ELO's Zoom....stinks...

Yeah, his face rang a bell for me but I couldn't tell his name.
I remember the "Son of the Invisible Man" segment in the Amazon Women on the Moon movie very well.

 

Gotta feeling we're in for a long wait.

But in the meantime he can give some much needed attention to the mastering.

 

The dude in the back row looks pretty bored...

 

That's one of the reasons they should never pan over to the audience when they film these concerts. They need to first tell the audience "Look like you actually paid for your tickets!"

 

C'mon guys. Just one bored man in a crowd of happy faces. Maybe he didn't slept well the night before.

 

Wow where have I been, how did I miss this thread. I totally disagree 100%. I bought it when I was on vacation in Ireland 6-12-2001 it happened to be the day after I got there that we found out it was coming out a day earlier. I and my dad almost died. When I was in Ireland I must have heard Zoom at least 30 times. We happened to actually have a cd player in the rental car and didn't bring any cds with us, so that was the only cd and we were there for 20 days. After the 30 times of listening, I loved that album and still do. You’ll never get me to admit that it sucks.

You know what’s funny is that after the album was out for some time, I went to my local record store and asked about Zoom on vinyl. The guy there told me, “you know what man, and no one wants records anymore. You would be the only person that wants it. Hear let me explain it for you a little easier, that’s like asking for a hamburger with only pickles on it. Nobody wants that just like nobody wants Zoom on a record.” I think that was the last time I went there and he also went out of business.

I agree, i love that song too. That's one of my dads favorite songs as well as mine.

hmm...I loved the concert, but i loved the album more.

Yeah, I think Armchair Theater is one of my favorite albums too. I was 5-6 when it came out. I too believe that it sounded like a solo more than an ELO album. I also was much pumped when the album came out too. For years I only heard stories from my dad and Jeff finally was making music history with me there to see it all, and along side my dad of all people. I also bought the blue promo album and my dad bought the Japanese version along with some other stuff. Question: when was this next solo album supposed to be released? I agree, waiting there to buy those tickets that ended up being worthless was disappointing. It was a real let down. We drove 40 minutes there waiting in a line for three hours and then coming home finding out later that those tickets are worthless and having to drive 40 minutes back to get out money back. It was a real let down. Yeah that’s why I like listing to the album more because when I see that concert, I think of the one that I could have gone to but didn’t happen. Hear is another thread that talks about the new re-masters. http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=78213

For my tickets, we played 65 bucks and got 15th row center, so maybe they were different around the country.

Heck yeah, you know how many times I heard an album and didn’t like it and heard it again and then loved it not believing I ever didn’t like it.

Well the Bev story I heard, but I never heard the Kelly story. That sucks that he was only a hired musician. What else happened?

I agree, I thought that Alright was a bad choice in my book. My dad’s favorite song off Zoom is "Moment In Paradise". I’d personally pick “Ordinary Dream.”

At least I have my original copies I’m my collection as well as the new ones.




Well I said all I can say for now, sorry for long post. Basically, I’ll never put down that album at all. It’s awesome, just like all of Jeff’s work and I mean all, I love everything he’s done. Jeff will have to do a lot worse then Zoom to drop me as a fan. I still wear my ELO belt buckle to work with pride and I still get a lot of nice comments from all the people that notice it. Haven’t had a bad one yet. I’ve had older people and younger people all ask me about it and tell me they love ELO. So I’m my opinion, he has a lot of fans and a lot of new fans. Let the re-masters come out. I can’t wait and I’m sure there are a lot more people besides me that are waiting for them.

 

I wouldn't have picked Alright as lead single, either. But was it even released in the end? I remember it never seemed to appear here in the UK.

 

You thought correctly.

 

Yeah I have it on a single, UK version and I also have Moment in Paradise too.

 

Really?!! I thought it was John "Stumpy" Pepys, the drummer from The Thamesmen. But then again he's supposed to be dead from a bizarre gardening accident.


Deke

 

Funny someone posted a photo clip of the private Zoom concerts. I've shared stories on this forum several times about my experience at those two concerts.

The first night was the best, mostly because they had some really serious audio difficulties the second night.

