Electric Light Orchestra: Zoom Tour Live
2001 was a very good year for fans of Electric Light Orchestra, with a new album, five remastered classic albums containing unreleased material, and the promise of a nationwide tour. It’s the breaking of that last promise that left most fans heartbroken, including myself since there was a Little Rock show on the itinerary. However, in hindsight, it may be a moot point - the cancellation of the tour in August 2001 probably would’ve happened in mid-September anyway. In any event, the lack of a tour stalled the momentum of Zoom, Jeff Lynne’s finely crafted comeback album, which in turn killed Sony’s enthusiasm for the series of remastered albums, and the rest is history.
In April and May of 2001, however, three concerts were filmed to help promote Zoom upon its release: one was a VH1 Storytellers show in New York City, and the other two were invitation-only shows (with a hefty contingent of the ELO fan club in attendance) at the CBS studios in Culver City. These latter two shows were always intended for broadcast on PBS, but in the wake of the tour cancellation, it seemed that the airing of this show was postponed nearly everywere, and with no tour to promote, Sony didn’t exactly fight to have it reinstated on the schedule. Many people hadn’t seen it before this DVD came out.
The Zoom Tour Live DVD is a nice, long-awaited slice of real live ELO concert footage; previously, we’d been treated to Live At Wembley: The Out Of The Blue Tour 1978, a UK TV special that was already 20 years old by the time it was committed to DVD, and the much more enjoyable Electric Light Orchestra Part II: Access All Areas, an excellent document of the spinoff band that kept the light burning during the 90s. Zoom Tour Live was filmed in widescreen and with excellent audio recording equipment. It’s a bittersweet taste of the tour that didn’t happen.
A big part of the appeal of this DVD is the presence of Jeff Lynne himself. Notoriously shy, Lynne - with new girlfriend and backing vocalist Rosie Vela by his side - is confident and clearly enjoying himself. And why not, when the technology now exists to more accurately convey the elaborate ELO sound to the stage? The two cellists add a lot to the proceedings, and the backing band - prominently featuring original ELO keyboardist Richard Tandy - is a tight, finely-honed unit. It really does sound like ELO. That they carry off “Mr. Blue Sky” on stage, complete with the choral epilogue, is a testament to how far things have come since the Wembley concert video.
The new songs from Zoom are greeted with rapt applause and even singalongs, which seems to both amuse and alarm Lynne, whose new album had yet to hit the stores but was already readily available on Napster (!). But perhaps the best number of the night is “10538 Overture”, the first single from ELO’s first album, which serves as a bit of unexpected nostalgia for long-time fans. And they play it extraordinarily well.
There are a few bonus features, including the video version of a now well-circulated radio interview CD and material on the ELO fan club (which had temporarily abandoned many years of fractious “ELO vs. ELO Part II” bickering to unite in support of Zoom, making this an opportune moment to document the club). The menus are deadly dull, and could have been given a look more in keeping with the album artwork (c’mon, the concert opens with a beautiful, Babylon 5-worthy CGI animation of the newly-refitted ELO spaceship in flight - couldn’t they have used some of that same raw material to do some nicer menus?), but the concert itself is worth the purchase price, and considering all the twists of fate that have befallen Jeff Lynne’s attempt to resurrect ELO, I suppose we’re lucky to have these shows on DVD at all.