Song of the Week: To France
Mike Oldfield
To France
‘To France’ was locked away in the mists of my memory until I heard it, appropriately enough, on French radio station Nostalgie recently. Straight away, I was bowled over by Maggie Rilley’s vocals and that distinctive, building sound, wondering how I ever forgot such a kicker tune. But I really don’t think that I’ve heard ‘To France’ on the radio since well, 1985. Is Mike Oldfield still unfashionable? I guess so.
‘To France’, Mike Oldfield, from Discovery, 1984
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Tags: song of the week
January 30th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
He’s almost a guilty pleasure isn’t he – but I don’t mind him, and had a mad buzz for ‘Bells’ and Hergest Ridge in the 80s, his early work (on bass), with Kevin Ayers is worth digging out – there’s been a mood of proggery posting across the blogs this week – very cosmic.
I’d forgotten all about this tune, in fact I don’t think I reaslised it was ever him
January 30th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I think that prog is very wintery music for some reason – it just suits the long, dark evenings. It is like the exact opposite to say, Antonio Carlos Jobim.
I’ve never actually heard anything by Kevin Ayers – sounds like something else I should check out.
January 30th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Oh he’s fab (bit patchy in places), but his recent greatest hits should sort you out, and Unfairground his latest album is a winner from start to finish- try a few of these
May I
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hUvG5-UB7_0
Singing a Song In The Morning – (with Syd Barrett)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQhuCJaNpI
PS Magic Mirror comes from a series of comps called Jagged Time Lapse – I think deleted now, but you can grab them here..
http://faintlyblowing.blogspot.com/2008/04/va-jagged-time-laps-vol-1-5.html
January 30th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I’m a huge, huge fan. Everything Oldfield, including The Sallyangie. I love Maggie Reilly’s vocals. Where is she now? Check out Foreign Affair for something even better.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Sorry PM, your comment went to my spam filter – it clearly doesn’t like Kevin Ayers. But I do – he’s very laid back, and his voice does not fit what I imagined! Singing a Song in the morning – fab. As a former cliched student Floyd obsessive, I can’t believe I haven’t heard this track before.
Five Centres, thanks – checked this out on You Tube. It’s ace.
January 30th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
He’s very laid back – If you’re into Floyd you’ll love Kev – there’s a great live (nicknamed ACNE) featuring Ayers, Cale, Nico and Eno from June 74 with some great versions of each others numbers
Here’s the version of Singing with Syd
http://www.divshare.com/download/6443554-e1a
Here’s the finished version
http://www.divshare.com/download/6443555-204
And here’s a track from his last album
http://channelmondo.blogspot.com/search?q=ayers
Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes and Shouting In A bucket Blues are well worth checking out too..
January 30th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
That’s brilliant! Thanks very much.
Do you have any advice on what’s the best way to convert .rar files? I have a stack of them sitting on my desktop…
January 30th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
You just need to grab Winrar – easily available as free download, it’s compression software a bit like winzip, and will expand the files into a target directory and convert to mp3
January 30th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Great – thanks for that. And have just bought whatevershebringswesing from Amazon. For £5 you can’t really go wrong can you?
February 1st, 2009 at 11:48 am
it’s no moonlight shadow! and isn’t the singer his sister who get’s none of the credit even though she’s 70% of the song.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for posting that. I’ve never heard it before. I really liked it though. Hope you’ve been having a good weekend. Cheers!
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
BLTP, really? Is Maggie O’Reilly his sister? I agree about her lack of credit – mostly because it confused me a lot when I was a 8. I loved Moonlight Shadow and felt sorry for the singer because her parents had given her a boys name.
Glad you liked it Keith. Check out PM’s links above too – they are superl.
February 4th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
I like this though I don’t think I’ve heard it before.
I’m getting very confused between Maggie O’Reilly (who was on “Moonlight Shadow” as well as this) and Sally Oldfield who was Mike’s sister and had a hit with a song called “Mirrors” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sErzyh1Z0. I don’t remember any of this: I just looked it up.
Sally O’s Wikipedia page lists an amazing 14 albums against her name!
February 5th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Oh wow, Hoops, thank you for posting ‘Mirrors’! I hit the play button and I felt exactly the same way when I heard ‘To France’ i.e. I knew it, the tune was familiar but I had forgotten all about it. This is exactly the sort of 70s sap that I could listen to for hours…
But yes, I think we must have been confused between Maggie O’Reilly and Sally Oldfield. Thanks for clearing that up.