The Moody Blues — To Our Children’s Children’s Children

If you’ve been following along, you’ve found that while I count myself quite the fan of The Moody Blues, I originally owned none of the original albums after Go Now! up to this one. Got through my college years and all that bin-diving without picking up most of the original releases.

That was largely because I first bought “This Is The Moody Blues,” a wonderful two-disc compilation of all those ’60s records that made their name, and that made buying some of those early albums, particularly “On The Threshold of a Dream,” kinda superfluous. At least it irritated the part of me that hated paying for a song, or multiple songs, twice.

So “To Our Children’s Children’s Children,” or “TOCCC” as the hip kids refer to it, is the first of that original run of classic albums (this one’s from 1969) that I actually bought back in my original record-collecting days, say 1978-1987. It’s lovely, not overly conceptual, and includes “Eyes of a Child” and a number of other very nice songs. And this is one that I played frequently, and recently bought another copy of just to have a slightly better version.

About ten years ago I was suddenly captivated by the briefest of songs, “I Never Thought I’d Live to Be a Hundred,” and the very similar “I Never Thought I’d Live to Be a Million.” For some reason they just touched me suddenly, where I’d hardly paid them any attention before. Albums that I’ve lived with for a long time can be like that. Not often, but sometimes, some song will come up from the undercurrent and grab hold in a way that it never did before.

And overall, this is just a wonderful, thematic album with a real flow.