Recorded during ELO's legendary week-long stand at Wembley Stadium during its 1978 tour in support of the best-selling Out Of The Blue, this concert - well-circulated on VHS over the years and an easy candidate for an early DVD revival - is a somewhat controversial document of ELO's live act among both fans and critics. Put simply, there are many places where - even taking into account the multi-keyboard wizardry of Richard Tandy - there are more instruments pouring out of the speakers than there are on the stage. ELO was one of the first rock acts to invoke a debate on the merits of backing tapes during live shows, and on at least one number (the set-opener Standing In The Rain, no less), the video is simply overdubbed with the corresponding studio track. Nobody said this was Zoom Tour Live.

What it is, however, is a fine video chronicle of ELO's spectacular (and often slightly goofy) stage show from the late 70s, when the band became world-renowned for emerging onto stage from a scaled-down replica of the Out Of The Blue cover artwork's ELO spaceship; in its scaled-down form on stage, though, that colorful flying saucer resembles nothing so much as a giant version of an old styrofoam McDonald's burger container which opens up to reveal the band.

The music itself, though obviously bolstered by backing tapes (because as good as they were, ELO's two veteran cellists and the mighty Mik Kaminski on violin couldn't quite put out that much of a wall of orchestral sound), is fine. The proceedings are brought to an occasional halt so drummer Bev Bevan can address the crowd and pay homage to actual royalty sitting in the stands; Jeff Lynne himself barely utters a word. The songs are primarily from Eldorado, Face The Music, A New World Record and mainly Out Of The Blue, with only the band's biggest early hits (Showdown and Roll Over Beethoven) bringing anything from the first three albums to the fore. The camera work on the video is pretty uninspired most of the time, with far too much emphasis on a wide shot of the entire stage, rendering the band almost invisible.

The fun doesn't stop there, though. Also featured on this DVD is the entire video shot for 1979's Discovery album. Each song was given its own video - even those songs which never saw the light of day as singles - though all of these early videos were linked by a blindingly white-washed stage (Commander Sisko could've been talking to Deep Space Nine's prophets just a few yards away). Also amusing is the presence of the three string players, even on songs which are notable for having no strings. Again, the actual footage of the band is exciting only for its rarity prior to this release, and wisely the videos were created by intercutting some distinctly disco-era animation (looking for all the world like some of the less stellar Odyssey² box art brought to life) for each song. On The Run gets a pinball motif, for example. This certainly isn't the Don Bluth-animated Don't Walk Away sequence from Xanadu, to be sure, but for the purposes of promoting the band's then-new release on the eve of the music video revolution, it sufficed.

I give this one a cautious recommendation to the ELO completists out there (what's that? Yeah, I can allow for the fact that I'm the only such beast out there).

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief