The Moody Blues
A Question of Balance

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

Achieving just the right balance of "Moody Blues Sound" and transparency is no mean feat. You have to be using the real master tape for starters. Then you need top end extension, a very rare quality on these imports, and finally, good bass definition to keep the bottom end from blurring and bleeding into the midrange. No domestic copy in our experience has ever had these three qualities, and only the best of the British imports (no Dutch, German or Japanese need apply) manages to get all three on the same LP.

Allow me to steal some commentary from a Moody Blues Hot Stamper shootout we did years ago, for the wonderful In Search of the Lost Chord, in which we say that, on the better Hot Stamper pressings, the clarity and resolution come without sacrificing the Tubey Magical richness, warmth and lushness for which the Moody Blues recordings are justifiably famous.

It's so correct from top to bottom, so present and alive, while still retaining all the richness and sweetness we expect from British Moody Blues records, that I would find it hard to believe you could do much better, in this life anyway.

We guarantee this copy will take the Moodies' wonderful music to a level you have never experienced in all your music-loving days.

What The Best Sides Of A Question of Balance Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1970
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We're Listening For On A Question of Balance

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks for the guitars and drums, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
• Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering -- which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
• Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians aren't "back there" somewhere, way behind the speakers. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage UK pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later import or domestic pressings, or -- even worse -- the Heavy Vinyl reissue, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Question
• How Is It (We Are Here)
• And the Tide Rushes In
• Don't You Feel Small
• Tortoise and the Hare

Side Two

• It's Up to You
• Minstrel's Song
• Dawning Is the Day
• Melancholy Man
• The Balance

AMG Review (short)

"And the Tide Rushes In" is one of the prettiest psychedelic songs ever written, a sweetly languid piece with some gorgeous shimmering instrumental effects. The surprisingly jagged opening track, "Question," recorded several months earlier, became a popular concert number as well as a number two (or number one, depending upon whose chart one looks at) single. Graeme Edge's "Don't You Feel Small" and Justin Hayward's "It's Up to You" both had a great beat, but the real highlight here is John Lodge's "Tortoise and the Hare," a fast-paced number that the band used to rip through in concert with some searing guitar solos by Hayward.

George Starostin's Review (very long, but a fun read)

Apparently, Children invigorated the band, so they decided they were strong enough to try and duplicate its success. And, darn it all, they almost succeeded - they were on such a high songwriting roll that, formula as it was, it was still nearly impeccable; I sort of view this record as a special Magical Mystery Tour-type 'extension' for Sgt Pepper. The sound might have changed a trifle (less Mellotron and less hi-tech overdubs on this one, apparently, to make it easier to reproduce some of these numbers on stage), but the essence is still the same.

What distinguishes the album is its concept: for the first (and last) time in their existence, the Moodies try out a straightforward take on ecological problems (that's what 'Balance' is all about). However, as much as I hate eco rock for its brainwashed nature and (usually) dorky lyrics, there's really little to complain about this particular concept: the 'save-the-world' problems are taken on a global, cosmic scale, with innocent philosophical allusions tied in now and then and lyrics masked by the Moodies' artistic and ontological pretensions (oh well, what else could one expect?) On top of it, Graeme Edge gets the one and onely reasonably attractive piece of text-writing ever: the spooky 'Don't You Feel Small,' although his closing Biblical stylization ('The Balance') ain't that nauseating either - so much for maturation.

Of course, it isn't really the concept that matters here, rather the songs themselves. The first side of the album is truly awesome - maybe the greatest side of material recorded by the band since Days, and definitely the band's best 'democratic' side - five songs, each by a different band member.

It all starts with an absolute Hayward classic - the upbeat acoustic rocker 'Question,' with an intoxicating 'aaah' now and then, and a vocal melody that forms a perfect optimistic counterpoint to the pessimistic aura of 'Gypsy'; both songs are otherwise very similarly structured, with verses and 'aaah's interchanging with each other over a fast steady beat, backed by a 'wall-of-sound' Mellotron backing. Unlike 'Gypsy,' though, 'Question' also has a middle romantic acoustic slow part which is quite endearing too, although I fear the balance between the two parts is a little too far shifted in favour of the slow part.

