When my mother gave me rides when I was in high school, she had this blue Honda Accord with a then high tech cassette player, which allowed us to choose the music we listened to instead of merely choosing the radio station.
It was always a challenge to find music both my mother and myself could both enjoy listening to. One of the artists we found we both liked was the legendary Vangelis.
My father discovered Vangelis and bought a number of his albums after watching the movie “Chariots of Fire”, including “Albedo 0.39”, “Spiral”, “Heaven and Hell”, and “Chariots of Fire”. I had taken his vinyl albums and enjoyed the music so much that I made cassette tapes of them.
When I played one of those Vangelis tapes for my mother one day as she was driving me somewhere, she immediately fell in love with his music. We would listen to a music a lot, and talk about what an incredible genius Vangelis was.
Her favorite album of his was “Heaven and Hell”; her favorite part of that album was the movement which was very effectively used in the TV series Cosmos; my favorite album of his was “Spiral”, but I also really enjoyed “Albedo 0.39”, especially the ambient soundscape in the song “Alpha” off of that album. We also listened to and greatly enjoyed the soundtrack album for “Chariots of Fire”, which my mother ended up buying.
Years later, when I watched Blade Runner with my mother, she was still a big fan of Vangelis, and could not help but comment on how Vangelis’ music sounded really good in the movie.
My mother died years ago, but I still cherish those memories of us driving around in her car, listening to Vangelis.
R.I.P. Vangelis
The included picture of Vangelis is CC BY-SA 3.0 licensed. Attribution: Kapetan Nikolios
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