For a confirmed Beatlemaniac like Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra fame, working with members of the Fab Four had always been a dream. Beginning in the late 1980s, every one of them came true.

Perhaps, given its vintage, it’s no surprise that Armchair Theatre seems to owe so much to Lynne’s participation in the Traveling Wilburys, along with George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan.

This is a project the Electric Light Orchestra should have put out at the turn of the 1980s, a lean, tune-focused affair which dials back the “I Am The Walrus”-era Beatles obsessions — even while retaining all of Jeff Lynne’s trademark hooky songcraft.

A simmering new melding of Southern rock and R&B arrives with the new JJ Grey album, while the Replacements and Shuggie Otis — yeah, you read that right — return with their first new music in ages.

Can’t wait for forthcoming expanded reissues of Jeff Lynne’s 1990 solo album Armchair Theatre and the Electric Light Orchestra’s 2001 release Zoom? Sample three bonus tracks from the April 19, 2013 releases here.

Since Christmas is right around the corner, I planned on writing about the Beatles’ Fan Club Christmas records. However, last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has halted the usual festivities, teaching us that life is fragile.

Jeff Lynne, so meticulous in the studio that he’s now painstakingly rerecorded all of the Electric Light Orchestra’s best-known hits, wouldn’t seem to be a great fit with the famously low-fi Bob Dylan.

Huge in England for a time, but utterly ignored in America, the Move are typically thought of in the states — if they are thought of at all — as nothing more than an antecedent to Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra.

Fresh off a solo redo of Electric Light Orchestra’s most famous songs, Jeff Lynne has reunited with ELO pianist Richard Tandy for a performance of “Evil Woman.” Stream the entire song here!

You’ve heard the hits, from the sublime (“Maybe I’m Amazed,” “Junior’s Farm,” “Band on the Run”) to the ridiculous (“Let ‘Em In,” “Ebony and Ivory,” the perfectly named “So Bad”). But what of those tucked-away gems by Paul McCartney?