mostly david ephgrave

One song that never fails to get me in a good mood is ELO’s Mr Blue Sky. It evokes very specific memories of mine and Glyn’s first Edinburgh Festival in 2008. We wrote a comedy three-hander play set in the basket of a hot-air balloon, titled ‘The Balloon Debate’ – and every night we used Mr Blue Sky as our playout. We had a very tight get-in and get-out for the show, in which we had to build and then dismantle our faux-wicker basket. The technician would leave the song playing while we packed up; all of us singing along as we did it. The show was well-received by our audiences, but less so by critics. We also lost a lot of money. Despite overwhelming odds, the song still brings back happy memories. It is written in the style of the late-Sixties Beatles, ‘Peppered’ with references in more ways than one. The “everybody’s in a play” lyric of the first verse gently paraphrases Penny Lane, as does the fire bell a few bars later. The song is irresistibly upbeat; little won...