Jeff Lynne's on the Phone
By: Abe Orabi I’m just gonna come out and say it: Jeff Lynne may be one of the most u nderrated, underappreciated, underpublicized musicians of all time. Let me go one st ep further and use the ‘G’ word. Jeff Lynne is a genius, period—and you can forget the qualifiers. Jeff Lynne, member of the Traveling Wilburys. Most underrated musician of the 70s? The criteria for defining genius is simple yet elusive. If you had to put it into words you might say that genius is the violent mastery of complexity; or, put another way, genius makes the intricate seem infantile. How ever you frame it, there is one universal truth: to know it, is to see it—and it only takes a moment. “Telephone Line” by Jeff Lynne is one of those defining moments of genius. It is both tantalizing and deeply satisfying on a physiological level. We are greeted with a long string of boops and beeps akin to C3PO, which ultimately coalesce into coherent synthesizer/piano chords. Lynne’s voice comes throu...