Is It Wrong To Like Mike Oldfield?

& people all crazy about things like Ford & Lopatin, y'know, if you want to see something genuinely awkward, you can only fly until dawn

I LOVE MIKE OUTFIELD... HE IS GREAT MUSIC MAKER
geo86970 2 weeks ago

I listened to the entirety of side one just the other day during a rainy stroll through Chelsea (and stepped on Ethan Hawke's foot -- by accident, I assure you -- on the corner of 10th Avenue and 21st street).

Wow wow wow, just discovered that 7:00 in to Mike Oldfield's 'Ommadawn' you hit the pipes and pianas beauty of the 1980s John Grant/Jackanory Littlenose theme tune! I can't be 100% sure that my attachment to this melody isn't entirely sentimental and the product of my dad giving me a cassette version of 'Littlenose the Joker' to run into the ground from a very early age, but I've listened to this 90 seconds of music about 15 times on the trot now and I can't help but share it (6.40 onwards):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpToJDpxQa0

it's wrong to like things that cool people hate

I thought this revive might somehow be related to the new Daft Punk.

i been laboring under the misapprehension that mike oldfield is cool as hell since like 1981

yeah, no shame at all in the oldfield game.

I was delving heavy into Mike Oldfield and Will Ackerman this time last year — for the first time.

Needless to say —as a pre-Mike Oldfield John Martyn and Durutti Column fan— my first listens to Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn were fairly awesome.

I'm definitely a fan.

Man, if this is wrong, I don't want to be right.

oldfield is on a lot of great albums of the 1970s. he has some awesome riffage on wyatt's rock bottom.

i should say, a lot of great albums OTHER THAN HIS OWN.

The second bit of Hergest Ridge Pt II sounds like some sort of demented Big Country jam.

Actually, it sounds like the music they did for the Restless Natives soundtrack.

Oops, dropping a bit tooo much Big Country knowledge there.

Don't be embarrassed, you're doing it on a Mike Oldfield thread

Haha, true!

Just watched the BBC4 TB doc, did not expect to be quite so moved by it at all, good grief. Definitely worth watching. Watching the follow on programme now, which is the 1973 BBC Second House performance of TB. I recognise Fred Frith and Steve Hillage and Mick Taylor, but has anyone got a complete listing of who plays on that?

No Viv Stanshall in the studio, whch is a great shame, but I understand now that he might not have been the most polished of performers.

Is it wrong to want to be Mike Oldfield?

http://tmr-web.co.uk/robreedsancturay/Blank.html

his version of "All Right Now" is really bad

His playing with Kevin Ayers in the early 70s is fucking incredible...I rewind those solos over and over

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r3fPo5JsPtY

Hideo Kojima used this song in some trailers for his upcoming game, thought I would see it on this page but didn't. Mmaybe I missed it. Cool song...

the 1976 record is more about texture, it's more elegant, flows and builds more slowly, it's dreamier. it also anticipates minimalism in the way it is content to just keep cycling & repeating. the 1974/2010 mixes are trying harder not to be boring, changes the balances of the instruments more often, and pushes the stringed instruments & drums higher in the mix. some of the brass textures really go over the top in a way I personally find to be a bit too much. it's a pretty good demonstration of how a remix of a record constitutes a completely different performance of the piece; all the tracks are the same performances, but the result of the orchestration has a completely different result

1976 mix all the way for me, but granted it's the one I grew up with

I have listened to 'Tubular Bells' maybe 3 times in my life but have lost track of the number of times I've listened to 'Hergest'

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, August 9, 2011 2:00 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This record is fucking great! Thanks for talking about this you guys. Where does one find the 1976 mix? Is it only on the LP? I see there's an 'orchestral hergest ridge' which was recorded that year and suppressed but I assume that's not it.

apparently the original cds have the 1976 version (though presumably pared back to stereo, as the '76 remixes were done for a quadrophonic box set he put out), but the new ones have the '74 mix.

ok, local charity shop as TBII.
is it shit and full of crap like that sea shanty crap on TB1, or, worthy of my coin and time ?

