Surprisingly, yet another entry that’s been influenced by long-time reader, and my far the most imaginative troll on this site, Chad. The year is 1992. I’d only been collecting records for just inder a year, so the name of Mike Oldfield was a bit unknown to me. The only music of his I was aware of, was his single “Moonlight shadow”.
“Sentinel” was the lead track on the album, which was released and remixed as a single. Around this time, Chad had picked up a copy of the afore-mentioned album on tape. I distincly remember its blue background, and yellow tube on the front. I only remember hearing the first track of the album, and was surpried to find out how differnt it was to the version released as a single. I think it was the first experience I’d had with an album version of a rack being different to the single version.
Sadly, around that time came the worst period of my life. and I remember, a few days after this particular thing happened, I went into Hit Parade on York Road, picked up the single version of “Sentinel”….. and “Tetris” by Dr. Spin. I’m guessing grief made me make some strange musical decisions that day.
At some point, I picked up the original Tubular Bells album. Admittedly, I wasn’t really a fan. I must have been about 14, and the two long passages of music didn’t really keep me entertained as much as, say, Pato Banton’s “Baby Come Back”, or whatever was in the charts back then. No idea what happened to the tape
Many, many years later, I found a 2nd hand copy of Tubular Bells 2. I was intrigued to hear what the full album sounded like, after only hearing the first track in its entirety. Needless to say, the fact that I’m writing this now proved just how much I liked the album. It was great. Much more polished, a lot less experimental. The two long passages of music still existed, as none of the tracks have gaps in between them (except, of course where you need to change sides).
There are some great hidden gems in there, and although a few singles came from the album, Sentinel was the only one that had any type of chart success – sentinel reached number 10, “Tattoo” reached 33, and “The Bell” reached 55.
“The Bell” is possibly my second favourite track on the album. Alan Rickman is featured as the “Master of Ceremonies”. though there are many different versions, with other people doing the role of the MC, such as Bully Connolly, MC Otto who is a German comedian. One version also has Vivian Stanshall reprising his role from the first LP. Unfortunately he wouldn’t be able to carry this role on in the third in the series, as he died in 1995. There were no MC tracks on the third album.
Interestingly, Alan Rickman isn’t credited on the album
I’m not going to do a track-by-track section as you really have to listen to the album in its entirety. Plus, they’re tedious as hell to type out
While I don’t own these albums anymore, I will often listen to Mike Oldfield on YouTube every once in a while. I did own them on CD, but they got “lost” along with many of my other belongings thanks to……(if you have nothing nice to say better keep quiet!)
I really should send you some music to update your tastes from 30 years ago!
Glad to hear you’re still a Mike Oldfield fan. It’s worth tracking the deluxe editions of his albums down, there’s some great bonus tracks on them. I think most of them are on Spotify.
That CD you gave me last time you were over still receives regular play. In fact, just thinking about has made me play that live version of “Shelter From The Storm” you put on there.
That live version of “Shelter From The Storm†is probably my all time favourite song. Always cheers me up when it comes up on my iPod.
It’s from “Hard Rain”. I think the concert is up on youtube if you are interested.
Firstly, nicely played on thename… I usually change these to “Chad”, but seeing as “フェレット” means “ferret” (atually ferreto) in Japanese, I’ll let it slide. Yeah, I caught the concert on Youtube, or at least this song. Wonder if it was named that because it appeared to be pissing down all the way through? Wikipedia doesn’t say, but surprising that it had a higher chart placing over here (no. 3), as opposed to the US chart position.