Is there no end to the number of times "Tubular Bells" can be recycled?

Not counting the QS and DBx-encoded version and the picture disc, I possess four different recordings: the original, the dreary philharmonic one, the version on "Boxed" (which has the ending Mike always wanted but wasn't allowed to have until he became a multi-millionaire), and now the 41-minute live recording on this double-album from the recent tour, which also includes a much cut and livened-up version of "Incantations" and "Guilty", ending, as it did in the concerts, with a triumphant reprise of the "Bells" there.

Actually, this is by far the best version. There are important changes, slight in themselves, whcih completely change its atmosphere: a suggestion of disco beat here, a change of chords there, which turn it from a melody of anguished yearning to a tranquil acknowledgement of acheivement.

Suddenly it becomes possible to believe that Mike's therapy has been all he says it was, for it is clear from this music that something very definitely has been turning Mike's head around since he first starting recording overdubs on the Beocord tape recorder he borrowed from Kevin Ayers.

At times it becomes almost heavy metal, at others it is exquisitely delicate, and the "Sailor's Hornpipe" is the folkiest of all the grand finales.

Although 25 minutes have been cut from "Incantations", the joins don't really show, and now it has been played in, it hangs together much better as a piece. My feeling, at the concerts, that this was actually the summation of everything that Mike has done hitherto, is firmly confirmed.

But it is "Tubular Bells" which I keep going back to play, which is so far in advance of the brilliant but rather disjointed original that I find it hard to identify.

And a note of praise for Virgin, who give the first 100,000 customers over 1 ½ hours of music for a mere £4.99. I wonder why they left the commentary off the end of the first half? I thought it was rather well done at the concert.

Karl Dallas