Moody Blues: Live? Not in your Wildest Dreams

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Thousands of music fans solemnly filed through the gates of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Sunday night to pay their final respects to the memory of the Moody Blues.

Beginning their evening with the popular strains of "Lovely to See You," the Moodies took
to the stage accompanied by the swirling psychedelics of a magenta-tinged backdrop. Supplemented by a quartet of musicians, longtime band members Justin Hayward, John Lodge and Graeme Edge performed 19 songs, plus intermission, for the next hour and 45-minutes.

The majority of songs were culled from the band's songbook between 1967 and 1972. The melancholy 1980s tune "(In) Your Wildest Dreams," joined a smattering of other "recent" numbers, performed while images of old album covers and vintage band photos were projected on the backdrop of the stage like a corporate meeting slide show.

Hayward, who sang from his position at center stage, played guitar with a minimum of movement. Wearing pleated suit pants and a button-down shirt, he did not look out of place
in the business-like environment.

The Sunday night crowd listened patiently to the toe-tapping tunes - "Tuesday Afternoon," "Question," "Ride my See-Saw," and "(I'm Just a Singer in a)Rock & Roll Band," - and clapped in between the band's numbers, politely.

For the Moodies' signature tune, "Nights in White Satin," Hayward conjured up as much emotion as was possible on a song he has been singing night after night for the past 38 years.

One of the evening's most humorous moments occurred when percussionist Graeme Edge climbed out from behind his drum kit and walked to the front of the stage. After surveying the crowd, he told them there were so many men with white hair and long beards in the audience
he thought he was looking out on a sea of Santa Clauses.

Then the 64-year-old drummer commenced banging a tambourine and doing a jig across the
lip of the stage, his own white hair and beard flopping in the commotion, as the band
performed "Higher and Higher" behind him - a sonic ode from 1969 inspired by NASA's
lunar landing.

This coming on a night, strangely enough, that a rocket was honing in on its strike at a comet 83 million miles above the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

For the crowd, it was a moment of levity among the otherwise moody memorial, celebrating what was, once upon a time, in their wildest dreams.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, July 5, 2005.