(This probably comes from the internet movie data base.)
A: Well the answer is YES. The title translates to "The Murdered Young Girl" and is a film by Roger Vadim. The music is just parts of Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge.
Credit: David Porter, dporter2@compuserve.com
A: This occurred because the early CD's couldn't have all of Inc. on one CD. Pity, because they cut some of the best of Inc.! Anyway, if you buy a new CD, you should get the long version. With all of the start of part 3.
A: Most copies of Platinum list the track "Sally", but the only place it actually appeared was on the first two LP pressings. The story goes that Richard Branson didn't like the song and insisted that it be replaced with "Into Wonderland" (basically a variant of the same song, but less goofy). The twits at Virgin didn't bother to update the album packaging.
If your copy of "Platinum" doesn't have a song on it with a chorus that begins with the lyric "Sally, I'm Just A Gorilla", you don't have a copy with "Sally" on it. You can tell without playing the LP by checking the matrix number pressed into the runout groove on the B-side of the album; pressings with "Sally" have matrix numbers ending in "-B1" and "-B2".
Credit: Lazlo Nibble, lazlo@swcp.com
If you want to be a real nitpicker, you actually can find Pictures in the Dark on CD: the German compilation Hit-Sensation. Good luck finding it!
Credit: Morten Due Joergensen, mdj@login.dknet.dk, Rainer Muenz, rainer.muenz@urz.uni-heidelberg.de, Jose Luis Gonzalez, JLuis@ThePentagon.com
A: Fish was asked to sing the lead vocals on "Far Country"? But Mike was not satisfied about his interpretation, so he decided on Mark Williamson to sing it.
Credit: Ralf Erhard, Orabidoo@allgaeu.org
A: Pete Claridge, who used to help Mike with his promo videos in the 80s, was (is?) heavily involved with supplying video walls for exhibitions and the like, and Mike wrote the piece to run in sync with a sales demo.
Credit: Gareth Randall, gwr@easynet.co.uk
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These studio notes include titles for most of the passages on the
album. As nearly as can be determined, here are those passages and where
they start on the CD version. Although the times are too short, as the
final piece is a full hour. And if you want to use these times: here are some further observation: The digits that appear in the leftmost column of the liner notes, among the section titles, will give the correct times if you add 2 minutes to each one. That makes some sense as someone on the list mentioned that the first part of the Amarok intro was added late in the production. | Where times differ: These times seem to fit better (remember to add 2!). Where name of section differs: And maybe this is the right text. Where the section now has a name: This is possibly the name appearing on the vinyl cover. |
| 0:00 Fast Riff Intro | |
| 2:32 Intro | |
| 5:46 Climax I - 12 Strings | |
| 6:18 Soft Bodrhan | |
| 7:20 Rachmaninov I | |
| 8:35 Soft Bodrhan 2 | 7:38 Soft Bodrhan 2 |
| 9:29 Rachmaninov II | 7:59 Rachmaninov II |
| 9:56 Roses | 8:35 Roses |
| 10:42 Reprise I - Intro | 10:23 Reprise I - Intro |
| 12:45 Scot | 11:12 Scot |
| 13:16 Didlybom | |
| 15:00 Mad Bit | |
| 15:56 Run In | 15:56 Russian |
| 16:11 Hoover | 15:56 Hoover |
| 18:00 Fast Riff | |
| 19:57 Lion | |
| 21:57 Fast Waltz | |
| 23:42 Stop | |
| 24:33 Mad Bit 2 | |
| 24:46 Fast Waltz 2 | |
| 25:06 Mandolin | |
| [this is where the side breaks on the LP] | |
| 26:07 Intermission | |
| 26:23 Boat | |
| 29:27 Intro Reprise 2 | |
| 32:07 Big Roses | |
| 33:13 Green Green | |
| 34:24 Slow Waltz | |
| 36:04 Lion Reprise | |
| 37:05 Mandolin Reprise | 37:05 Mandolin Reprise 1, 2, 3 |
| 37:47 TV-am. | 38:46 TV-am. |
| 39:50 Fast Riff Reprise | 39:50 Fast Riff Reprise |
| xx:xx Hoover/Scot | 41:03 Hoover/Scot |
| 42:22 Boat Reprise | |
| 43:32 12 Rep | |
| xx:xx Intro Waltz | 43:49 Intro Waltz |
| 44:12 Green Reprise | |
| 44:46 Africa I: Far Build | |
| 48:00 Africa I: Far Dip | |
| 48:46 Africa I: Pre Climax | |
| 49:32 Africa I: 12 Climax | |
| 50:23 Africa I: Climax I | |
| 51:00 Africa II: Bridge | |
| 51:17 Africa II: Riff | |
| 51:34 Africa II: Boats | 51:34 Africa II: Boat 3 |
| 51:52 Africa II: Bridge II | |
| 52:10 Africa II: Climax II | |
| 54:22 Africa III: Baker | 54:23 Africa III: Hello Everyone |
| 55:50 Africa III: Choir | |
| 57:30 Africa III: Recorder | |
| 58:14 Africa III: Happy | |
| 58:43 Africa III: Finale |
And did you know, that during the Intermission, the main voice in the right channel reads the section list aloud! You can clearly hear it begin with 'Fast riff intro'. It stops at 'intro waltz' and you can clearly hear 'scot didlybom mad bit russian'. (Thus the 'n' in 'Run in' is probably a narrow 'ss'.) Also: when listening to this part, on the left channel you can hear "Not to be listened to by cloth eared nincompoops" repeated several times.
