Have berries, will travel

I wasn't planning on blogging today, but I didn't want to forget about that oh-so-awesome play on words you see in the title.

You may have never heard of the Travelling Wilburys as a group, but you've certainly heard of their members. From left to right, George Harrison (he was a Beatle, you know), Jeff Lynne (lead singer/songwriter of Electric Light Orchestra), Tom Petty (without the Heartbreakers), Roy Orbison ('Pretty Woman', 'Only the Lonely', and a lot of stuff that wasn't so commercially successful), and Bob Dylan (if you've ever heard music where the singer can't sing, it was probably him).

The story behind the Wilburys' formation - at least, the story I've heard - is that these five recording artists were sitting around, brainstorming a new song for Harrison. Harrison spied some boxes marked 'handle with care', and came up with the lyrics 'been beat up and battered around'. As everybody else contributed lines, they quickly realized this was too good for its intended purpose, and formed a band around it. (Youtube of 'Handle With Care' here).

Roy Orbison passed away while work was still being done on The Travelling Wilburys Volume 1, his part in the music video for End of the Line was taken by a rocking chair and a guitar.

Two years later, in 1990, the surviving four Wilburys reunited and released another album - The Travelling Wilburys Volume 3 (no, that's not a typo). Although Volume 3 didn't have any hits on the level of Volume 1, there were still solid tracks such as She's My Baby and Wilbury Twist.

So yeah, good band that for some reason, a lot of people have never heard of. What I like about them is that they were all already rich by this point...they were just making music for the fun of it.

--Ryan