Sammy
Group: Members
Posts: 43
Joined: Aug. 2011 |
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Posted: Aug. 22 2011, 16:43 |
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Ok, sorry for the somewhat silly topic title but it sort of bears a truth. Having just recently joined this forum, I now thought to bore you all to bits with my own personal Oldfield fandom saga.
I'll try and keep a long story short, excuse me however if I resort to rambling!
Once upon a time in the Early Eighties yours truly was just starting to get exited by a hobby called "music" & happened to borrow an album called "Tubular Bells" from the local library's vinyl collection - it was on the strength of the cover design IIRC.
The first listening experience on my parents' stereo system went somewhat like this: "erm really weird... but wait... there's something pretty interesting happening now... and now... sod it where did I hear this theme before... aww... cor, it's fantastic"
This was the time when cd's hadn't really quite yet arrived on the market, and on the other hand vinyl versions of Oldfield's (old) albums weren't exactly growing on trees, at least not where I lived (a small village near Tampere, in Finland).
Sometime afterwards however I came across vinyl copies of HR, Ommadawn AND Incantations at a shop and remember the guilty (ha) feeling I got when I bought them all at one go - not only because of it felt like a shopping extravaganza but also because at the time I only barely could afford them & was a bit worried that me parents would butcher me and have me for breakfast next day on a vinyl plate. Well they obviously didn't, bless their socks, but I did receive some truly suspicious glances and snide remarks when they actually heard the music!
This changed me life for a few years. At least music-wise. Ended up buying the rest of the albums, too, all I could find that is, and it all sounded brilliant. Oldfield became a sort of demi-god to me, everything he had done was wonderful; any criticism towards His Work was futile and would probably only have been met with scorn, if not actually a hail of stones from my general direction.
Well. This phase (best described as "rabid") went on until about the album "Islands" - after some time however I noticed to my surprise that I wasn't all that sure if it was the masterpiece I was expecting it to be. The heroic aura hitherto surrounding MO and his music was beginning to wear off; I started to move towards other things in life from my late teenage years, also in music.
I kept the vinyl albums instead of taking them to the local scond hand music shop... but when cd versions became reality I only purchased the early ones, up to and including "Incantations" (anyone remember that awful first cd edition? Now that was a nasty shock). A long time passed until I actually felt the urge to "return to the other stuff" and eventually I ended up purchasing the HDCD albums up to "Discovery".
It's funny to say this considering how big a fan I used to be, but I haven't even properly heard, or felt the urge to hear, any albums of his after Islands. Oops. This is pretty much how I still feel now. (Says he, preparing for a barrage of Amarok listening suggestions. No, I haven't heard it I must confess! )
Now... I only return to albums like "Five Miles Out", "QE2" and "Discovery" sporadically, and somehow, I've kind of lost that old fandom. They're ok -and every now and then I even think they include many brilliant moments- but rather than considering them the best music ever I just seem to end up feeling nostalgia for those times when I did consider them such, and used to spin them on the record player day in day out.
Only HR - Ommadawn -Incantations seem to have that "special something" to me now & I still find myself going back to them on a regular basis, and they still leave me speechless. (Ok, TB as well, but even in my most rabid fan days I sort of considered it a bit patchy when compared to the "Trinity" that followed.)
Maybe I'm missing something, dunno. Re: the newer albums. But the funny thing is I do not greatly care, either way - it's been a lovely road and it still is with the said three/four MO albums I really really like... and while it's nice to have the other old favourites, too, I rarely listen to them at all. You might almost say I just have them for nostalgic reasons, as some sort of mementos to the past.... and you probably wouldn't be far from the truth there.
The reason behind this story - or rather the question behind it - is this: am I a true fan? 
Or perhaps some of you also have a similar history...?
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and I hope I will for a long time to come. 
) for example; haven't really warmed much to his later efforts although I can still appreciate the fact he's still at it.
