The Present is the eleventh studio album by The Moody Blues, released in 1983. It is the second album of the Patrick Moraz era. It had three minor hit singles, "Blue World" (#62), "Sitting at the Wheel" (#27) and "Running Water". The album itself features strong compositions, but with a track order designed to capitalise on the legacy of the more successful Long Distance Voyager, with Justin Hayward's songs at the beginning and Ray Thomas' as finales.
The Present also became, in 1983, the first compact disc manufactured worldwide. In November 2008, the album was remastered and released on CD with two extra tracks.
The cover is a pastiche of Maxfield Parrish's famous painting Daybreak, with some subtle details: The crossed arms of the standing child is said to symbolise the Roman numeral "X", this being the Moody Blues' tenth album (with Lodge and Hayward).
Read more about The Present: Charts
Famous quotes containing the word present:
““I don’t suppose there’s a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There’s youth to the amount of eight hundred pound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I’d take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get ‘em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among ‘em as nothing should equal it!””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)