Credits: Marcus Junglas, junglas@student.uni-kl.de, Lazlo Nibble, lazlo@swcp.com, Goran Wallgren, gweronimo@yahoo.com, Pete Nelson, pete.nelson@bt.com, Nicolas DELNATTE, ndelnatt@club-internet.fr, Terry Robinson, m00mt600@mcmail.com.
A: MO and William Murray wrote "the horse song", and he was credited as the author of the short story "Cheer up, cloth ears..." on Amarok. Other names on both Ommadawn and Amarok are Clodagh Simonds, Bridget St.John,and Julian Bahula (African Drums!).
Amarok was always intended to be a "sequel of sorts" to Ommadawn (although not in the direct linear manner of TB/TB2) so the obvious thing to do was to involve as many of the original participants as possible.
In an interview Mike stated that he intended to make Ommadawn 2, but as the work progressed it gained a "a life of its own" and became something different and therefore got a different name.
Credit: Wayne Poll, wayne@earthlight.co.nz, Gareth Randall, gwr@easynet.co.uk, Eitan Shefer, eshefer@scso.com.
A: First what Thom Newman himself said, in an interview conducted by David Porter:
It was part of a pathetically half-hearted attempt at re-inventing oneself, I suppose. A bit of silly nonsense. One of the things that we seem to get good at when we're in each others company.
(Source: Spanish book by Jose Cantos.) He was going to sign as Michael Oldfield (it was originally an idea from Richard Branson for Tubular Bells so this would imply more respectability than the familiar Mike, at least with an unknown artist like him at this age).
And then what fans thought:
'Heaven's Open' was an album which was done very quickly and cheap to get out of the contract of VIRGIN records. Mike had a lot of trouble with them.
Amarok is Mikes 'good bye' to Virgin and you hear it everywhere on it:
The only way to seperate this album from the others is to print "Michael" on it. Even Tom Newman is called "Thom" on it! 8-)
But. There might also be another reason. He might have used his full name for the same reason that he sang the songs with his own voice. Because he really felt those lyrics - in "Gimme Back" there is one lyric which literaly goes "I need my voice.." These songs are unashamedly autobiographical in nature and Mike could have realized that having another persons voice to sing them would be a travesty. Have you noticed how in interviews, Mike's closest friends and family actually use his full name ie: "Michael"?
There's also the fact, that at the same time Sally Oldfield put out an album, using her middle name Natasha.
Credit: David Porter, dporter2@compuserve.com and Tom Newman, Marcus Junglas, junglas@student.uni-kl.de, Morten Due Joergensen, mdj@login.dknet.dk, Paul Hutchinson, paulh@netsource.co.nz, John Bacsa, john@hobbes.gh.wits.ac.za, Jose Luis Gonzalez, JLuis@ThePentagon.com
To be fair to Branson, I'm sure that he didn't deliberately do anything underhand, but Mike eventually came to realise that he was locked into a contract that paid him a low royalty (proportionally speaking) and from which Virgin refused to release him early. Money-wise he was a millionaire several times over, but had he been given a more realistic royalty rate, he'd have been a millionaire several *more* times over! He eventually sued Virgin for loss of earnings some time in the early 80s, which didn't help the relationship.
Allied to the contractual problem was the fact that as the 80s wore on, Virgin didn't seem to want to know about instrumental music unless it was called Tubular Bells. Mike felt forced into writing songs, but even when he did what he thought Virgin wanted they didn't seem to bother marketing the products properly. Perhaps understandably, he felt betrayed by Branson, although he's made some interestingly contradictory remarks about him since he finally left Virgin - in one interview he'll say that he "bears Richard no ill-will", and in another he'll rant on about how badly betrayed he was. I guess it depends on whether he's having a blonde hair - sorry, bad hair day or not! =;-)
Credit: Gareth Randall, gwr@easynet.co.uk, Rory Ewins,rory_ewins@hotmail.com
A: One answer is: you can't. For some reason, MO or WEA didn't want to make this game available for PC owners. Another answer is: it exists, but I don't know where you can get it. Someone made a privately pressed CD, which should work for PC's.
It's possible to see the videos under LINUX: You need the hfs-driver for the Apple file system. Get the newest version of this one at http://www-sccm.Stanford.EDU/~hargrove/HFS/. Then you can mount the CD and play the Movies for example with xanim. Get the newest version of this one at http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html. It's also possible to export the CD and mount it as a network drive for example under W95 and play the videos with QuickTime.
Some of the segments have been converted into RealVideo. You can find them at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Towers/4836/videos.htm.
The Let There Be Light video has also been turned into AVI. Find it at http://www.areasoft.com/mirror/oldfield/video/sodavi.zip.
Credit / further technical assistance: Gary Wingert, wingo@well.com, Jan Fricke, fricke@rz.uni-greifswald.de, Angel Ezquerra, ezquerra@email.enst.fr, Jose Luis Gonzalez, JLuis@ThePentagon.com.