sing us your favorite tune

Electric Light Orchestra :: Mr. Blue Sky

This is a love letter of sorts, so if you don’t want to deal, just skip to the last paragraph:

I spent my early childhood in the late 70s and early 80s, so my brain doesn’t really see what’s wrong with androgyny, polyester (as long as I don’t have to wear it), or overly-dramatic and completely overblown pop songs. I love Black Sabbath as much as I love ABBA. I can listen to a lot of proggy goodness in the way of Guru Guru and then turn on the sixth Beatle Jeff Lynne and his bubblegumilicous candy-prog band ELO. But it hasn’t always been that way.

You see, I have a problem with nostalgia. It’s a game for losers and advertising firms and I really had worked hard on getting rid of it in my life. Around 2002, however, I had a small change of heart. It was around then a lot of things ended for me and I was stuck in a horrible job in a three-bedroom house with holes in the floor; I couldn’t even pace back and forth because there was no room. I had begun hanging around my friend Melissa a lot more, because she saw that I wasn’t doing well at all. We watched movies together and went out to dinner. We had drinks at local bars (even though she doesn’t drink) and talked about books and music and art and our past lives. We both came to a few conclusions: H.I.‘s words in Raising Arizona, “Sometimes it’s a hard world for small things,” are some of the truest spoken by a film character in recent history; no one should read a novel by a man written from ‘65 to now in which the main character comes to terms with his father through sports/cars/art/women; love is bolder than hate; and lit degrees are kind of worthless.

I had planned a trip to New Mexico in early spring to camp by myself for a few days, but a huge snow storm was coming directly in the path of my trip, so I couldn’t go. Getting ready for the trip, I heard Mr. Blue Sky on the radio or in a shop or something and had flashbacks to my older cousins’ rooms with posters of the Bee Gees and Olivia and John in Grease and that weird flying neon ELO jukebox symbol. What was that thing? It wasn’t as cool as the spaceship on Boston albums, that’s for sure. I thought about how much I wanted a vocoder and that the song was actually really good, even if it was a complete Beatles ripoff, and then it left my head. Anyway, in lieu of New Mexico, Melissa decided that we should go a couple of hours north to Omaha and spend the weekend. I’m all like, “Omaha? Yecch!” and she said, “No, it’s great. Let’s go!” So I relented.

We get to Omaha and it is great and we have a wonderful few days. On our last day, we step into a book store with a record store in the basement and an art gallery upstairs called The Antiquarian. While walking around the art exhibit we accidentally walk into an NA meeting. Whoops. We slowly backed out as they said their prayer and we made our way to the record store downstairs. There we met the older man and twenty-something working the register (named by us Dinosaur and Dinosaur Jr. for their record store crustiness—they were nice fellas, though). We looked around and I noticed ELO’s Greatest Hits for $3, so I pick it up and debate. “I’m really not sure if I should get this,” I tell Melissa, “it’s pretty corny and it just brings back feelings of nostalgia more than anything.”

“Nostalgia, shmostalgia. If you like it, get it. If you don’t get it, I will,” she said and smiled. So I walked it up to the counter with the other purchases, which D. and D. Jr. liked and commented on even as they balked and frowned at my copy of ELO’s Greatest Hits, and we walked out of the store.

Soon Melissa and I’s occasional being together became being together all the time and not wanting to spend any time without one another. I also became obsessed with the song Mr. Blue Sky, and its second-rate Beatles progressions, so much so that every day when we’d wake up together for about three months, I’d play it on the stereo. I’d play it loudly. Sometimes I wouldn’t even wait for the gratuitous ending before I would pick up the needle and start it again, dancing off to the shower. I no longer had ghosts of the late 70s drifting through my thoughts whenever I heard it, just how happy I was to have Melissa around. Now when the song comes up in a commercial or movie or on the radio, I remember how it feels to be loved enough by someone that they would offer to buy an album that I liked but was too afraid to buy because of nostalgia—to be loved by someone who knows me better than I know myself and doesn’t care—and that makes me infinitely happier than anything else in the world.

I honestly like Supertramp as well. Journey, not so much.

Mr. Blue Sky
Electric Light Orchestra (homepage)

vj said on wednesday, april 30th, 2008

Melissa said on wednesday, april 30th, 2008

joshua said on thursday, may 01st, 2008