Entertainment For Lively Minds
The might Heep
Posted by Vincent on 22 December 2011 - 11:55am.
That fabulous promo pic of the Heep led me to recall their lumpen genius (not that I showed any sympathy when prog ruled and it seemed below my towering 15-year old intellect). For all those who can appreciate where dumb becomes great, this clip just keeps on delivering; iffy clothes,"Creme Brulee" rock, an over-confident front-man giving it loads (with 'tache, natch), Dutch audience, and don't leave till you've seen the back flip. Only Black Oak Arkansas could equal it.
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Bob
I suspect Bob and I are going to have one of our rare moments of agreement over that clip!
"where dumb becomes great"
Absolutely right. I was transfixed by the awfulness.
Alison Goldfrapp
has let herself go
the hip Police
tkdmart, you made me laugh out loud! The risibility of this clip (and I posted it affectionately) is in marked contrast to the sneering attitude of the hip-Police, for whom I have a strong desire for their dirty little un-hip secrets to be exposed with maximum embarrassment.
As I said
to a friend who recently went to see them - 'In the words of Beano's Little Plum "They, um, heap bad"'
Blimey, they're still going?
Looks like it's Mick Box, Trevor Bolder plus blokes now, although, to give him his due, Lee Kerslake hung on in there until 2007.
"Gypsy": One Man's Story
I played keyboards in a local (Fens) "heavy rock" combo for about 12 months in the mid-Seventies. They were called Gypsy and had been going for about six months before I joined them. The band leader, a riproaring longhair in the Nigel Tufnell mould, suggested that, now we had an organ, we should play the Heep track we were apparently named after.
I was a Bowie freak who had heard of Heep but didn't really know their music. Nobody in the band had a Heep record. Well, the longhair did, but his record player was knackered and he wanted to "get this down" in a couple of evenings so we could do it the following weekend at some far-flung RAF-base social club near Nottingham.
The lead guitarist and drummer did their best to explain how the song sounded (I wasn't about to fork out for the album and thought they would drop the idea as it was so obviously never going to work) and we began to cobble together our version. It sounded absolutely fucking terrible. But we pressed on regardless. As an organ-smothered number, I had to carry it and was even forced to bung in a long-winded solo.
It became the centrepiece of our set, our "title song", and it was a cast-iron floor clearer.
It was not until about 10 years later that I found a Heep "best of" collection in an Our Price sale and decided to buy it, just to hear the original "Gypsy" for the first time. I got it home, gently lowered the stylus arm and closed my eyes at the hiss of the vinyl.
It was total, unbelievable shit to my ears. It was actually WORSE, FAR FAR WORSE, than our version, which itself was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever played on. I see it weighs in at 6:37 on "Very 'Eavy, Very 'Umble". When we played it, it felt like a lifetime, especially that solo.
PS: We did do a cracking "Jean Genie".
Fantastic post, LongNosedNutter!
...I laughed out loud at that final paragraph and I don't doubt its truth one bit. Watching 'singer' Dave Byron in the OP clip, and knowing from Bob Harris's autobiog that he spent time in the 70s rattling around a hired country castle on the verge of bankruptcy with inflated ideas about his status, I can EXACTLY where Bill Nighy gets all his ideas for those bumbling 70s rocker types he plays in films (Still Crazy, et al). Priceless.
But just to make sure no one else suffers as you did, Foxy, from a lack of detailed information on How To Play Heep, here's something helpful from youtube:
And here - to exquisitely complete the circle you started - is a clip of The Heep from last year, once again with a Dutch audience AND the bloke who played bass on the Jean Genie. Surely, Foxy, you should be in ecstasy with this?
They are more Tap than Tap
Glad to see Trev has lost the Grade II Listed sideburns, though.
I prefer their earlier version
Didn't half change their look .
I don't believe I've ever heard Uriah Heep before...
they have always just existed in my mind as a definition of awfulness. Now that I have been exposed to their music, their role in encapsulating that which is shite has only been strengthened.
I quite enjoyed the clip, though... the singer's hair and moustache are hilarious.
Watched a bit of it again...
Were all those bonfires being lit intended for the burning of Uriah Heep albums?
It's possible we're witnessing a very rare phenomenon here...
...the ENTIRETY of the Massive agreeing on a point of music: namely, that Uriah Heep are a crock of execrable, irredeemable old tosh.
Can it be, as Twang suggested above, that the farthest shores of the prog, pop and indie people herein are united in this?
I think we should be told.
Nickelback?
shurely.
How dare you
I bow to no-one in my defence of Nickelback.
Well, I quite like like this song anyway
The MIGHTY Heep...
... were the first band that I saw live at the Glasgow Apollo (touring Return to Fantasy, with John Wetton on bass) - I still retain a few bits of 70's vinyl and I wouldn't part with them, although I admit that I lost track of ver Heep when I discovered VdGG and the Softs, etc.
So, perhaps not the ENTIRETY of the Massive in agreement....
Me too.
If you don't count the godawful support band, Girlschool, ver Heep were the first band I ever saw live, Newcastle City Hall 1980.
They were much more fun than Word favourites AC/DC, who I had the misfortune to see later in the year.
I think we need to see more of this man...
...I mean, of course, David Byron. Having seen a few more film clips I'm coming around to the view that the music (mostly) without his voice/lyrics involved would stand a fighting chance of being pleasing to the prog-minded among us. Ken Hensley on keys (and later guitars, vocals, everything) is clearly very talented. Why on earth they needed Byron poncing around and ruining it all is anyone's guess. Here they are in 1975:
And here's their 'hope you like our new direction' soft/rock-cabaret period in 1977 with Keith Harris (minus Orville) on vocals:
Again, what *were* they thinking?
Byron's dad owned a van in 1967 so he was in
Hensley and Box planned to get shot of him as soon as they could afford a van of their own...
what have I done?
These clips of Dave Byron and the Heep seem to have brought out some rather insensitive and uncaring observations on what has to be the nadir of 2nd division heavy prog. There was a long article on Byron in a rival 4-letter music organ some years back which said he was a wannabe MOR singer who got lucky (if that is quite the word) with the Heep. All my friends in Mojoland will enjoy this - make sure your speakers are on:
http://www.david-byron.com/
And a merry Christmas to one and all!
Roger Dean
did some good sleeve artwork for a couple of their albums (though I'm not quite the fan of his that I used to be)