real

And yet, an album I paid a measly £1 for, I'm absolutely made-up with! The first album by the Electric Light Orchestra on Harvest Records - 1971 original, complete with inner sleeve.

I'm not becoming slightly obsessive about ELO, but their early work (and that of the parent band, The Move) is quite, quite splendid! Both Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, ably assisted by Bev Bevan, are masters of post-Beatles melody and musical invention.

So I'm trying to get together all of the The Move's and ELO's releases on Harvest Records, because there was something very special going on between 1971 and 1973 with both Wood and Lynne, before commercial success completely took them over.

Aside from "Yellow Submarine" another lost album of mine is The Move's 1971 opus "Message From The Country", and I'm itching to get my dirty hands back on it.

Again, I had it on original vinyl (complete with their previous long-player "Looking On" from Fly Records, 1970, the first time they featured Jeff Lynne in the band), but both vinyls went missing as I moved stuff between here and over the water.

I have all this stuff on CD, but as time goes on I'm becoming more and more addicted to vinyl again. I think it's a trend a lot of people are going through, and I don't usually follow public opinion but on this I will. The digital era of music is fantastic, but there's something earthy and real about having old vinyl albums.