My #30 All-Time Favorite Album: On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues

ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DREAM, my #30 all-time favorite album, is the British rock band The Moody Blues' third studio album after they regrouped following the departure of their founding vocalist Denny Laine and bassist Clint Warwick.  With guitarist Justin Haywood and bassist John Lodge joining original members drummer Graeme Edge, flutist/guitarist Ray Thomas and keyboardist Mike Pinder, they embarked in 1967 on a string of concept-based albums with a classical music-sounding background highlighted by Pinder's mellotron...definitely a turn toward progressive rock.  On the Threshold of a Dream is themed on, well, dreaming...especially Side Two, in my opinion one of the greatest ever album sides, back when there used to be such a thing as album sides.  Recorded in London in January 1969, not far from where the Beatles were at the same time recording their Let It Be tracks, it was released that April...but I didn't hear any of its songs until much later, in the 1990s.  This album, as with the Moodies' others, is a full creatively collaborative effort, with everyone contributing tracks.  Two of them, the opening, quirky In the Beginning and the beautiful, haunting The Dream on the second side, feature Edge, well-known for his beautiful soliloquy at the close of their hit Nights in White Satin (from Days of Future Passed).  Then the album progresses to pleasant tracks by Haywood (Lovely to See You), Thomas (Dear Diary), Haywood & Lodge (Send Me No Wine), Lodge (To Share Our Love) and Pinder (So Deep Within You).  Although the tracks flow without interruption from one to the next on both sides, the songs on Side Two end up seeming like a coherent, complete work.  Never Comes the Day, by Haywood is a sad, sweet lead-in to one of my all-time favorite songs, Ray Thomas' Lazy Day...a curious combination of quaintness and the sinister.  This in turn leads to another personal favorite, John Lodge's Are You Sitting Comfortably, a wistful fantasy piece reminding me of (vicariously) hiking through Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Then comes that intense Edge piece The Dream, leading into the finale: a combination of the Haywood song Have You Heard and a psychedelic, orchestral-sounding instrumental The Voyage.  Yes, that Side Two is always a special listening experience for me...

Now that this weekly unraveling of my thirty personal all-time favorite albums has begun, you might be interested in how I break them down.  Well, it's overwhelmingly weighted in favor of well-known acts, mostly bands and many from Britain and many leaning toward hard and progressive rock with other more recent ones in the alternative/indie rock genre.  I'm sure that if you've been into classic and alternative/indie rock to any degree you're probably going to be familiar with many, if not most of my picks.  My biggest problem in compiling this list, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, was deciding which albums to leave out as there are so many great ones.  At this writing the full On a Threshold of a Dream album is available on YouTube: check it out if you can...