Mike Oldfield
Crises

Mike Oldfield: Crises (1983)

The other day I found myself shopping inside a hypermarket: as I wandered among the shelves, a very distinctive melody from the synths tuned into the car radio: Foreign affair take a trip in the air, tropical beach, à la mer, and so on in an ascending mantra that seemed to last half an hour. It must have been Maggie Reilly's mystical voice, but that night I had a strange and unsettling dream, rather a nightmare: I found myself sucked back into the vortex of the 80s, and the teachers gravely told me that I had to retake the high school exam because the one I took two years earlier was not valid. Everything over again, you get it? I had to repeat the year! You know those dreams that seem real and you wake up with anguish. I mean, look what a little song does to you... And so down came the Neapolitan tears of nostalgia tied to this great record by wizard Oldfield.

It had been a while since I thought about opening the cabinet with the vinyl skeletons of the colorful 80s, when Napster, eMule, iPhone, iPod, and company weren't there. It worked like this: the role of the musical database was played by the wealthier friend who bought the most popular records and recorded them on cassette for friends or classmates. Stuff from the Mesozoic era... And it was precisely one of these, Max called Retard because he was a half-stuttering super-repeating slowpoke, it was he, I say, who lent me Crises. It was a period of hard infatuation: I had fallen madly in love with his cousin, one Emanuela, met at his birthday party in October 1983. That late afternoon, after the makeshift DJ played openers like Moonlight Shadows, he moved on to more typical dance hammers of the period, Automatic Man and Maniac by Sembello, So Many Men, So Little Time by Miquel Brown, Lunatic by Gazebo. Lying on a couch trying to be charming along with the other handsome guy in the class, I said: Look Robé, that cute girl with long hair, she's checking out this side- But does she like you?...- Mmh well, no. Quietly aim over here, take a look...I'm going to make a move on her, I said proudly like all the pumped-up sixteen-year-olds of those times. She lazily reclined on the couch where I had blended in, or rather went leopard-like to observe her... But...plot twist: she's the one coming towards us, pretending to take the long way around the table with the drinks. I liked her a lot: a little spicy type with fake virginal traits like, I don't know, the co-star in the movie Staying Alive, with those long, semi-teased hair. I started a conversation with a childish excuse.The conversation was typically 80s: what do you think of Flashdance? and Thriller? Duran or Spandau.... Do you dance? Let’s dance. Then I went to Max and shouted in his ear: Enough with this dance, let me score with your cousin, and put on a slow one...

In short, the music played loudly, the homemade psychedelic lights sparkled on the faces, me and her, eyes into eyes, hands barely touching, she tells me what beautiful eyes you have, I like you- yes I was watching you, I wanted to meet you...You know I didn't even want to come to this party, I say, but luckily, just think what a shame, I would never have met you..
How wonderful to be so romantic at that age, but thinking about it today with hindsight, oh if the young knew, and if the old could...
In fact, feeling good and content, I got her phone number and secured a Saturday afternoon outing. Among friends, I was a hero, I had scored and they hadn't, Little did I imagine that I was just a game to her, that she was already involved and then stood me up. What a crush guys! You can see on your face you're in crisis, these are love troubles, a friend told me while we went to Luneur-Roman amusement park n.d.A.- to distract ourselves. And on the tagada, a mechanical ride, what do they play as a soundtrack: Foreign affair, take a trip  in the air....À la mer À lagoon by la mer, It's a foreign affair. So at home I blasted through headphones the whole album...Crises crises, you can get away, I need you by my side 'cause there's a crises...

How much I listened to that record in those months, and since she lived in Eur, I had this flash of the stand-up she gave me: the meeting, the Eur lake, the moonlit night, the skyscraper on the waters, and me dressed in a Rifle military green velvet jacket waiting for a girl who would never come: the watcher and the tower, waiting hour by hour.
Even though I didn’t like prog, I immediately liked this record, it made me dream. The sounds for the time were beautiful, among folk mandolins, harps, tubular bells,  the legendary Fairlight, then Oberheim, Roland, Prophet, and the QUANTEC room simulation the best hardware reverb unit: basically a huge amount of stuff that today belongs in a museum. Apart from the worldwide hit Moonlight Shadow, which by the way had a much more dramatic text that we didn’t understand back then, the entire B-side of the 33 contains wonderful songs: High Places, with a particularly poignant and melancholic melody and synths  so simple and beautiful that they manage to make even Anderson's somewhat worldly gay voice bearable: The stars so close we touch them, they seem so small.. Couldn’t get much higher, Couldn’t get much lighter Navigator to heaven

Ps.
I ran into Emanuela again the following year, same party, same sea, but things went muy differently, it will be the occasion to review another great vinyl.