Music : Tubular Bells

Rating: - One of the best instrumental music albums ever
really amazingly cool and scary also collages of guitars,piano and other instruments.this one along with "Ommadawn" and "Hergest ridge" makes a real trilogy of albums that descrie the bst all the rush and tempo of modern world

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Rating: - It saved my life
None of my friends really like it, but i find this a very inspiring album if you're a musician yourself, and/or interested in recording, due to it's imperfections.

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Rating: - I liked it once, long ago....
I was really into this album when it came out. I was in High School and I used to listen to it alone in my room with the black lights on and a candle or two burning. Way cool....

Time passes and I stumble upon a copy of it in a used CD rack. 'Hey I remember this!" $5.00 and I'm on my way to relive some of my lost youth.

I rip open the package and jam the thing in my car's CD player. I can't wait. Ahhh there's the familar theme from that scary movie. Cool. Stuff slowly beings to happen...more instruments start to come in...Yeah, just like I rememeber... 5 minutes in and I'm starting to wonder, "hey where's the good stuff?" Ten minuets pass and I can hardly keep from giggling. The melodies are simplistic and nieve, the sound textures are silly and the music is - dare I say it? - boring! Yes there are some nice tunes that start off filled with promise, but then they either get repeated over and over again into oblivion or they get swamped with cliche ridden sounds (When's the last time anyone used a fuzz effect on a guitar? There's a reason why, ya know. It sounds stupid!)

I really lost it when the caveman chorus started up. Talk about stupid! I used to think it was a nice and silly way to break up the piece - sort of an aural intermission - but now I can't help but think that Mike O. was serious about this section - well as serious as he was in the preceeding sections of the work anyway - and that he actually thought that this part was, well, meaningful or arty or ...something other than just plain old stupid.

At last, the formerly comical but not really pretentious and inane part with the english guy introducing the instuments. YAWN! Who the heck cares?

And finally, the thing that sums it all up perfectly: the sailor's hornpipe at the the end speedong away into silliness. Couldn't think of a good ending, could ya, Mike?

I did try to listen to the CD one more time a few days later to see if I had missed something. Nope. I ended up giving it to my (older) brother - also a former fan of the piece - and I don't think he's gotten all the way through it.

Bottom line: Pretension posing as art, silliness posing as creative cleverness.

I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because it might be worth listen to if you're stoned. Or if you have nothing else to do.

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Rating: - Why?
This is the biggest tease in the history of music! The first half is sublime, creative, musical and wonderful. The many different instruments intertwining with one another are absolutely gorgeous. The last half continues the same way, and just when I started to think that this was the single most creative piece of music I had ever had the pleasure of listening to...."Goh dagh whaassggghh goh dagh whahhhnohhh!!!!" some moron decides to start grunting and growling in jibberish. Other reviewers have called these "caveman vocals." I'd say it's more akin to hearing a klingon attempt to pass a brick from his bowels. I'm a fan of all things avant-garde in music, but this grunting is overly aggressive and simply out of place when set against the rest of the piece. It'd be the same as a pianist playing Chopin and starting a foul-mouthed freestyle rap in the middle. Maybe in another genre of music it would fit, but here it serves no purpose other than weird-for-the-sake-of-weird. What follows this 3-minute ordeal, if you can stand to listen further, is a soft and solemn interlude that is played beautifully on mainly organ and guitar and could almost redeem the piece. However, the last two minutes further serve to ruin it. A jig-like rendition of a sailor song whose title escapes me, but everyone has heard it. Mr. Oldfield couldn't find a fitting end to his opus, so he figured "I'll end it with POPEYE!" Great idea Mike.

I hate writing negative reviews and I don't enjoy critics, but I felt I needed to warn those who have been hearing about how good Tubular Bells is and have decided to buy it after listing to the first 5 minutes. If you end up loving it, grunting Klingons and all, I'm very happy for you.

I gave it two stars instead of one because of the wonderful first half and the second half's few shining moments.

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Rating: - The magic point
"Tubular bells" - propably his best album up to the date.and please,do not buy "TB2003" because the biggest emostions and power are still laying in this famous raw seventies version...
Mike creates rich soundscapes using manny different instruments,the melodies are flowing one into another and some are suddenly dissapearning giving place for new exciting tunes...sometimes it is relaxing (Opening theme),Sometimes funny (the caveman in part 2 - MIke sings it himself) but always ful of beautifulness.the part 1 is most famous one but the part 2 is really much more emotional - the gentle guitar collages are so melanchoic that they will make you cry...
a must have album for everyone!