Recently something of unexaggerable beauty came into my life, something that was to enthrall me musically and elevate me spiritually, to pour oil on the turgid waters of my soul, to diminish my worldly riches by four-odd dollars while increasing my hopes of attaining far greater riches in another world.
That unexaggerably beautiful something was a record album; not just any ordinary record album, mind you, but one offering to my weary ears an abundance of spiritual and other insights and poetry that recalled the best of—yes, I dare say it—Gibran, colossal Straussian orchestrations simulated by a mellotron and heavenly choirs comprising seemingly thousands of over-dubbed falsetto
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voices.
That unexaggerably beautiful record album was the Moody Blues' very newest testament, A Question of Balance.
Everything about this remarkable artistic achievement, up to and including its very marvelous cover (which was done in gouache, compellingly depicting the confusion that is currently rampant in this topsyturvy world of ours, and rumored to be scheduled for reproduction on Threshold's forthcoming official lunch-boxes), borders on the divine.
Don't think for a wink that the Moodies compose anything other than very groovy music, music that might at first seem capable of standing on its own despite its melodic and harmonic puerility. That the Moodies never hesitate to add the aforementioned mellotron orchestrations and gigantic multi-voice choruses is simply a testament to their really caring about giving their all.
And their heady, thoughtful, eminently poetic lyrics just cannot be topped when it comes to important stuff like the universe and man's plight and soon. They're always real sticklers about giving us all those rhymes (mind/find, free/me, man/understand) that we're fondest of, and, unlike so many of their contemporaries, have the balls to pose the "thousand million questions about hate and death and war" that all of us want answers to.
Me, I can meditate pleasurably for hours on such verses as: "Blackbird sitting in a tree observing what's below/Acorns falling to the ground/He'll stay and watch them grow," at the end emerging from my meditation a more enlightened, happier human being, one better equipped to confront an often confusing universe.
I am confident that if you give it a chance you, as I, will not in your record cabinet, but be moved to store this album rather within the cardboard shrine that houses your Nam myoho renge kyo scroll.
[Rcally, friends, doncha think is sad that this group—who, were they to quit regarding themselves as seers, hock their mellotrons, and let Justin Hayward do all the writing and singing, might make some damn fine straightforward rock and roll—think themselves above making fine straightforward rock and roll?] (RS 70)
JOHN MENDELSOHN
