Exposed - Mike Oldfield

Exposed is a two disc album of Oldfield's tour in 1978 or so, and focuses of selections from Incantations and Tubular Bells.  I have had (I thought) much of this since the second disc of the 1981 Airborn album is live (somewhat) performances of both.  Now with the exception on Sting songs and Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, I have a pronounced prejudice against anything other than the first version I heard of something.  That probably comes out of all of the cover versions of Star Wars or Saturday Night Fever or Disco Duck that came out in the 1970's, but it's a prejudice I still have, so it's not surprising that I still like the Airborn live versions better than this one.  What this does is take different versions of live performances, which are looser, less polished, and in most cases actually different orchestrations and arranagements, and stretch them out.  They aren't necessarily worse versions - in places I like them a little better than their Airborn counterparts, but it seems that there's a lot of weaker material in here.  Overall not a bad album, but it takes a few listenings to appreciate the performances on their own, and get past noticing the differences.