THE MOODY BLUES - THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE - RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL - OCT 6, 1986

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THE MOODY BLUES - THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE - OCT 6, 1986 - RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL
'THANK you for keeping the flame burning for such a long time,'' announced Justin Hayward, the singer-guitarist of the Moody Blues from the stage of Radio City Music Hall on Monday evening. Mr. Hayward composed ''Nights in White Satin,'' the wailingly romantic 1968 ballad that still remains a fixture on late-night rock radio. And the group's performance of the song - the ''Moonlight Serenade'' of the psychedelic era - drew a sustained standing ovation.
The sound of the 1986 Moody Blues is not terribly different from 1968, just less grandiose. ''The Other Side of Life,'' the quintet's successful reunion album, offers a crisper update of a style that combines dreamy folk-oriented melodies, thickly textured, flute-embellished arrangements that sometimes suggest the rock equivalent of symphonic orchestration and lyrics that pose grand questions in vague, romantic verses. The Mellotron, the exotic electronic substitute for strings that the group popularized, is long gone, replaced by newer and more conventional sounding synthesizers.
At Monday's concert, the group's older material - ''Nights in White Satin,'' ''Question,'' ''I'm Just a Singer in a Rock-and-Roll Band'' and ''The Story in Your Eyes'' - all performed with a brisk, workmanlike understatement, drew the most enthusiasm. ''Timothy Leary's Dead,'' which in its day was received by some as a solemn oracle, became an occasion for musical jest, as the keyboardist Patrick Moraz capped it with a topsy-turvy instrumental coda.