The Moody Blues - To Our Children's Children's Children (1969) (deluxe edition)

Recorded in the late spring and summer of 1969 and released in October of that year, To Our Children's Children's Children marked the first release from the Moody Blues' own Threshold Records label – essentially a finished work right down to the jacket design as delivered to Decca/London Records, without any of the fighting and negotiation that had been required to get their prior albums issued in the desired form. Mostly written and conceived on a long rest after extensive touring behind their prior album, the record showed the band pulling effectively in several directions at once, generating rich, powerful electronic/psychedelic pieces such as "Beyond" and "Higher and Higher," driving rock & roll – John Lodge's bass was rapidly becoming their anchor and their most formidable rock instrument – and lush, trippy psychedelic ballads ("Out and In," "Watching and Waiting"), plus one catchy, hook-laden psychedelic pop number ("Gypsy"), all of it somehow held together across two sides, the hard rock and the trippy sensibilities, the idealism and the hedonism all balanced in a kind of perfect harmony that gave the album something for almost every rock listener above the age of 13 to enjoy. Although there was never a hit single off of the album, it still reached number two in England and number 14 in America, demonstrating that the group was in a position to hold onto the audience it had developed over its previous three albums and even expand it slightly as a pure LP listenership, without the benefit of AM radio play to reach the most casual listeners. It took longer to get certified gold than their preceding or succeeding albums, but its sales were won via retail, one LP listener at a time (with a tiny boost from the relatively new field of FM radio), rather than wholesale from AM play of some catchy single or other, and that showed how big the group's actual fan base had become in just two years. Their next tour of the United States would find them booked into a festival alongside the likes of the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Ten Years After, and the Band, all then among the elite of the rock world.
Although To Our Children's Children's Children was remastered quite nicely in 1997 as part of the "Moody Blues Remasters" series, the 2006-released Deluxe Edition of To Our Children's Children's Children features the cleanest mix and mastering of the album ever heard. The first disc offers a dual-layer SACD/CD edition of the album, on which every one of the dozens of guitar parts and massed vocal parts can be heard in sharp relief, without any compromise in the total listening experience of each song. At the same time, hearing the album in this way, one goes get a close-up look at the corner into which the group had painted itself by relying on the recording studio's capabilities for overdubbing – numbers like "Watching and Waiting" or "Eternity Road," with their subtleties revealed right down to the six or more guitars in evidence on the latter, come across as pure studio creations that would have been (and, indeed, were) impossible to re-create on-stage. Even "Watching and Waiting," the group's chosen single off of the album, proved impossible to do in concert, and only "Gypsy" ever found a place in their repertory (though in concerts from 2005, using technology available 30-some years later and an augmented lineup, it was possible for them to do "Higher and Higher" on-stage). The second disc, which runs even longer than the original album, opens with the original, unfaded master of "Gypsy," which is not only a generation up on any prior version of the song but offers it complete, without the cross fades needed for its inclusion on the album. "Candle of Life" and "Sun Is Still Shining" are also here. The main body of the CD, however, is given over to eight songs performed live by the group for the BBC's David Symonds Show on December 17, 1969. This is just about worth the price of admission by itself, as a live-in-the-studio re-creation (complete with invited audience) of much of their concert set from this period, which was also captured live at Royal Albert Hall during the same period and later issued as part of Caught Live + 5; it isn't too different from the Albert Hall performance except that the fidelity is superior and the sound much closer and more intimate, and the vocals by Mike Pinder, Justin Hayward, and others are generally more expressive. Ironically, because "Gypsy" was the only song off the album at hand to make it into their concert set, everything else on the program is from their three prior LPs; this includes a beautifully sung rendition of "Never Comes the Day" and the complete "Threshold of a Dream" suite, plus "Nights in White Satin" and "Legend of a Mind." Despite some overloads and tape distortion (especially on Ray Thomas' flute and parts of the suite, and Pinder's Mellotron solos), it's all worth hearing and worth the extra investment. The extensive annotation is also well written and researched, and the original Peter Travers jacket design has been restored and enhanced, with lyrics included along with the annotation. ~Allmusic

Track listing
cd1:
01. Higher And Higher (4:07)
02. Eyes Of A Child - Part One (3:24)
03. Floating (2:59)
04. Eyes Of A Child - Part Two (1:24)
05. I Never Thought I'd Live To Be A Hundred (1:06)
06. Beyond (2:58)
07. Out And In (3:50)
08. Gypsy (3:33)
09. Eternity Road (4:19)
10. Candle Of Life (4:15)
11. Sun Is Still Shining (3:40)
12. I Never Thought I'd Live To Be A Million (0:34)
13. Watching And Waiting (4:17)
~ (40:24)

cd2:
01. Gypsy (Alternate Version) (4:18)
02. Candle Of Life (Alternate Version) (4:59)
03. Sun Is Still Shining (Extended Version) (4:07)
04. Gypsy (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (3:22)
05. Sunset (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (3:54)
06. Never Comes The Day (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (4:42)
07. Are You Sitting Comfortably (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 Decembe… (2:54)
08. The Dream (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (0:58)
09. Have You Heard-The Voyage-Have You Heard (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concer… (5:50)
10. Nights In White Satin (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (3:12)
11. Legend Of A Mind (David Symonds' BBC Radio One Concert, 17 December 1969) (4:37)
~ (42:52)

Personnel
- Justin Hayward – vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, sitar
- John Lodge – vocals, bass guitar, harp
- Ray Thomas – vocals, flute, tambourine
- Graeme Edge – drums, percussion
- Mike Pinder – vocals, Mellotron, piano



original uploader unknown, found in my archive