Pinder contributes the dark, 'labyrinthic' (if you know what I mean) meditation 'How Is It (We Are Here),' one of his catchiest ditties ever, and introduces the ecological topic - although I'm a bit puzzled as to what is meant under 'her love.' Is it the Earth he means? Possibly. In any case, the symphonic effect in the instrumental part of the song is admirable, with the Mellotron forming a perfect duet with Hayward's strangely encoded guitar solo. If you ask me, that passage is at least ten times as good as the band's stupid cluttering with their instruments on 'The Voyage.'

After the 'depression,' Ray Thomas comes up to soothe us and becalm us with the beautiful 'And The Tide Rushes In,' reminiscent of his style on Days - same shaking vocals, same stunning harmonies, hey, it could have easily fitted onto their debut, it's on the same level. Except that it's actually different: this is the first time Ray managed to come up with something of a truly operatic character, not giving his voice even the slightest restraint, and it's also very personal-sounding - after all, it's just an acoustic ballad with some Mellotron in the background.

As for the already mentioned 'Don't You Feel Small,' this disturbing shuffle could have been Edge's masterpiece, if not for the utterly nasty loud whispered voice echoing the band's singing - it mars an otherwise excellent vocal melody. Kudos to Graeme anyway for writing the first true song in his career - after all, even his best contributions so far on Children have mostly been instrumentals with an occasional bit of declamation.

Finally, Lodge's 'Tortoise And The Hare' is yet another minor-key rocker, with a suspicious, disturbing sound and suspicious, disturbing lyrics. I love hearing the band go 'it's all right it's all right' with that paranoid beat, and I love hearing Justin deliver a short grizzly solo, completely up to the point. It should be noted, however, that 'Tortoise' is the first example of Lodge showing a passion for disco-type monotonous rhythms and thus leads to 'I'm Just A Singer', which in turn leads to 'Sitting At The Wheel' which in turn leads to 'Here Comes The Weekend'... oh me, oh my.

Getting back to pleasant things, I must reiterate that this side has it all - it's slow ('Tide'), it's fast ('Question'), it's sad ('How Is It') and it's funny ('Tortoise'), it's dark ('Don't You Feel Small') and bright ('Question' again) at the same time. If you ever needed to demonstrate all of the Moodies' talents in one twenty-minute session, this would obviously be the best choice.

Unfortunately, the second side, as is quite often the case with the Moodies (see On The Threshold Of A Dream for further reference), just doesn't sustain the heat. For me, it contains just two songs that can be qualified on the same (or nearly the same) level: Lodge's 'Minstrel's Song' is a nice little 'pastoral' shuffle with hippiesque overtones and an excellent vocal melody structure, and Pinder's 'Melancholy Man'...

I know some people prefer to detest it, but I just think it's a perfect example of a lyrics-melody match: the song is supposed to be slow, dreary, long and muddling, as it is dedicated to depicting the 'process' of melancholy, and, well, it is. Plus, those backing vocals are moody, and why should we expect anything else from a band with the word 'Moody' in it? Nah, I like the song, even if it's more than five minutes long.

It's also heavily influenced by French chansons, as is my hypothesis, and thus - quite naturally - provokes an Anglo-Saxon to rebellion. What I don't quite like are Hayward's contributions to this side. Both 'It's Up To You' and 'Dawning Is The Day' are quite pretty by themselves, but they're just not too substantial, ya know. Once again, Justin fell into the atmospheric trap of harmonizing and romanticizing without any truly creative melodies. In fact, I know it might sound strange, but at this point in his career Hayward was much better at 'rockers' than at gentle songs (aren't 'Question' and 'Gypsy,' two of his best songs, proof enough?)

Also, just as the album opened on a high note, so it closes with a downer: 'The Balance' is obviously just a piece of conventional crap, even if the Edge poem is not the worst he'd ever written. For some reason, though, I'm about the only person on Earth who dislikes the number - seriously now, do all you people really fall for that unmelodic chorus and Pinder's pompous declamations of the old drummer boy's poetry? Still, none of the other nine songs are really bad, and so, being in a good mood, I gently deprive the album of just one point. Blame it on the ecologists.