If Jeff Lynne is remembered for anything, it will most likely be for ruining later era Beatle solo projects and latter day Tom Petty records. This, of course, is disregarding the seven or eight people, people I’ve never met mind you, that will insist he be remembered for the Electric Light Orchestra, his feckless contribution to the annals of rock and roll. Here’s the thing, if you truly and honestly love rock and roll, it is possible that you might stumble upon something slightly redeemable from the worst artists. And I mean if you really, really love it to the point where you’ve spent countless lost hours compiling CDs and mixed tapes that you know you are probably only going to listen to once – that kind of love. This kind of love can be brutal. You’ll buy records you would be embarrassed to show friends for that one red-letter song that you wish meant as much to your loved ones as it does to you. And sometimes when you’re listening to it, you pretend that it does. The kind of love that makes you willing to piss away a month of weekday-nights scouring the file sharing circuit knowing that when you finally find it you’ll be so ecstatic that when you finally hear it, it’s a letdown. Songs are like atoms; the entire fabric of your being is made up of them. On their own, they might pass as miniscule, but the reality is that the ultimate sum is made up of the parts, and if you take any away, the person you amount to is not the same person you are. And that’s where “Mister Kingdom” comes in.
Mr. Kingdom is a throw-away track from ELO’s 1974 Eldorado pseudo-symphony, but I first discovered it as the b-side to their 1977 “Turn to Stone” single. Please be advised that the single was not mine, it fell into my hands through my father. You need to understand that my father’s single collection is made up of songs like “Break My Stride,” “I Touch Myself, “and “Come On Eileen.” He didn’t have bad taste in music; he was just neurotic enough about his taste to not give a shit about what anyone, including his own flesh and blood, thought of it. And I’m fortunate for that, because this is the same avenue that led me to discover songs like The Steve Miller Band’s “Shu-Ba-Da-Du-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma,” and anyone who knows me intimately knows that I would not be the person I am without that gem of an atom in my repertoire. The same goes for “Mr. Kingdom.” You should also know that I was a child of seven years old, which meant things like lack of a tasteful melody, effortless production, and hookless choruses didn’t come into play when I fell in love. It was the kind of music that you absorbed by letting it absorb you; it was a vibe, a beautifully monotonous wave like the language between old computers and cassette tapes full of screechy blips. The computer just understands, you see? And so did I in that very same way. It made my wheels turn. It made me want to hear it again. It became something I heard in the endless chamber of my musical memory which derailed my academic endeavors in grammar school. I craved it like I crave cigarettes, and it charmed me like cheerleaders and punk rock chicks did when I was in high school.
It’s highly likely that I’ve never mentioned or attempted to play this song for many people because I, the lover of rock and roll that I am, understand that this is one of my atoms, or even a gene if you like, that defines my character in a significant way only known to me. But it’s time to tell the world about it. It’s time to give Jeff Lynne his due for the one thing he did right so that I could be who I am today.
“Mr. Kingdom” is one of those songs that went into hibernation for a considerable period of time, only rearing its head into the twenty-first century when I was compiling my 35 CD set, “The Vinyl Vault,” for my 301 Pioneer disc changer. And yes, it will play randomly from all 300 discs. Sure, I could buy an MP3 player of some sort, but fuck that. The atoms from which this lover of rock and roll is made of will not let the art of album producing and mix-taping die. Seriously, what the hell is a playlist? I’ll tell you. A play list is something that lazy people throw together hap-hazardly to fulfill whatever fleeting fancy they choose to half-entertain. I mean, really, you’ve never suffered over what song to cut from a playlist because you don’t have to, and I hate you for it. I hate you for not knowing what it is to love and lose, to desire and reject, to lie awake at nights justifying how it could be that not one damn Pink Floyd song made it onto your Desert Island CD for reasons like interrupting the flow of the desired vibe of the project. Pardon me, for I digress.
What is “Mr. Kingdom?” It’s function of the concept album from which it sprung is beyond me. And it’s sung by that other guy who’s name I don’t care if I ever know who sings some songs in ELO. I did at one time own the vinyl record of Eldorado, scooped it up at a yard sale just to recapture “Mr. Kingdom.” And come to think of it, that’s the real pleasure of album owning. I’ve owned hundreds, some of which I cannot trace the origins of their existence in my collection, but I’ve listened to them all at least once in the hope of adding another atom to my animal. Anyway, when my turntable finally died in the late 90s, that was it for “Mr. Kingdom” until the Pioneer changer needed feeding.
Here’s the answer to the question in the previous paragraph. “Mr. Kingdom,” is a mellow keyboard oriented number whose melody borrows heavily from “Across the Universe,” which is probably what made the other atoms react when I first heard it. It’s not quite as stringy as the other ELO crap. And one of the other major draws is the wonderful articulation of the lyrics and Burton Cummingsesque babbling that falls between the verses and after the hearty second chorus, a bit more restrained in such a way that you would imagine Cummings would do as he was going under for an operation. It’s the one song where Lynne’s lack-of-tasteful-production producing style shrouds the song in those unanswerable infinite questions: what-the-fuck-is-this-and-why-do-I-love-it-oh-so-very-much-I’m-giddy? And trust me on this; if I played it for you, you wouldn’t get it. That’s why I’m telling you, so you won’t fault me for this soft spot in my atomic structure, so you’ll still respect me the next morning when the drink wears off. And part of the reason it still resonates with my person is because, I can’t tell you who Mister Kingdom is, and I don’t care if you or I or even Jeff Lynne ever figures that out. It’s just a title that suits the song; another score for Lynne. It’s the kind of song you write a week into learning to play a new instrument. You're so happy to just have written the damn thing that you work up the balls to record it, and everybody loves it because it is so damn effortless, it just came to you because of your limited understanding of how to write it in such a way that it makes sense musically, and the lyrics came out of the necessity of having something to sing, and the title came from some stupid phrase you remember from a high school biology text book – I once wrote a song called Geothermalnuclearsolowater when I was in ninth grade. That, however, I didn’t work up the balls to record.
The point is, I want you to realize I’m writing this because of “Mr. Kingdom,” not for it. And there it is. That’s it. That simple. That’s the beautiful thing about songs. Some you extract from existing bodies of work and find a significant place for it in your own compilations. And then there are even some that don’t need the body. They are the body within the body, that atom next to another atom that in all of their various incarnations of mixed CDs and tapes, the ones you listen to for years, the one’s you care so little about you throw them on the car seat in direct sunlight, the ones you play all by themselves, sometimes over and over until it’s out of your system, but you know it never really is, and when you get tired of listening to it, you start thinking about why you needed it so badly in the first place, why you couldn’t just let it go for good. I mean, do you ever really think about that? Do you ever really wonder what the last time will be when you listen to a song? I do.
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I can't say I ever heard the song and as eclectic as your musical tastes are, I am surprised that a song by ELO would rank high enough to talk about on your first blog. But that is what makes music so great, even though it is a common bond we all share. we all have our own individual 'atoms' that touch us in a much different way. While music is universal, the affect it has on the individual can vary greatly.
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