TO OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN

Along with Alan Parsons Project and Pink Floyd, the Moody Blues were an early venture for me into non-metal- related progressive rock. Their "Days of Future Passed" was the first compact disc I ever bought (back in 1989) and the only CD I owned for a couple of years. Impressed by this first acquisition, I looked at their other classic era albums and without knowing one from the other, I bought "To Our Children's Children's Children".

From the onset, I really got into this album. The opening track "Higher and Higher" has such excitement and promise. Justin Hayward's vocal delivery sounds like an optimistic narrator for a "promise of human kind in space" documentary. The lyrics capture that enthusiasm and optimism:

"Vast vision must improve our sight / Perhaps at last we'll see and end / To our own endless blight / And the beginning of the free / Climb to tranquility / Finding it's real worth / Conceiving the heavens / Florishing on earth"

The song also features some terrific fuzz tone guitar, making this a very accessible to an 80's metalhead who became enamoured with the psychedelic guitar sounds on the late 60's.

The next two songs capture the Moody's more childlike character with gentle music, pretty melodies and lines like, "The candy stores will be brand new". However, "Eyes of a Child Pt. 2" comes in rock band packaging with more electric guitar. A short acoustic guitar number about a sun that has turned 100 (years? eons?) concludes this set.

The instrumental "Beyond" is a highlight for me. It begins with an intense and busy guitar and flute rock piece which is then eclipsed by an ominous drone of notes that makes me imagine humans busying themselves in space for the first part and then the enormity of the celestial bodies and vastness of space in the second part. A second busy theme floods in and once more human beings and their space craft are rushing about hither thither, only to be replaced by a pretty pair of flutes creating a vision of a Catherine-wheeling space station orbiting over the earth as the sun comes in a blaze of light over the horizon. The piece concludes with more playful humans in space active and occupied.

"Out and In" wraps up side one in a more gentle and emotive Moody Blues fashion.

Side two seems to focus more on space adventure with more mature and lively themes in "Gypsy" and "Eternity Road". Some great songs here. We get a little mellower and reflective with "Candle of Life" and "Sun is Still Shining". The Moody Blues write some pretty eloquent and evocative lyrics, a very poetic and English take on the Age of Aquarius sentiment.

Our sun has become a million in the brief track to follow and "Watching and Waiting" is the obligatory slow tempo album closer with strings and lyrics about a lonely entity, quite likely the Earth, offering its bountiful fruits to all its inhabitants. Perhaps there is a message here for us to not neglect our home in our rush to conquer space.

After five Moody Blues albums and a double-disc compilation of their career from 1967 to around 2005, this album still resonates with me the most. One of the first albums you should hear by this band!