10/23: Music Go Music and ELO

I just kind of want to call this entry OhmygodOhmygodOhmygod!!

Because it is technically flashback friday, I'll take a moment to expound upon my vast and limitless love for the Electric Light Orchestra, before I get to the glint of newly discovered love in my eye today for Music Go Music.

I've often put needle to an ELO record and had a solo dance party that involves a lot of unflattering arm flailing and skipping around, making me feel like a five year old the first time they hear the Hokey Pokey. And in those moments, I ask myself, "Why in the hell aren't there any modern bands that sound like ELO?!?" Or I should say that I scream that question to the sky, shaking my fist at the Heavens and reprimand any and all Gods that reside up there for giving us so much music that sounds like Mariah Carey and so little that sounds like it came from the gloriously convoluted brain of one Jeff Lynne.

I mean just take the simple categorization of the music on their Wiki page: Rock, Progressive Rock, Pop Rock, Symphonic Rock, Cello Rock.

I'm sorry? Cello rock? I guess it must have been big in Bulgaria.

But there you have it - ELO, music's glorious blender. And what a smoothie it created!!

Just feast your eyes on this:



Did you hear that keyboard saying "ba boo biddy be boo boo?" With all these synth acts out there, you've gotta wonder how a 100 million album-selling "mainstream" act like ELO can trump them in weirdness.

Let's just summarize by saying that there is not a possibility on earth that I can listen to more than one minute of an ELO song without being instantly transported to a great mood.

And speaking of good moods (and awkward segues), today's quite a pretty day here in LA. It's 75 degrees and sunny, and hell, it's Friday, so there's not much to complain about in the world. Well, not in mine at least.

And today is the day that my prayers to the musically vengeful gods have been answered. The answer to those prayers is Music Go Music. Hyperbolic much? Actually no. If you were watching my face when I first heard this band, you probably would have seen me the way I got the first time I heard Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow" after 15 years of radio silence. That is to say - big smile, hidden with my hands giggling Japanese Schoolgirl style, and a little moisture in my eyes.

Oh yes. This is it. Dripping with strings, beats like a rubber ball, and vocals as earnest as ABBA and plaintive as Blondie. It would be disco if it wasn't so...undefinable. It's huge, shamelessly happy, dramatic...ELO-esque, but unique unto itself to the point that comparing it to other bands feels slothful and lazy.

For the record: Music Go Music is an LA band. An LA band I've never seen (idiot!) nor heard of (damn it!). The singer who bills herself as "Gala Bell" is actually named Meredith, and she does double duty for another quite good LA band called Bodies of Water. Bodies of Water is kind of a nouveau-chorale folk rock act with nary a rubber ball beat in sight, but plenty of ear-grabbing guitar, which makes for an truly interesting range to straddle between the two bands. Music Go Music has their first full-length CD available now from Secretly Canadian. So go buy it and come have a dance party with me.







http://www.myspace.com/musicgomusic