There Was a Musician Called Mike
Date: Mon Nov 18 13:40:58 1996
Subject: Re: Magic, Guilt & Poetry
How about limericks?
There was a musician called Mike
Who recorded no two works alike
Till one day he reckoned
That T. Bells the second
Would earn him the profile he'd like
(A touch cynical, perhaps... but then I was going to have 'money' instead of 'profile', so it could have been worse!)
Mike Oldfield, a Tubular guy
In interviews never would lie
'I'm happy,' he'd say
'With my music today
And I'll make it this way till I die'
Once the coolest muso on his block,
Mike had lost all his power to shock
His muse had grown bland
By the time of 'Islands'...
Then he blasted us with 'Amarok'
Mike's binges left him catatonic
But Exegesis showed him that's moronic
He said, 'Booze is sin
So I'll stop drinking gin
And set up my new charity, Tonic'
There was a young fan of Oldfield
Who once on a mailing list squealed
'I was sickly when born
Till I heard 'Ommadawn'
And nowadays I'm totally healed'
Mike Oldfield was pissed off with Virgin
And all of their pop-chart-hits urgin'
So he gave them 'Earth Moving'
And 'H.O.' to get grooving;
Which made for an effective purgin'
(And the last line on this next one has to be read with an American accent...)
While listening to Enya CDs
Mike said, 'Celtic music's a breeze'
So he quickly recorded
What WEA ordered;
It's ideal for catching some z's.
(There was a list-member called Rory
Who became a limerick factory
Till the list cried 'Enough
Of this blasphemous stuff!'
And dealt him a punishment gory.)
Date: Wed Nov 20 14:09:41 1996
Subject: More Limericks
I'll see if I can make up limericks for the rest of the albums I haven't covered: i.e., apart from Ommadawn, Islands, EM, Amarok, HO, TB2, or Voyager. So let's see, that's TB, HR, Inc., Platinum, QE2, FMO, Crises, Discovery, TKF and TSODE... and if I'm really keen, OTB, Collaborations, Exposed, the Complete and Elements!
Mike's fans are divided on Platinum
Some tracks don't really quite flatten 'em
But the feeling about
Is that Five Miles Out
And Crises don't have too much fat on 'em
(Three in one go! Not bad.)
To soothe his ev'ryday frustrations
One Mike fan would play Incantations
But also he'd play
On his sillier days
The last song on Collaborations
A Mike fan of the star-sign Pisces
Using astrological devices
Read her future true;
It said 'I need you
On my side because there's a Crises'
(Okay, so I'd already done Crises... what the hell.)
Mike Oldfield was feeling land-lubbery
Till he hit on a means of recovery:
He hired a crew
And the good QE2
And charted a course of Discovery
(Now, for those who think that Elements didn't contain nearly enough rarities:)
A disgruntled fan once disclosed
That the problems that Elements posed
Would not go away
Until one happy day
The Complete works of Mike were Exposed
(Here's one for 'The Exorcist':)
The music on Tubular Bells
Reminded directors of Hell
They used its main theme
To make audiences scream
And die-hard M.O. fans all yell
The master tape of Hergest Ridge
Is prob'ly kept in Branson's fridge
So all you can buy
Is the remix, and I
Don't really think that's ridgey-didge.
(Ridgey-didge = corny Australian slang for 'authentic', 'proper', 'above board', etc.)
(Now how the hell am I going to do OTB and TKF?...)
Puttnam, who made 'Killing Fields'
Used music by Michael Oldfield
Much of it, though,
(Though it's on the main show)
From the album was fully concealed
(And, last and probably least, with one desperate rhyme:)
A conductor of classics of note
Said, 'Of everything Oldfield wrote,
The Orchestral
Tubular Bells
Doesn't get my top-notch vote.'
Date: Wed Nov 20 16:33:05 1996
Subject: Re: Bored with MO
I missed an album off my list:
One day in his English abode
Mike went into computer mode
He fiddled around
With some sampled sounds
And out of all those he made TSODE
©2001 Rory Ewins