Oldfield & EP's

[FULIGIN%UMass.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU (Peter E. Lee)]

>From: William LeFebvre <phil@rice.edu>

>I was wondering if any of the Oldfield EPs have new or different stuff
>on them.

     Yes, they certainly do.  Being an avid (rabid?) music junkie, I tend
to find alot of music from bands that is available only on 12"s.  This is
true mostly of either 'dance' bands, who tend to produce lot's of remixes
(usually tedious), or british bands who are trying to to stay in their
nation's rapidly flickering limelight - not an easy proposition when singles
are sometimes out of the shops in a week to make way for new stock.  I was
rather surprised then, to discover that Oldfield, who I generally concieve
of as an album artist, had obscure songs available only on EP's and singles,
which, in fact, he does.  In fitting with the above-mentioned reasoning
behind the production of EPs, the title tracks of the Oldfield releases (at
least the ones I have) are all pop-songs, but all of them feature nice
instrumental B-sides (some of the A-sides aren't all bad either).  Here's
a list of what I have, I don't think all of these were mentioned by the
earlier poster :
     "Mistake" (by "The Mike Oldfield Group") - I have this on a 7" picture
disk.  The B-side is, as I recall, called "Waldeberg : The Peak" and is
quite nice.  The A-side is a worse than usual Mike Oldfield pop single.
     "Crimes Of Passion" (12") - One of the few Oldfield forrays into music
with comprehensible lyrics that I actually like.  The B-Side is a beautiful,
though brief, instrumental called 'Jungle Gardenia'.
     "To France" (12") - An extended version of "To France" (from "Discovery")
which I really like, backed by two rather experimental instrumentals called
"Bones" and "In The Pool".
     "Pictures In The Dark" (12") - Oldfield's most recent single.  The
A-Side is a precisely crafted 'commercial' piece, which sometimes blows me
away, and sometimes strikes me as too safe.  All in all, worth having.  The
B-side contains a beautiful Irish-traditional-esque instrumental called
"The Legend", and a scary, slightly askew piece called "The Trap", which
would make a great soundtrack to an Agatha Christie film.
     I know of, although do not own, the following :
     "Five Miles Out" - features another unreleased B-side, as I recall.
     "Tricks Of The Light" - I had this, but then sold it.  Features an
unaltered version of the ablum track on the A-Side, an instrumental version
of the same song, which sounds like musak, and one instrumental worth having
called "Afghan".  I didn't think that one song justified the price of the
12" though.
     "Etude" - Part of Virgin's recent "Full Length Version" scam.  You might
buy the single expecting to hear a more "Complete" version of the song than
appears on the album, but you'd be wasting your money - it is the album
version.  Both A and B-sides appear, unaltered, on the soundtrack to
"The Killing Fields".