Spanish guitar and introducing acoustic guitar. Plus, tubular bells

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

16/09/73 : Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield

Unsurprisingly, I am aware of this album, but I suspect I've only ever listened to 30 seconds max of the main theme before I've got bored and let my mind wander elsewhere, so I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to experiencing a whole album of it.

And yeah, a minute in and I'm like "enough already" - but I'm pleased to say we do get through it to get a bit more variety.  Is it good variety though?  Well, no.  Like most albums there are bits I like and bits I don't like, but a lot of this is dead average or somewhat peculiar.  Particularly on side two with the weird monster noises.  Are they backwards?  I'm sure Wikipedia will tell me, but whatever is doing it, there is FAR too much of it.  And then the "Sailor's Hornpipe" bit at the end - who thought that was a good idea?  (Mike, I guess).  I guess I'm glad I listened to it, but I really don't see quite what everyone saw in it (although I imagine it's good for showing off your high-fidelity audio equipment).

We're at #7 in the charts this week on its eleventh week of a 25 week run, with it peaking at #7 in this week and three weeks earlier.  It then took a couple of weeks off over Xmas - and came back with a bang for a 128 week run, peaking at #1 in October '74.  It has also managed another 131 weeks in the charts on 25 separate runs, last being seen in 2018 - all very peculiar indeed.  The top five in the charts this week are  The Rolling Stones (a new entry), Rod Stewart, Peters & Lee, The Carpenters and Bowie (who was also at #6, #9, #24 and #25).  There are no other new entries in the top ten - the next one is the OST of the film of Jesus Christ Superstar (#30) featuring a load of people I've never heard of, except for Yvonne Elliman who I only know for her version of "I Don't Know How To Love Him".  Once again we have two women in the top five (this is getting repetitive now) - and we also have ANOTHER woman in the charts with Carole King popping back in with Tapestry.

Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has a LOT on this album (350 milliPeppers) - I can't say I read it all but there were some gems in there.  Vivian Stanshall (of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) is the guy that introduces all the instruments - Mike liked the way he did on one of their tracks, but was too shy to ask him and had to be talked into it, at which point Vivian readily agreed and is billed as "Master Of Ceremonies".  But that's not nearly as interesting as the story behind the weird monster noises - Richard Branson wanted vocals on one track so that he could release it as a single, which annoyed Mike so much that he drank half a bottle of whiskey and screamed into the microphone and the engineers adjusted the pitch to create "Piltdown Man" to give Richard his lyrics.

Critical reception was favourable at the time and it's still regarded as an important album, which I can understand - but I struggle to understand the commercial reception with it getting to #1 here and #3 in the US, selling 15 million copies globally in the process.  Yes, it didn't hurt that it was included in the score for The Exorcist but it still feels bizarrely successful to me (although I wonder how many copies were listened to more than once).

"Customers also listened to" Sky, Tangerine Dream and Jon & Vangelis.  As I said earlier, I'm glad I finally got round to listening to this (it's not quite 50 years old yet, but it's close!) but I can't imagine any scenario whereby I revisit it I'm afraid - I found most of it either boring or odd.

09/09/73 - Nothing to surprise anyone here
23/09/73 - Yeah, I enjoyed this