The Moody Blues - Nights In White Satin

"can the poems, it's ass whooping time!"

Lately, this song is following me everywhere, from the soundtrack to "Easy Rider", to the DVD menu for an episode of "The Sopranos", all the way back to AM oldies radio.

I've always loved the Moody Blues. Well, that's not true. Of my parents' record collection, this was the least offensive to my eleven year old ears on summer nights when my father and I played ping pong in the basement. He let me choose the music, and this was my favourite, after Bill Cosby. It was just him and I... my mom would be hard at work sewing us all summer clothes, and my brothers were out and about riding bikes or building forts. It was the age before the internet, afterall.

Nostalgia aside, I find them overwhelmingly average in the canon of late 60's pomp-rock. Nowadays they may be found playing casinos along-side the likes of Carrot Top, Hootie & The Blowfish and... Bob Dylan?

Whenever I get the chance, I play this song over and over again for whoever will hear it. I remember last summer it coming on one of those classic rock stations up north, driving back to our campsite from Wawa. "The Rock" or "The Moose" or "The Pinecone" or something. I could have nearly crashed the car, it put me in such a head-space... even though for most it draws imagery of a shirtless Fabio on the cover of a Harlequin or broken-hearted maidens jumping off of promontories against a gale.

But to the criticism I hear when I get in those urges, and play it over and over again... I just argue that this legitimately could be an album-closer for The Arcade Fire. And then, somehow, it would be bonafide brilliance by today's standards, whatever they are this week. It suffers because it's still in rotation on 106.7, The Wolf in North Bay... (boating advisories to follow...) but why should that matter?

Please watch the video. There is something oddly hypnotic about it. There is a home video of my brother and I performing "Unskinny Bop" that is more true to life than this. None of you will ever see it though.

Buy The Moody Blues. I spared you the full-length version with the poetry and the wankery... but only because I doubt your interest. All of you.

-kam