That statement will either mean something to you, or it will mean nothing to you. It might mean nothing to you if washy space-y pretentious prog rock wasn’t your bag in the 1980s. But it was mine.
I have always had an eclectic taste in music and back in the early 1980s when I was 15 my friend Aiden, who was a couple of years older than me got me into all the British prog rock bands like Yes and Genesis and Pink Floyd and Emerson Lake and Palmer who had all done their best work in the previous decade. As a devotee of Queen, I was a bit suspicious of synthesizers, but I have also always had a penchant for drones and atmospheric washes and mystical poetry and stuff like that. Bands like Rush were doing all that, even if Queen, until 1981 anyway, was explicitly rejecting it.
Anyway, my love of Jon Anderson’s voice and Vangelis’ notoriety for the Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner soundtracks led me to an album that for a couple of years was a staple in my Walkman. “Private Collection” was bliss to listen to through the headphones. The following year, they released “The Best of Jon and Vangelis” and that was the extent of their discography that I owned on cassette.
Here is “Horizon” from from “Private Collection” in all of its 23 minute long glory.
Headphones on. Bliss out.
Thanks for this Chris, I can relate. My favourites were L’Enfant and Hymne.
Kindred spirits in more ways as time goes on!
That takes me back to stretching out on the living room floor, headphones on and it’s long cable snaking back to the stereo: L’Opera Sauvage and in particular L’Enfant.
Means Something | Doesn’t Mean Anything
Chris |
Brad |
François |
Patty |
Rats: my little 1980s ASCII/Underwood t-chart didn’t work. Looks like the comment box ripped out the carriage returns.
Getting to be about that time when I might need someone to unkludge the code from this site’s design again.
I know who the Vangelis haters are in my circle. I have no doubt they just kindly passed on by this post 🙂
I don’t know his other music, but when I discovered the 666 album of his “Aphrodites Child” band as a sixteen year old (1991), it took me to another dimension, combined with discovering yoga, sensuality, art, opening up a new world… Together with CAN, they were the first two CDs I bought in my life. Still love them!
Small story: for ages I had been sitting at a desk in my physics class on which someone had written “the leading horse is white, the second horse is red…” always capturing my imagination and wondering what it was all about. When I heard 666 for the first time on my brother’s tape, and exclaimed: OMG, this is what is on the desk, he told me that he had written it! To me it felt like a deeper msg from him to me (to cut through the crap;) ….
The opening scene of Blade Runner is stunning. Big atmospheric droning percussive synths flying over nighttime Los Angeles in 2019. Sublime.