Search - Elo :: Night the Light Went on

Time for another review in almost 3 years!

P. Vamossy | 01/18/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you ever owned this muffled mess on vinyl, you'll be pleasantly suprised by the sound quality on this new version. It is 100 times better! I've read an interview with the band, and apparently the truck with their equipment broke down. This put them behind and they never had a chance to do a proper sound check. The master tape that was used for the old vinyl version was marked: DO NOT USE - BAD MIX. Why it was still used, I'm not sure. Apparently, a way better mix of this concert surfaced and here we are!

One thing different about this new version, they cut about 30 seconds from the little jam piece between Showdown and Daytripper. It was always one of my favorite spots on the album so I noticed it right away and was a bit bummed. The funny thing is, four songs on this new release are supposed to be unedited versions we never heard on vinyl and then they gotta cut 30 seconds out of another. I don't get it. Anyway, if you're a big fan of the first three ELO albums or just a big ELO fan in general, this is worth getting!"

Why did they have to cut up "Roll Over Beethoven"????

T. Ackerly | 09/28/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I had this on vinyl as a kid and was very excited to find it had finally been released on CD. I was extremely disappointed, however, to discover they cut the second solo section from "Roll Over Beethoven," completely ruining the buildup into the last chorus - very sad. Interesting to note that someone went in and altered the original graphics of the inside foldout cover to reflect the new song lengths for the "restored full length versions [???] that were edited on the original vinyl" (check out the tiny type at the bottom of the center spread).



And yes, the sound was quite poor on the original and there's not much of improvement here - garbage in, garbage out. But one can still sense the excitement that could be whipped up by this particular version of ELO (with Mike d'Albuquerque on bass and Mik Kaminski and Hugh McDowell on violin and cello respectively). It's a incredibly fantastic performance. Hopefully, one day, someone will go in and truly restore this album in it's "entirety.""

A cool period piece

eric_the_redder | Los Angeles | 06/02/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you're into "Turn To Stone" and that commercial ELO stuff (which I do like), this may not be for you. If you're a fan of early ELO you'll probably find it very interesting. Note that it is not a lot of songs, if you're used to hours-long DVD concerts.



The sound is OK, not great, but after all this is the Long Beach Echo-rena and in those days all the monitors were on-stage, not in-ear, so everything bled everywhere.



"Roll Over Beethoven" is cool although I actually prefer the "ELO Part II" version on Live In Moscow I think it's called.



My favorite here is "Showdown"-has a very Western open range OK-Corral kind of feel to me, a really nice version with an edge to the sound"