Music you love, but which no one else seems to...
I heard a snippet on Thai TV the other day of the famous bit from Mike Oldfield's seminal Tubular Bells from 1973. The bit they played was famous because it was featured in The Exorcist.
Sent me right down memory lane, it did. Tubular Bells was one of the first proper records I ever owned (apart from Pinky and Perky's earlier stuff). A friend of mine played it to me on a tinny tape recorder, and I was hooked, from about the age of 12. No one else we knew liked it.
Anyway, a couple of years after that, we moved away from that town and I was all alone, The Only Mike Oldfield Fan in the Village. Ommadawn, his third album, came along, and I duly saved up my pocket money and got the bus down to Woolworth's to buy it. To say I fell in love was an understatement. I think I stayed in my room for the next year and played it non-stop on my old record player. Mum and dad thought there was something "wrong" with me, and considered talking to a doctor. No one else I knew had even heard it, let alone liked it. Then along came Thin Lizzy, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Led Zep IV and Punk and I moved on. Don't think I ever listened to Mike Oldfield again.
Until Thai TV. Just downloaded the re-mastered version Ommadawn and guess what? I've fallen in love all over again. It's a sublime instrumental album, hauntingly melodious, dark, moody and uplifting at the same time, with a wild variety of instruments, ethereal vocals and an orgasmic crescendo at the end of Part 1. Part 2 ends with one of the most astonishing guitar solos.
Thanks for listening.
:thrashi:
A taste.
Mike Oldfield: Ommadawn- Part One 1/2 - YouTube
PS - whatever you do, don't listen to anything he recorded after 1975. You have been warned.
