Do Ya?

I’ve never been known to pray at the altar of musical convention.

Quite the opposite, all too often the unconventional will win me over in spades.

Google “Fugs.”

Back in the 1970s when Freddie Mercury & Co. hit it big with their operatic excess, I noticeably yawned while most others my age hit the Book & Record Mart on South Main Street in search of vinyl singles.

It’s not that I could not recognize and appreciate Queen’s deviation from the tried-and-true 3-minute, formulaic musical fodder. It’s just that if what I truly wanted was to be sidetracked by operatic hogwash, I could have joined the Westmoreland Club and pretended to be all cultured and the like. You know, fake.

Thanks, Freddie. But, no thanks.

But there was this one underrated musical outfit that came long before Boston patented the “Rock Man” pedal, who perfectly married the soaring sonic and the beautifully harmonic.

Yes, long before Boston, there was The Electric Light Orchestra, by which the sonic and the harmonic collided in unconventional musical bliss.

Mark! Mark!! Mark!!! Turn that down!!!

What, mom?

Later