The Moody Blues, reconsidered

For the past week or so I've been unable to get the songs of the Moody Blues out of my head. The Moodies probably were more vilified than any other rock band in the pages of Rolling Stone (the one exception being an album review by apparent fan Steve Ditlea) but damned if their tunes weren't catchy. Anyway, my head wouldn't have been filled if not for the fascinating documentary, The Moody Blues: Classic Artists, that reveals such juicy bits as the revelation that the producer of Days of Future Passed, a classical music A&R man named Tony Clarke, was in mid-production when he realized that they were making a psychedelic record! The subsequent breakup of the group is in its way as disheartening as the breakups of many other groups of the day, and the Moodies do not deserve the pillorying that Rolling Stone ended up giving them. It's not enough to make me cancel my lifetime RS subscription, but I just thought I'd have my say, while I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.