Scatterplot
Group: Members
Posts: 1980
Joined: Dec. 2007 |
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Posted: May 06 2009, 14:45 |
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I'm not into happy, cheek-swelling music. I like music to be a barren, arrid wasteland of depression(no, I'm not into metal, too old for that, my high school heyday was about the time of Van Halen's Debut album, when I was a sophmore). I guess I gravitated to MO circa 1973 forward......because of it's bleak nature. I've used the word "bleak" too much on here. Bleak emplies empty. Mike's music was never empty up until about 2005. It was "full". It filled me with "something" I have just identified after 35 years. And thank you for all your posts/comments esp. newcomer Smillsoid. More than Genesis, Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Deep Purple, Renaissance or anybody else. Funny, no American bands. British art-rock bands were always at the top of my musical priority. USA artists like Steely Dan were just as brilliant as MO but in a different way. Steely Dan, no question, is in my top 5 list. But they did not EVOKE the same feeling the guitar solos in "Ommadawn" did. Why? I finally figured out why.....after a quarter of a century I figured out WHY. I never read Changeling but there's so much of it online.....then there is your comments. It took over a year but Deb Seward and Smillsoid came along and hit that nail on the head. -ANXIETY-..........anxiety. TB1, HR, Ommadawn, Incantations......all full of -ANXIETY-. After that MO took the exegenesis(sp) therapy you all have written so much about. I had a benign brain tumor in that magic year 1973. Well, I had it since 1971 but until '73 only a civilian opthalmologist identified it and sent me to the best neurosurgeon of the time. Prior I was mis-diagnosed by dumb Air Force doctors of the early '70's. "He should wear a shirt when he sleeps". This mis-diagnosis coming from a child with headaches that blacked him out, intermittent blindness and frequent visual impairment, vomiting, but the biggie was walking into walls. My equilibrium was so impaired by the tumor growing in my cerebellum(equilibruim and co-ordination part of the brain) that I continually walked sideways until I hit the wall. I think it was the left side, I've spent 33 years trying to forget. The tests once in the hospital in 1973 were EXACTLY as you see in the Exorcist when Linda Blair was being tested. BANG-CLANG machines swirling around. The CAT(computerized axial tomography) scanner was not to come out for 2 more years which was a fantastic development. Yet I was in 1973, to qoute Star Trek, in the hands of "Stone knives and bearskins". I survived to discover MO after the loss of 50cc of cerebellum. Anxiety was a symptom I "endure" today at age 48. I've taken enough Xanax in the years to fill a warehouse. Mike's first few albums are "fused" into my altered engrams. He had an anxiety disorder too, the music shows that. I really cant imagine a life without those albums. That's what it is....MO was writing music while having anxiety attacks. I did music years later(while in front of myriads of wires, MIDI cables, patch cords all over the room)that, while playing it and recording it, was so overwhelming, I reached anxiety attack level. No wonder so much simple blues and pop in the last 20 years, no matter how simple and childish it's writing/recording is, it evokes no emotion at all(at least in me, but it sells because it is -EASY- to listen to). Exceptions being The Division Bell etc. by old heroes. There is no impulse to it. Even Joe Satriani or post-90's Pat Metheny won't do it. I think I found what I came here(tubular.net) for. I found my answers to very old questions with your stories. Why Mike Oldfield? Now I know why. I will cherish those albums forever. Take care Tubes......
Jimbo
PS: Yeah I called you Tubes. A once agreed upon name for you/us Tubularians. Wanna go for it? Uh huh....I'm ready....Let's rumble!
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We raise our voices in the night
Crying to heaven
And will our voices be heard
Or will they break Like the wind
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post your fave summer fun songs,especially mo tunes, deb 
Summer = sun = farniente = in the pool ! I really like this track ! 
the re release of tb will truly be the summer of the bell! thats a tacky post! lovin it! deb 
