45)
- Oh Little Darling (3:29)
- Dear Mama (4:33)
- You Don’t Need To Hold Me Tight (3:56)
- Black Hearted Woman (3:27)
- Midnight Train (3:52)
- Don’t Wanna Hear That Song Again (3:12)
- Anything Goes With Me (3:33)
- Can’t Stand The Morning (3:11)
- Old Rock & Roller (3:48)
- You’ve Been Telling Lies (3:10)
- Sea Of Dreams (4:47)
- I’ll Cry For You Tonight (4:06)
- Am I A Dreamer (3:42)
Released by: Renaissance
Release date: 1982 / reissued in 2009
Total running time: 52:31
wouldn’t kick FSM out of bed if they wanted to do something crazy like venture into unreleased music from The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. A pipe dream? Maybe. But until FSM announced it, the expanded Star Trek II score seemed just as unlikely. It’s been worth the wait – great music finally getting a fitting treatment.
So…what if someone took the traditions of rockabilly and the blues and shoehorned them into a new-wave sound? Wouldn’t that be cool? This seems to have been the train of thought pushing the Steve Miller Band’s Abracadabra down the tracks 20-odd years ago, and for those who picked it up on the basis of the truly cool title track (which, at the time, was a huge single, absolutely inescapable on radio), the bulk of the album may have been a major disappointment. In hindsight, it sure was for me.
some newfangled effects on traditional rockabilly and blues riffs does not a new sound make, and in any case, Dave Edmunds did it better on Information a year later. Still, this is a rare case where I’ll recommend an entire album to you if only on the basis of its one extraordinary single. It’s just too bad that Abracadabra the album wasn’t as beguiling as “Abracadabra” the song.
In 1980, Steve Winwood carved out a persistent niche of the radio airwaves with several tunes from his Arc Of A Diver album – and that niche was well-deserved, given Winwood’s synth-driven (but still more rock ‘n’ roll than new wave) distinctive sound. Sadly, the follow-up to that, while it did yield hits of its own, lacked the “oomph” of Arc‘s originality; if anything, it smacks in a few places of reheated leftovers.
This is a strange little album – that much is undeniable! The vocals are pure They Might Be Giants-esque 60s kitsch, and the instrumentation is firmly lodged in the early 80s explosion of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines. Some may remember the obscure single “Mexican Radio” which sprang from this album, although there are more memorable songs here, among them the strangely hypnotic “Lost Weekend” and the hyper-kinetic “Tomorrow”, a hysterical ode to procrastination, but we’ll get to that later. My 
Almost certainly the quintessential Duran Duran album – well, hey, it sure wasn’t Seven And The Ragged Tiger – and, oddly enough, it’s also my favorite of their output. It’s not often that my favorite album by any given group is also the one most people consider their best work. For example, ELO’s Out Of The Blue seems to be held up most often as the quintessential ELO album, the cream of that band’s crop. But I point to earlier albums Eldorado and A New World Record as better examples of what made ELO unique. The point of that example is that surely everyone remembers Rio, and I’d wager a good lump of money on Rio being the one Duran Duran album most people are likely to own.
I’m sure some out there are already screaming, “Why Pac-Man Fever?!?” But in case you hadn’t guessed from the nearly-daily dose of updates to 
What a wild, weird and misunderstood musical score this is! Let’s set the record straight – this was a movie about video games. Not Mortal Kombat or Doom, but games from the era of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. The era where an Ensoniq sound chip capable of polyphony was quite a major coup for a quarter-grabbing arcade machine. The music is supposed to be electronic-sounding! And it’s not as if traditional instrumentation was nowhere to be found – there are numerous helpings of orchestra and, in some of the more inspired moments of the score, some choral textures bring out an element of the story which was buried by special effects and the script. Some of the least-recognized moments of this score are the most mesmerizing when heard away from the vision of Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges cavorting around in fluorescent tights. “Water Music and Tronaction” benefits from a truly haunting arrangement – when I dug out my battered LP about a year ago and listened, I was hooked all over again, and the Tron motif is used most effectively here outside of the main theme. The “Magic Landings” cue is a gem because the best parts of it – cartoonish action music for Jeff Bridges’ clumsy handling of a robotic vehicle – were mixed out of the movie altogether! “Tower Music” is perhaps the most noteworthy track due to its brilliant subtlety and use of choir to underscore the religious nature of the scene. The end credit music is also