Electric Light Orchestra: Balance Of Power (Remastered + Expanded) CD Track Listing

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Electric Light Orchestra Balance Of Power (Remastered + Expanded) (1986)
Balance Of Power (Remastered + Expanded)\n\nOriginally Released March 1986\nCD Edition Released 1986\nRemastered + Expanded CD Edition Released March 20, 2007 \n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: After mining the Beatles gold mine for all those catchy hooks, by the time that Balance of Power was released, Jeff Lynne and company had pretty much found that once-rich vein going dry. This album did contain yet another Top 40 hit with "Calling America," but by the mid-'80s, ELO were finding their audience and their inspiration on the wane. Not truly memorable, but passable. [In 2007 Epic/Legacy reissued Balance of Power with seven bonus cuts, including alternate takes of "Heaven Only Knows," "Secret Lives" and "Sorrow About to Fall," U.K. b-sides "Caught in a Trap" and "Destination Unknown" and the previously unreleased "In for the Kill" and "Opening."] -- James Chrispell\n\nAmazon.com Product Description\nThis was the Last Studio Album from Elo (Before the Comeback Zoom), Issued in 1986. The Original 10 Track Album Includes Three Tracks that were Originally Issued as Singles, and of the Seven Bonus Tracks Five Are Previously Unreleased and the Other Two were Issued as UK Only B-sides. \n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nFinal ELO album before "Zoom" , March 21, 2007\nReviewer: My Science Fiction Twin (My Little Blue Window, USA)\nJeff Lynne had wanted to quit recording albums under the ELO name for some time. He felt that the formula for ELO was limiting his abilities as a songwriter/producer. He stepped forward with a fine final album. "Balance of Power" has a handful of terrific songs including the great "Calling America". This exapnded edition features alternate mixes of "Heaven Only Knows" with a introduction (put on as a separate track)that was missing from the final album and "Secret Lives"(an alternate take) that are better than the final released versions in my opinion. "Sorrow About to Fall" is an alternate mix of the album track. \n\nWe also get two sublime b-sides "Destination Unknown" and "Caught in a Trap". The songs were previous released on the first ELO boxed set but rightfully regain their place next to the stronger tracks on this next-to-last ELO album. When Lynne would return as ELO only Richard Tandy would play on "Zoom". Here the band is a trio of Lynne, long time drummer Bev Bevan (who also was a member of the Move with Lynne and the only member on every album by ELO except "Zoom")and long-time collaborator Richard Tandy playing keyboards and sythesizer strings. Lynne plays both guitar and bass. \n\nAlthough the production and use of electronic drums date the album, they add a charm to the album. While this is far from my favorite ELO album, Lynne's best qualities as a songwriter--a strong sense of melody, creative arrangements and production touches dominate the album. \n\nYou can also hear the influence of Steve Windwood's "Arc of A Diver" and "Back in the High Life Again" with Richard Tandy playing a sythesizer with a similar sound to Winwood's on the popular singles from those albums. \n\nI'd give "Balance of Power" 3 1/2 stars with the addition of the alternate mixes/versions and the inclusion of the two fine B-sides. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nswansong....til 2001, September 18, 2006\nReviewer: Daniel Silverman "Seedy Road" (brooklyn)\nCritics and fans alike seem to regard Balance of Power, ELO's final studio LP from 1986, as little more than a footnote to the band's illustrious hit-making career. Yet the album is a superbly crafted and consistently appealing pop record (there's not a single clinker in this ten-track bunch, a rare accomplishment indeed for a singles-oriented band) and is of historic importance when viewed as Jeff Lynne's opening bid for artistic credibility in a post-Xanadu age, which ultimately proved so successful that he realized his life's dream, that is, to work with the, um, Beatles. \n\nLynne abandons the excesses of his previous few outings here, stripping the short, simply structured songs to their melodic and harmonic core, with synths playing a far more subtle role than previously. Even the cover graphic indicates a retreat of sorts, replacing ornate adolescent silliness with a simple visual pun. \n\n"Getting to the Point," the first and finest of the record's three ballads, explores with a new-found maturity the dying embers of a relationship, with the first-ever appearance of solo sax on an ELO record. "Without Someone" is similarly restrained in tone, also calmly reflecting on a lost love. Finally, the initially off-putting "Endless Lies," with its operatic chorus, finally clicks when one realizes the song is a tribute to future-Lynne collaborator Roy Orbison. \n\nThe remaining seven brief pop-rockers are uniformly excellent. "Sorrow About to Fall" makes an inspired swipe of FOREIGNER's "Urgent," with sax again stepping into the spotlight, while "Is it Alright" (sic), a simple letter checking up on a friend who felt the need to move on, deftly weaves together several joyously Beatle-esque, octave-leaping melodies with a latter-day Steve Winwood synth pattern and a mildly sinister bass chug. "Calling America," a minor stateside hit, is a similar exploration of a friend who has left town, which bemoans high technology's inability to connect the two across the Atlantic; a far cry from the excessive technofascism of 1981's Time LP. \n\nThe final track, "Send It," inclusively ends the string of album-closing "rock and roll" numbers begun with Discovery's "Don't Bring Me Down," and continuing through Time's "Hold on Tight" and Secret Messages' "Rock 'N' Roll is King." The song succeeds especially when set in low relief to the previous album-closers' synth-based clutter, which betrayed their hollow insincerity. Here, the melody and the steady beat carry the song along handsomely, and the album arrives at the terminal in tip-top condition. \n\nWithin the year Lynne was already collaborating with George Harrison on a number of projects, and his production career began in earnest, offering his now-stripped-and-clean sound to the likes of Del Shannon, and fellow Traveling Wilburys Roy Orbison and Tom Petty (Bob Dylan approached Daniel Lanois for his first post-Wilburys project, to the likely disappointment of Lynne). \n\nAfter his work with Ringo Starr on the excellent Time Takes Time record, the pieces were in place for Lynne to make his final move. Since his teen days with the Idle Race, singing of John and Paul and Ringo and George's "lovely tunes," Jeff Lynne, a good-natured working-class lad from a northern industrial city, imagined a better life. In 1995, reality caught up with imagination, and "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" are the glorious if sadly incomplete results. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nOut of the Box, September 10, 2006\nReviewer: J. B. Christian "Sans l'

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