Virtual Jukebox

As a naive teen - still struggling to understand myself in relation to the rest of the world - I was obsessed with the music of Mike Oldfield.  I loved 'Tubular Bells', but 'Ommadawn' seemed to strike at something deeper.  I bought the album with my first week's wages after starting work.  I think it cost me £3.  Every night, I'd come home from work and sit and listen to it as I ate my dinner, alone, with my headphones on, whilst mum and dad sat and watched the telly.  The bit after 12 minutes always has me hypnotised.  The drums.  The strange, foreign-sounding lyrics, the dramatic crescendo.  I played it over and over and over and over then... and I still do, over 40 years later.  It seems to strike at something primal...

Ommadawn Part 1

That's rung some (tubular?) bells. In my teens, I didn't have a huge amount of interest in pop music. Partly through my Dad's taste in music, I was mesmerised by the likes of Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Tomita, JM Jarre, etc. I always had a preference for music that took me on journey, and where the experience wasn't spoiled by paying attention to lyrics. I loved anything with unusual instrumentation, bizarre time-signatures and polyrhythms, atmospheric effects etc. The opening to Tubular Bells was the first riff I ever taught myself on a keyboard; blissfully unaware that it's in a peculiar time signature. When my folks were out, I would sneak a go on my Dad's posh headphones (I wasn't supposed to touch the hi-fi!). I always laid down in the middle of the room, and would get the feeling of falling through the floor when I slipped into a little universe filled only with the music.

Odd to think that I later played in punk bands! I'm not sure if my continuing preference for odd time-signatures was a blessing or a curse in those - the later stuff I did came out like Crass flailing out an attempt at a Gong track! (I have a compulsion for utter chaos in music on a regular basis!)

Anyhow, thinking back to my teenage "falling through the living room floor" moments, and since I mentioned "little universes", here's one that I always loved for some reason, even though there is so little to it, and it has lyrics - the vital statistics of planet Earth...

Trogluddite said:

I was mesmerised by the likes of Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Tomita, JM Jarre, etc. I always had a preference for music that took me on journey, and where the experience wasn't spoiled by paying attention to lyrics. I loved anything with unusual instrumentation, bizarre time-signatures and polyrhythms, atmospheric effects etc.

Erm! Dear Trogluddite I keep saying how your words echo my very own, and yet again your choice of artists is so very exact but as strange a mix as mine. Wow, I often mention Tomita, being my first album purchase after hearing a piece on late night radio through headphones, then jm  jarre mesmerising And with the most expensive headphones I could find turning it up until it was so loud if I opened my mouth you could hear it from within. 

I like what I like in music, that can be absolutely any type, As a youngster steel drums and reggae,, then my mum’s Beatles singles, then electronic synthesised music, then punk but not English punk, the dead Kennedy’s amaerucan, holiday in Cambodia the first song I heard in radio, then deep deep bass, right now certain classical pieces, mostly picking out each instrument as it plays, the sound of acoustic guitar especially when you can hear the fingers slide in the base strings, 

It is freaking me out hearing your many stories, I am not a stalker Lol. Are you? 

I am almost embarrassed to keep telling you all these comparisons, but they keep happening so Maybe we were twins? 

Trogluddite said:

I was mesmerised by the likes of Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Tomita, JM Jarre, etc. I always had a preference for music that took me on journey, and where the experience wasn't spoiled by paying attention to lyrics. I loved anything with unusual instrumentation, bizarre time-signatures and polyrhythms, atmospheric effects etc.

Erm! Dear Trogluddite I keep saying how your words echo my very own, and yet again your choice of artists is so very exact but as strange a mix as mine. Wow, I often mention Tomita, being my first album purchase after hearing a piece on late night radio through headphones, then jm  jarre mesmerising And with the most expensive headphones I could find turning it up until it was so loud if I opened my mouth you could hear it from within. 

I like what I like in music, that can be absolutely any type, As a youngster steel drums and reggae,, then my mum’s Beatles singles, then electronic synthesised music, then punk but not English punk, the dead Kennedy’s amaerucan, holiday in Cambodia the first song I heard in radio, then deep deep bass, right now certain classical pieces, mostly picking out each instrument as it plays, the sound of acoustic guitar especially when you can hear the fingers slide in the base strings, 

It is freaking me out hearing your many stories, I am not a stalker Lol. Are you? 

I am almost embarrassed to keep telling you all these comparisons, but they keep happening so Maybe we were twins? 

Ha ha!  No I'm not a stalker, nor psychic (as far as I know!)...

...but I am a Dead Kennedy's fan! The 12" of Holiday in Cambodia is one of the few vinyl records that I own. I was rather fonder of the US punk scene than the UK generally; Black Flag, Big Black, Husker Du, NoMeansNo, and particularly the Minutemen were firm favourites. The DIY punk scene in the UK, back when I was still part of it, had a little bit of that - punk being about the attitude rather than just a stereotyped music genre - but even there, plain old hardcore was the rule.

In that vein, here's the Minutemen track that I always used to play when a day at work had pissed me off...