Bootlegs galore for fans of Electric Light Orchestra fans, that’s what we must cling to. The Big Night is a fantastic example of what context can be added to the band’s history when fans have tapes. Sure, it breaks a couple of copyright laws, but the bootleggers are touting this as the “pinnacle” of ELO. The Big Night is a performance that comes just a short while after the release of Out of the Blue, which arguably is their pinnacle. Jeff Lynne would write great works before and after this but never had a sound so complete as that. What The Big Night highlights is, yes, the band are an exceptional live experience but that they were never quite capable of moving their sound on that little bit further. They sound here as they do in the studio and beyond the strobe lighting there is very little reason to have attended the shows. Not one has convinced otherwise, but The Big Night gets close thanks to the spectacle at play.
A five-minute cello solo acts as a segue for Can’t Get It Out of My Head and Tightrope. Naturally, that won’t appear on any of their album work. Anything that doesn’t feature on the album but does in the live production is, frankly, unnecessary. A sad fact of The Big Night but one to reckon with all the same given how often there are little breaks from the solid sound ELO can bring. There’s a little too high a pitch from the backing vocalists on Standing in the Rain but that doesn’t weigh all that heavy on the lead trouble. ELO are too tightly knit a group to thoroughly enjoy. What they can do in the studio is what they can do on the stage, certainly impressive, but it means they’re not willing to play around with the potential nuance or change of their sound. That much is a disappointment and even the lesser-known songs ring through with such an inevitability to how they sound.
Night in the City, for instance, feels more like a big rock track from a Boston record than anything uniquely ELO. It also doesn’t have the best vocal performance from Lynne, one of many where it seems the song is out of range for him. Wembley ‘78 is arguably the superior show for this tour, let alone the one that highlights the band at the best of their abilities. Hits like Do Ya, Mr. Blue Sky, and Evil Woman don’t quite have the instrumental effectiveness or desperation as they do at the Wembley show. But this, The Big Night, should work far better than it does. There’s an element of instrumental inspiration lacking. They’re playing all too close to what was brought out on the album and, as a result, can only hold themselves to a high standard they’ve imposed on themselves.
Neither crowd or artist are served all that well by this strict commitment to adapting the studio sound note for note. Even the breaks from that, as rare as they are, don’t sound all that great. More focus on the piano solo on Evil Woman is hardly of interest. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who finds the song is wholly reimagined by this addition. But it’s this standard that many will be seeking from ELO gigs, officially released or not. The Big Night is a great visual experience at least and that’s solely because of how hard the bootleggers are working to preserve these and present them too. The Big Night will be a great time for those interested in the live line-up and the little details, but it’s hardly as though the band has a massive charm to their on-stage presence. That just wasn’t how ELO operated, and it’s not changed for The Big Night.