It's Trevor horn producing iirc, but idk what that amounts to in 1992

incantations tho

http:/www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=0tF6nmOhVxE

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=0tF6nmOhVxE

Such a jam

Loved his autobiography - which is less about the music, than his struggles with depression.

One thing I like about that song is way the solo switches up from a knopfler-ish twangathon into that kind of screaming eagle mac attack

Am also a fan of the distinctly less pleasant follow up 'shadow on the wall' with Roger Chapman as the timbral opposite of Maggie reilly.

Singing it through in my head and it keeps morphing into the guitar bit from Hocus Pocus

Roger chapman is the roger wootton to Maggie reilly's bobbie Watson; someone please tell me the rest of Crisis plays out like an aor First Utterance

Listened to a chunk of Crises on my ride in and no it's not like Comus FM at all, it's all a bit stranger than that. Overlong title track goes a bit Battles in places, and then after Moonlight Shadow you get these two reggae-ish numbers - first one with Jon Anderson is like a skank-prog follow-up to State Of Independence, second one is an ambient dub pop song five years before The Orb got there. Weird.

There was a live in the studio take on Tubular Bells that featured several underground people including most of Henry Cow. I think it should be pretty good but I haven't heard it recently.
Kind of funny that hard leftist people are working ion a musical project with a future Tory like Oldfield.

I liked him in the Whole Wide World with Kevin Ayers too. & possibly Sallyangie

I bought Crises because I love "Moonlight Shadow" and "Foreign Affair" so much, and decided to give the rest of the record a chance. Lord almighty is the sidelong title track terrible. It's like every tasteless, tacky, bad idea of the late 1970s crammed into 20 minutes. I'm sticking with the early stuff from now on (though I will still rep for "Foreign Affair" till the day I die).

Also, surely some hip-hop producer has sampled the first four bars of "Foreign Affair" by now, right? I mean, it sounds straight up early Def Jux to me

Ha, I actually like "Crises".

Somehow, I only just realised that Kanye West sampled "In High Places" in "Dark Fantasy" (maybe because I never liked that KW album). Does he have a thing for prog rock? There was the King Crimson sample on that album too.

In High Places was previously sampled by others though.

I also like Crises - it was the album that came out during my high school Mike Oldfield craze, so I'm down for life basically.

Crises and Five Miles Out are both really good, I like 'em as much as anything he's done.

Supposedly the next album is a sequel to Ommadawn - guess I'll hold my breath

In High Places and Foreign Affair make this worthy imo. Five Miles Out has the title track and Family Man. I'm not a massive fan of the side-long suites but there are nice bits and tons of cool sounds and textures (assuming one has already accepted Oldfield's whole "thing" that is).

Discovery got re-released recently, after which I got off the bus, this is a kinda sweet little track with a hilariously over the top chorus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvzG9siO704

Hergest Ridge became a favorite record of mine last year, magical album

i walked up the irl hergest ridge once partly because of mike o. it is a nice spot tbh

http://www.tgos.co.uk/contentAsset/image/6ca321bf-1cbb-40d0-9fdb-51fa5f7653b5/firstImage

Discovery got re-released recently, after which I got off the bus, this is a kinda sweet little track with a hilariously over the top chorus.

🎥

"Return to Ommadawn" next week. Maybe I'm not cynical enough but my interest is piqued

Been listening a lot to Amarok this week and lol, such a strange piece. the claim upthread that it's "totally untouched by any notions of restraint or good taste" is so on the money, just "here's a thing, here's another thing, here's another thing, clap clap clap wankadoodle doo!!" for an hour straight, complete with a total "what the fuck" ending. Totally plays to all his strengths too. Too bad he never attempted anything like it again.

That's so weird, I just listened to Amarok yesterday! So many moments of "wait NO... ok yes."