To Our Children's Children's Children (The Moody Blues, 1969)

It's only right that if the album before this one and the album following get a little love here, then this one should as well. Although for many this is the Moodies' finest album, it gets a bum rap by many others, including the band themselves, as an album when the band overextended themselves into something they weren't. Just three years earlier, they had the opposite problem. I think it was Justin Hayward that questioned why a British band was essentially performing songs from and/or about the American South, a place they had little personal connection with. This questioning led to an early concept album, Days of Future Passed, followed by a veritable masterpiece of psych, In Search of the Lost Chord. Their third album both progressed and reacted in various place, but overall advanced the band's identity as a "cosmic" kind of band. This brings us to the fourth album, today's feature.

The primary impetus of the album was the moon landing, so themes of space and exploration abound throughout this album. In fact, I go so far to say that this is the band's one and only "space rock" album. Sure, it's not full on Hawkwind or early UFO type music, but the band open acknowledges the otherworldly qualities of the mellotron and flute, two of the band's signature instruments. And of course the lyrics are almost all either overtly or thinly disguised tributes to the expansive powers of the mind and the wonder of space. Sometimes it is unbridled optimism ("Higher and Higher", "Floating"), and in other places it feels bleak ("Gypsy", "Eternity Road"). All of the band members are participating in this vision. Not even the "rocker" John Lodge excuses himself from the overarching theme of the album.

Just like the fascination of American society with the moon was fleeting, soon to be swallowed by Vietnam and Watergate, the rock scene didn't spend a lot of time waxing poetic about space. Realizing they were producing such "out there" music that it couldn't even be performed live, the Moodies themselves backed off into simpler lyrical and musical territory for their next album. When they returned later with a more progressive sound, it was far more "prog" than "psych" and space was no longer the place. Other bands would hold on longer to the space rock scene, but by mid-decade in the 1970's, the whole scene was kind of a curious backwater, which would be effectively marginalized and killed off by punk and new wave, though sometimes metal bands would tip their hat to the old masters (with Iron Maiden of all bands giving a hearty salute with their most recent album, The Final Frontier).