REVIEWS:
The Travelling Wilburys were a five man supergroup conisting of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra fame, if you don't know). The group originally got together to cut one tune, but they got the idea to stick around together and make an album. You'd expect them to sound pretentious and epic, considering that you have 4 of the biggest stars of all time (and Jeff Lynne) writing and recording together, but instead they just cut some good old fun rock. They also didn't use their names on the album, giving themselves names like Otis Wilbury and Nelson Wilbury. They wrote up a story about how the Wilburys are traveling musicians who formed their own group. After their first album, Volume 1 came out, Roy Orbison tragically died, which upset the group's plans.
After a 2 year break, the remaining Wilburys (under new pseudonyms) released Volume 3 (there is no Volume 2 - it was their little joke on the public), which failed to meet the commercial or musical success of its predecessor. They split up for good after that. Jeff Lynne went on to produce some of Tom Petty's records, which turned out to be the best of his career. Both George Harrison and Bob Dylan also started cutting new records, which I haven't heard yet. The group was a nice little rock combo, and you'd never even guess that the group had so many extremely famous people in it. Their albums are out of print now, unfortunately - if you see a copy of either of them in a store, I'd recommend picking them up before someone else does - they're getting pretty rare.
--Philip Maddox
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(reviewed by Philip Maddox)
This album is probably going to be surprising if you know nothing before buying it except who's in the band. You'd expect it to be big, anthemic, and overblown, but instead it's humble, catchy and fun, and probably a hundred times better because of it. This collection of 10 pop songs are extremely catchy and fun, with nearly every song having a spectacularly fun, catchy hook that's bound to get stuck in your head for days. If you've heard anything here, you've probably heard the album's bookends - "Handle With Care" and "End Of The Line", both of which were fairly major hits. The first, featuring verse vocals by Roy Orbison and great, rough harmonzing in the chorus, is a gem, featuring an emotional, great vocal hook with fun lyrics to boot. "End Of The Line", with it's chant of "it's aaaaaallllllllllright", is, you guessed it, catchy and fun. Folkish and pretty. Good tune.
The less well known songs here are just as good though, and they actually cover quite a bit of ground. The rockabilly of "Rattled" is hilariously fun, and the descending bass line over the chorus is great. The tune that Jeff obviously had the most to do with, the very ELO-ish "Margarita", with tons of keyboards and goofy effects, is actually a blast, and better than anything I've heard him do in ELO (which, admittedly, isn't too much). Lots of neat guitar effects and thrown out vocal and guitar lines make it a very good, memorable song. Even the most overblown tune here, the Orbison sung "Not Alone Any More", is good. Orbison sings it really well, and the chorus is very sing-a-longable. All of these songs are very, very good, though they aren't quite classics.
If you want to talk about classics, though, I've got one for you right here - Bob Dylan's "Tweeter And The Monkey Man", one of his best story songs ever. It tells a dark tale of life in New Jersey, with cops, transvestites, drug dealers, and murder, all served up as only Bob Dylan can do it. And the chorus here is just fantastic. Everybody sings the phrase "And the walls came down/All the way to hell/Never saw them as they're standing/Never saw them as they fell" with a creepy descending piano line that really emphasizes the lyrics well. That's an utterly fantastic tune, if you haven't gleaned that from what I've said yet. All in all, this is a fun pop record that everyone should like, and I never really get tired of listening to it, so you should give it your all if you ever see a copy. Oh, and one more thing - poor old Tom Petty sure doesn't have a lot to do on this album, though he certainly carried the Wilbury style along to his own albums right after this. If you're interested in hearing more Wilburys after getting their 2 albums, start with Petty's Full Moon Fever and continue from there.
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