Mike Oldfield — 286

ALBUM: Tubular Bells (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$

This as many might know here was the theme song for the Linda Blair head spinning vehicle, The Exorcist, AKA ‘Get the Hell out of Me,” AKA as “Rotation, Rotation, Rotation.”

Sorry, I have to laugh to keep from recalling those horrific scenes when the Devil occupied the body of a young Hollywood actress. No wait, Blair was an actress playing a little girl who was definitely not an actress.

This movie was a cultural phenomenon. People actually had to be carried out of the theater or so the reports go.

If there was nothing else to take away from this movie — and it would be hard to take it away once it starts —and that would be that it brought to the national forefront two words.

Projectile vomiting.

Movie-goers learned from this movie that Linda Blair was fed way too much pea soup. I think if they investigate they may find the vomiting was connected to the head-spinning. You do a few 360s with your noggin and tell me you are not a little queasy.

Blair looked like a full-circle water sprinkler, only with gobs of goo instead of water.

Oh sorry. I made up some of that. But I did that to contrast what was an over-the-top extremely dramatic and tension building movie with the music, which is over-the-top, and extremely dramatic. So, perfect fit.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the movie or the music will be the bigger 1970s cultural touchstone. My bet is on the music.

The music fits the movie. It’s orchestral and symphonic in its sweep, not to mention psychedelic and dark.

Did I mention Oldfield, some kind of prodigy who could play dozens of instruments, created this at the age of 19? Wow. He apparently was in several bands as a young teen and due to family problems stayed in his room practicing guitar for hours on end, according to the well sourced Wikipedia page.

This album I bought used for $5 about a month or so ago after my man Willie Moseley, senior writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, suggested Oldfield as a top, if not the top, guitarist of all time. His suggestion was spurred by my posts about lists of greatest guitarists.

I listened. And Moseley had a point. Besides directing and other duties Oldfield spends a good time on his guitar, snapping, ripping through tubulur gongs of sound. Power chords, fuzzed tones and breakneck soloing are all there. And, what’s important it works with the music.

Good finding this record. True 1973 is a long time ago but I still remember the music played on the radio. That radio single was taken from the intro of the two-sided first album. There were many permutations and re-releases to come as the album sold an astonishing 15 million copies worldwide, including 2.6 million in the UK alone.

The music on head phones reveals repetitive riffs jumping on board one-by-one building to big and small crescendos. I flipped to Part. 2, the second side and ran into some parts that wordlessly disturbed me.

There was more tubulur bell dinging but there were unearthly sounds like phantom wolves howling — and snarls and growls of demons in the darkness as the music rose in volume and smothered the room.

I was having a flashback of Linda Blair squealing like a giant razorback. I pushed the off button, backed slowly, out of the room, and shut the door.

I need to go exorcise.