1755: Dad Rock

I have a playlist on my phone called “Dad Rock”. The title will be fairly self-explanatory to most of you, I’m sure, but for those wondering why I would call it that when I’m not a father (and have no intention of being one, either), the explanation is actually relatively simple. It’s a playlist full of stuff that I secretly quite enjoyed listening to when I was young and impressionable, but which during my teenage years I steered well clear of owing to the fact that it’s not at all cool to be into records from your Dad’s collection. Not that I was cool at all during my teenage years anyway, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, the point is, my Dad Rock playlist contains a selection of stuff from artists like Pink Floyd; Yes; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; and the Electric Light Orchestra. It’s a playlist I intend to build on over time as I recall things from the past that I actually quite enjoyed, and ultimately will become a pleasing collection of somewhat retro music (largely erring on the prog rock side of things) that I can listen to at my leisure.

One of the first albums that I added to the mix was Time by ELO. I’m not entirely sure why this album has stuck in my mind all these years, but downloading a copy and listening to it on the way to and from work recently has confirmed to me that yes, it really is a cracking album and one that I’m very happy to have rediscovered.

Time, if you’re unfamiliar, is a concept album based around the theme of a man from 1981 (the year of the album’s original release, and the year of my birth) who somehow finds himself in 2095. The theme is rather flimsy, to be honest, but it’s a good excuse for a selection of vaguely sci-fi-themed tracks about The Future — or at least The Future as imagined in 1981.

What I love about Time is how unabashedly earnest and unironic it is about everything. It features lyrics that would be used in a cynical, sarcastic or parody manner today, but it takes them seriously. Take this wonderful little bit from Yours Truly, 2095, referring to an apparently emotionless robotic woman that reminds the narrator of someone he left behind back in 1981:

She is the latest in technology,
Almost mythology, but she has a heart of stone
She has an IQ of 1,001,
She has a jumpsuit on,
And she’s also a telephone.

Wonderful stuff. And it doesn’t stop there, but I won’t bore you with too many quotes.

What’s interesting about Time is how its vision of the future actually isn’t too far off the mark in a few situations. The above example from Yours Truly, 2095 is extreme, of course, but the prospect of the latest technology having “being a telephone” thrown in almost as an afterthought is already a reality thanks to smartphone technology and software like Skype. Similarly, these lines from Here is the News accurately predicted the launch of round-the-clock rolling news coverage and the subsequent banality that comes with it when there’s not all that much going on.

Here is the news,
Coming to you every hour on the hour,
Here is the news,
The weather’s fine but there may be a meteor shower.
Here is the news,
A cure’s been found for good old rocket lag,
Here is the news,
Someone left their life behind in a plastic bag.

More than anything else, though, Time is an evocative work that uses a variety of different musical styles, some well-crafted (if occasionally cheesy when viewed through a 21st-century lens) lyrics and some genuinely catchy themes. Despite the fact that the “narrative” of the album is somewhat shaky and unclear, it certainly does manage to evoke an uncommonly vivid image of the future — not quite dystopian in nature, but certainly a rather alien existence to that which we know even now in 2014.

Early in the morning,
The sun was up and the sky was very blue,
Without a warning,
As I looked out, my thoughts returned to you,
A noise in the city made the children run,
And hide themselves away,
And thunder boomed and lightning filled the sky.

Since I’ve always known Time as a complete experience — and there’s very much a feeling of a “journey” throughout the tracks, even if the narrative itself is a little muddy — it’s one of those albums that I absolutely can’t listen to on random play, even though I like most of the tracks individually. It’s a work designed to be experienced as a whole, and it’s one that still — for me, anyway — holds up remarkably well today. So I have a feeling there’s going to be at least a few more journeys to and from work with it blasting from my speakers, yet.