Remember the Seventies? Of course you do! When Electric Light Orchestra - ELO - reigned supreme! Rockaria aims to recreate that sound with a selection of songs from ELO.
I’d booked Capitol for dinner, as we’ve not been there in a while. They’re still producing quality food and drink. Wish they’d re-open at the weekends for brunch, though. We had bruschetta, oysters, prawn fettucine, pork belly, Eton mess and white chocolate cheesecake. Not all mixed into the same bowl. We then trotted up Courtenay Place to the Opera House.
Rockaria does exactly what it says on the tin – a run through all the hits, early and late, of ELO, with a bit of Xanadu and three Travelling Wilburys songs thrown in for good measure (these being two of Jeff Lynne’s other projects – in fact Xanadu, sung by Olivia Newton John, was the only one to go to No. 1 in the charts). Unlike the classic line-up of ELO for most of their albums, this incarnation has but one violinist and no cellos, as opposed to two cellos and one violin. This put a lot of the pressure on their violist as he had to handle all the string parts – I suspect he was subtly assisted by the keyboardist and synthesiser player in this. They also had a lot more guitar, with lead, rhythm and acoustic all on stage, as well as the bass.
As this is a cover band rather than the actual, setlist.fm
doesn’t show them, but from memory I can tell you that they played Evil Woman,
Roll Over Beethoven, Strange Magic, Livin’ Thing, Rockaria! Do Ya, Telephone
Line, Turn To Stone, Mr Blue Sky, Sweet Talkin’ Woman, It’s Over, Don’t Bring
Me Down, Last Train To London, All Over The World, Rock’n’Roll Is King, and
probably some others too. Not necessarily in that order. As with other cover
bands, they’re all very accomplished musicians and they’re clearly having a
good time as well. It was a rollicking good night!
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