The other day, while getting that Robbie Williams CD for Jayne (which actually I quite like) I indulged in a little guilty pleasure which I have been meaning to do for some time, and bought an Electric Light Orchestra greatest hits album.

ELO might be the height of uncool, or should that be the depth? but they are a part of my life experience.  A New World Record came out in 1976 when I was 14 and I had a copy of it on cassette – a proper, paid-for, pre-recorded cassette and not taped off a mate's album or anything.  When Out of the Blue came out in 1977 I can remember Kenny Everett playing just about the entire double album on his Saturday afternoon show on Capital Radio.

I never had that album but someone else in the dormitory had it so I heard it a lot. Years later in 1988 I was on the way to see Pink Floyd in Sydney with a work colleague[*]. We were on the Manley Ferry and talking about classic albums and he mentioned Out of the Blue. I realised that I had not heard it since leaving school and as soon as I got back to Britain I bought it the local Our Price in Lewisham on vinyl.

When ELO featured prominently on that episode of Doctor Who with Peter Kay in it I had an urge to listen to my albums again but my vinyl is all in the loft with my tape deck, my turntable is disconnected and in the cupboard. I don't know what happened to my New World Record tape.

For some reason those two albums are hard to find in the shops, but the other day I saw that HMV have this greatest hits CD for £5.95 and I knew I would not be able to resist.

To be honest, I would rather just have the two albums again but I begrudge paying too much for something I already have and would not pay more than a fiver for either of them. The other albums don't really do it for me, even Discovery which was a big hit for them. This CD (All Over the World) is a reasonable compromise. 

It has 20 tracks including Mr Blue Sky, Wild West Hero, Evil Woman, Turn To Stone, Rockaria, Livin' Thing and Telephone Line: enough to get it out of my system.  I don't think I will listen to the whole thing much, but its on the iRiver so that individual tracks can pop up on the random play. When Mr Blue Sky was on I had a sudden flashback to when I first heard it, on a portable radio in the table tennis annex to the school hall on that saturday when Kenny Everett played it all.

This is what makes music so powerful; its ability to do that, to take your mind to another place and time.  Sometimes you like to listen to a song you don't even like as a song just because it can do that. That is worth £5.95 of anybody's money isn't it?

[*] Not boasting about going there, honest, its just that for some reason that moment is lodged in my mind. I can still picture it easily.