Progressive rock bands stumbled into the '80s, some with the crutch of commercial concessions under one arm, which makes the Moody Blues' elegant entrance via Long Distance Voyager all the more impressive. Ironically enough, this was also the only album that the group ever got to record at their custom-designed Threshold Studio, given to them by Decca Records head Sir Edward Lewis in the early '70s and built to their specifications, but completed while they were on hiatus and never used by the band until Long Distance Voyager (the preceding album, Octave, having been recorded in California to accommodate Mike Pinder), before it was destroyed in the wake of Decca's sale to Polygram. In that connection, it was their best sounding album to date, and in just about every way is a happier listening experience than Octave was, much as it appears to have been a happier recording experience…

In Search of The Lost Chord (1968). "In Search of the Lost Chord" is the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns. They dumped the orchestra this time out in favor of Mike Pinder's Mellotron, which was a more than adequate substitute, and the rest of the band joined in with flutes, sitar, tablas, and cellos, the playing of which was mostly learned on the spot. The whole album was one big experiment to see how far the group could go with any instruments they could find, thus making this album a rather close cousin to the Beatles' records of the same era…

This single-CD compilation doesn't do too much more than scratch the surface of the band's sound at its most popular points, but it does do one thing that no prior Moody Blues compilation ever did – it includes "Go Now," which, as the notes point out, is still the group's top-charting single in England. What it doesn't do is get "Go Now" in really good sound (no one seems to have a proper master source) or include their even better follow-up single, "From the Bottom of My Heart." Still, this body of work is pleasing and, thanks to its extension back to the original lineup, even a little bit informative, and it was the first Moody Blues compilation to be mastered in 20-bit audio.

Hall of Fame is a live album by the progressive rock band The Moody Blues. It was recorded at a concert performed at the Royal Albert Hall, which included backing by a live orchestra. The album was released on 8 August 2000. It is the second Moody Blues live album to feature a live orchestra, with the first being A Night at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. This is the last live release to feature Ray Thomas. A decade on, all but "Overture" and "Legend of a Mind" appeared on the budget release Live at the Royal Albert Hall with the World Festival Orchestra released by Sony Music Custom Marketing Group in the United States. Backed by the large string ensemble, the Moody Blues perform a cross section of their hits, both new and old. Included here are such songs as "Tuesday Afternoon," "The Story in Your Eyes," "Nights in White Satin," and more.

The Moody Blues' best album in five years benefited mostly from the presence of the Top Ten single "Your Wildest Dreams," authored by Justin Hayward, which turned their status as survivors from the '60s psychedelic era into a plus, with a great beat to boot; it also debuted with a very entertaining video featuring young British psychedelic rockers the Mood Six playing the young Moody Blues to promote the song on the newly dominant MTV and rival video outlets. Unfortunately, nothing else that Hayward or anyone else turned in for this album was remotely as catchy, and, in fact, much of the rest of the album - apart from the closer, John Lodge's "It May Be a Fire," which recalls his and Hayward's collaboration on the Blue Jays album - shows signs of a group running on empty creatively…

With a career as illustrious as the Moody Blues, it's difficult to group together all their best material on a single disc, but Legend of a Band acts as a brief yet pleasant jaunt through some of their most popular work. While some of their early material is deemed slightly progressive because of lengthy keyboard suites and instrumental runs, it wasn't until the mid- to late '70s that their music began to take a more rock & roll-oriented path. Even though only 12 songs make up this hits collection, they do offer a definitive cross section of their music.