The Move – The BBC Sessions
When some of the tracks on the two volumes of ELO BBC recordings – Live At The BBC and The BBC Sessions – were exactly the same as the final versions that appeared on their albums, I had a few trepidations about picking up yet another BBC Sessions album. As it turns out, The Move: The BBC Sessions features some dandy rarities I’d never heard before, most of them taking the form of cover songs that haven’t appeared on previous collections.
Some not-quite-finished session takes of some classic Move chestnuts are included here, from “Flowers In The Rain” to “Night Of Fear” to “Blackberry Way”, and while they’re not as polished as the final album cuts, it’s interesting to hear a slightly different spin on them.
Some of the covers are real gem, and reveal The Move’s legendary live act – “Stop, Get A Hold Of Myself” and “Morning Dew” are among the highlights of the covers.
If you can find it, The Move: The BBC Sessions is worth tracking down for Move completists and even not-so-completists.
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- You’d Better Believe Me (3:00)
- Night Of Fear (2:23)
- Stop, Get A Hold Of Myself (2:35)
- Kilroy Was Here (2:40)
- Walk On The Water (3:04)
- I Can Hear The Grass Grow (3:18)
- Morning Dew (2:43)
- Flowers In The Rain (2:20)
- So You Wanna Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star (2:55)
- Stephanie Knows Who (2:32)
- Cherry Blossom Clinic (2:26)
- Hey Grandma (3:04)
- Fire Brigade (2:17)
- Weekend (1:52)
- It’ll Be Me (2:32)
- Useless Information (2:46)
- Kentucky Woman (2:28)
- Higher And Higher (3:10)
- Long Black Veil (2:53)
- Wild Tiger Woman (2:33)
- Piece Of My Heart (3:03)
- Blackberry Way (3:08)
- Going Back (2:50)
- California Girls (3:08)
- Christian Life (2:02)
Released by: BBC Music / Strange Fruit
Release date: 1998
Total running time: 67:42
Here it is at least, 30 years after the fact – the Repertoire Records digitally remastered CD release of the first Move album – plus 16 bonus tracks (if only there were that many ELO holy grails to be found…!).
Eldorado. And, though it isn’t a string-laden classic, ladies and gentlemen, you haven’t heard it all until you’ve heard Mr. Bev Bevan croon “Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart” – even “Ben Crawley Steel Company” pales next to this timeless recording. How Bev never got started on a solo career as a vocalist, I’ll never know!
Though released nearly 25 years after the fact, this CD compilation contains the entirety of the Move’s final LP, Message From The Country, along with some B-sides and singles from the same era. Even before ELO was formed and subsequently split up, one can hear that Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood were moving in different musical directions on this album. Lynne’s dreamy “No Time” foreshadows some of the style he would bring to ELO after Wood’s departure, and Wood’s “It Wasn’t My Idea To Dance” focuses again on Wood’s obsession with 50’s rock ‘n’ roll which would become a trademark of his future solo and post-ELO output. This disc also has the Move version of “Do Ya”, which ELO later covered in 1976. There is one song I have to single out for special praise, in a strange way. There’s a reason why 
This disc reproduces all but a couple of songs from the first Move album. I’d better explain this obscure group and frequent answer to radio trivia contests, because the Move is one of my all-time favorites, and probably my hands-down favorite from the 1960s. The original Move consisted of Roy Wood, Bev Bevan, Trevor Burton, Ace Kefford and Carl Wayne from Birmingham, England, a group of musicians who got fed up with the strictures of the cover bands they played in, and decided to form their own group to play originals and get a record contract. From about this time, two very important bands were formed in Birmingham: the Move and the Moody Blues. The latter is still around today, while the former transformed into the Electric Light Orchestra (my all-time favorite rock/pop act) in 1971. But enough of the future – the 
Shazam was the first Move album I ever found on vinyl, and it’s certainly a unique slice of late 60s/early 70s rock. Having lost Carl Wayne, who wanted to indulge in smoother crooning than the rest of the band desired, to a cabaret singing career, this album saw a bit of overcompensation for that loss by leaning in a much heavier rock direction, almost on the doorstep of heavy metal. But there is still evidence of the group’s pop roots in the opening numbers “Hello Susie”, a rocking pop tune full of Beatle-ish harmonies, and the unusual “Beautiful Daughter”, which has some wonderful string quartet textures courtesy of Roy Wood and lyrics which seem to concern a situation not unlike a “farmer’s daughter” joke. Further treats include a hard rock remake of the Move’s own classic “Cherry Blossom Clinic” 
This is the first Move album to feature new member Jeff Lynne, who, with Roy Wood, mutated the Move into the first incarnation of ELO…and the rest, one could say, is history. If one can say that, then this album is history in the making, because it’s easy to hear Jeff Lynne’s style of songwriting emerging confidently, and as I’ve noted before with the first ELO album (which was the only one to feature Roy Wood), the combination of Lynne’s Beatle-ish songwriting practices and Wood’s fondness for eclectic instruments makes for a very unique sound. This is heard most clearly in “Open Up Said The World At The Door”, which is 
For those interested in the Move’s single releases, there’s no better introduction than this. It features such classics – trust me, even if you’ve never heard of the Move before now, they were classics – as “Blackberry Way” (an atypically Beatle-ish tune from Roy Wood, which also turned out to be the Move’s first and only U.K. #1 single), the trippy “I Can Hear The Grass Grow”, the raunchy (and badly-mixed) “Fire Brigade”, and the first song ever played on BBC Radio 1, “Flowers In The Rain”. It’d be hard for me