I would say that, without stretching the point too much, had the Moody Blues not stumbled across an obscure sound effects gadget used by the BBC for their radio shows and realized it had tons of musical possibilities, the world may never had the opportunity to hear a Mellotron to the extent the Moody Blues used it.

Initially part of the British Invasion of the early 60's, the Moodies (as they were known, for short) slowly morphed out of the Beat Group niche and into a cross between Art-Rock and Symphonic-Rock. Their biggest album, and one that just about every one "of a certain age" knows the words to from start to finish, was Days Of Future Past, released in 1967. It touted the first-ever collaboration between Symphony Orchestra and Rock Band, with the extra added bonus of The Mellotron, for good, ethereal measure.

Tonight's tracks come by way of two BBC Sessions - the first from early 1967 (just before Days was released) and the other from November of 1967, (after Days was released).

Here's the rundown:

BBC Early 1967
1.Leave The Man Alone

BBC "Top Gear" November 13, 1967
2. Peak Hour
3. Nights In White Satin

Now you get to hear why every band on the planet had to have a Mellotron, or at least record with one.

And some still do.

For all the bands who pioneered genres and went off to become legends, either as groups or solo artists, there is a massive majority of bands who recorded one album or two, didn't catch on with an audience, maybe got critical acclaim but no commercial acclaim, and quietly faded from the scene.

Those were the bands who had label deals - we're not even talking about the hundreds and thousands of bands who never got out of the starting gate. The bands I'm talking about had potential, made all the right moves, issued singles as well as albums and still couldn't get arrested for the effort.

One of those bands was Gracious! (the ! was their idea, not mine). Initially starting off as a blues band, morphing into hard rock before landing on riffs, Mellotrons and Symphonic Rock as their legacy.

They lasted from 1969 until 1971 and had two albums to their credit, both for Vertigo, the adventuresome subsidiary of Philips Records in the UK.

Tonight's track comes off their debut album Gracious! (S/T). This track opens the album and is appropriately called Introduction.

I'll be dead-honest and say that a lot of what was considered Symphonic Rock was pretty pretentious, rolling in self-conscious grandiosity with a short shelf life with listeners. Some of it morphed into mainstream pop (a-la ELO), but even those were eventually given over to more conventional presentations, usually dropping the references to Vivaldi and Bach in the process.

Symphonic Rock was a short-lived phenomenon, an outgrowth of Psychedelia and touching on Progressive, but it did exist and Gracious! were busy practitioners as tonights track illustrates.