I appear 4 times in the video. Mostly because there was a cameraman sitting on a box on the floor in front of me the first night, and he had that camera in my face all night long. What an incredible experience. Once in a lifetime, or in my case, twice in a lifetime.

 

Yes...I believe he choked to death on grass clippings...somebody else's.

 

He probably works for LEGACY!


Chris C

 

"Zoom" was an inexpensive DVD, so I bought it about a year ago. I really enjoyed it. My ELO interest is now revitalized. Can't wait for the "New World Record" remaster...

 

That's interesting. I always wondered if it came out or not. I never saw a copy.

 

omg i got lucky finding them, Ebay baby. M.I.P was even harder to find. i'll post pictures soon.

 

I think Zoom is a very good Jeff Lynne solo album.

Has it actually been five years since it was released?? If so, my perspective of time is really poor today.

 

I have two Zoom related questions:

Can someone remind me where I might have gotten the Zoom Interview CD? For the life of me I can't remember. I remember being really reved up about the CD (and I STILL like it) and even remember that I got the CD a day early. Otherwise it's all a haze.

The other question I have is: does anyone remember the "enhanced version" of Ordinary Dream that was circulating on the internet before Zoom got released? It had tons of really authentic Out of the Blue type arrangements. Anyway, does anyone know who did that enhancing?

 

I have a promo CD and never bought the for-sale version. Wonder if I have it and never knew?

 

That song was not an ELO song. Someone did a damn good job with it, but it was not Jeff Lynne.

I remember I got it off of Napster back in 2001 shortly after the release of ZOOM. I stil have it on a 8.5 gig hard drive that has nothing but MP3's I DL'd from Napster from 1999 to 2001.

 

It's definitely the Jeff Lynne Zoom track as the base. Somone just added instrumentation and like you say, pretty amazing job. Just surprised that the name of such a talent hasn't appeared. The arrangements are great.

 

...just a bit OT...

For the Lynne/ELO fans, there's a disc coming out in October by an artist called L.E.O. with the title "Alpacas Orgling" (yeah, I know - ). What this album actually is? A group of tunes written and performed to sound like ELO! The prime mover behind it is Boston area musician Bleu (if you haven't heard his "Redhead," check it out), with a "cast of thousands" including Andy Sturmer, Mike Viola, Paula Kelley, and even Hanson all contributing. Listen to some tracks at the L.E.O. MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/bleuleo

Okay, back to the Zooming.

 

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Sounds like ELO Part III.

I will most likely be buying this CD.

 

Hmmm...well, looks like another band like JET came out again. Where JET had that Beatles sound LEO had has that ELO sound. They didn't even try to hide the name. I have to admit that the song Distracted was catchy, but that was only because it sounded like ELO so much. I think it's disrespectful to Jeff and ELO.

 

There may have been a number of ways to get it, but the way I got it, and the way most ELO fans I suspect got it, was that there some sort of offer made on the internet whereby you had to print out a coupon and take it to a record store that had the CD, and they would redeem it for the CD. It was not done through major chain stores, it was done through a large network of "indie" stores, supposedly partly to help the indie stores out.

Of course, I called up the closest store that had it, and they said they would have the CD. Nobody at the store knew about it, though. I just got the manager who said he had a big stack of the CD's on his desk. So I went down with another person and we both had coupons and got two copies. It took a bit of time, as the staff also had no clue what I was talking about. It seems they probably were preparing to simply stick the stack of CD's on the table near the entrance where many indie stores stick all sorts of advertisements and promo CD's, etc. So there are probably some folks who went into stores and were able to just grab the CD for free without even having the coupon.

I don't know if I would have ever paid much for the CD, but it is was and is definitely a neat freebie. I think the interview on the CD is simply a longer version of the interview shown as bonus footage on the "Zoom Tour Live" DVD. On the CD, it sounds like somebody has dubbed in the questions after the fact. Perhaps this was intended as some sort of open-ended radio interview thing as well, although I doubt many radio stations in 2001 were playing anything from "Zoom", let alone doing a drawn out open-ended radio interview!

Also, as I recall, the interview CD may have also been given away or sold later on by the "Face the Music" fanclub/newsletter. There was talk of that happening; I'm not sure if it ever did because I didn't need it after already having tracked it down.