So, what have you been listening to lately?

[gearHed289]

Honorary mention: At least lyrically it's country and so are the chord changes (besides, Mark is always happy when he SEES David Byron and HEARS Gary Thain):



Byron had better days than this vid shows, alcohol abuse was beginning to show and it eventually got him fired from Heep and ultimately he died from it too. 

A (much) later line-up would do the song better justice (the late Trevor Bolder's bass playing is bliss and the vocals by Canuck Bernie Shaw are top notch):

When is the second clip from? I kind of feel bad for those guys as I'm reading the new book on Rush's touring history. Rush was opening for Heep, then eventually, the tables were turned and Heep was the opener. At some point, Judas Priest got tacked on, and before too long Heep were opening for Priest! Really good band that straddled between hard rock and prog. Maybe they had image problems compounded by personnel changes, IDK?
 

[TBird1958]

Honorary mention: At least lyrically it's country and so are the chord changes (besides, Mark is always happy when he SEES David Byron and HEARS Gary Thain):



Byron had better days than this vid shows, alcohol abuse was beginning to show and it eventually got him fired from Heep and ultimately he died from it too. 

A (much) later line-up would do the song better justice (the late Trevor Bolder's bass playing is bliss and the vocals by Canuck Bernie Shaw are top notch):

Uriah Heepcame along after Slade for me, the lineup with Byron, Box, Kerslake Hensley and Thain really cooked, and I think Thain really was the driver at that point (even if he didn't write the songs), as his playing is quite a bit more creative than his predecessor and while Jon Wetton was certainly a great player I feel the band lost everything with Gary's death. I like Trevor Bolder and his playing a lot too, he probably should have been Thain's replacement from the beginning, love his playing in the second vid, but tone - ugh! Too burpy, he sounded WAY BETTER playing his GIBSON.  David Byron was indeed a handsome fellow to me at least! His death is almost lost today, truly a tragedy.       

[uwe]

That second vid is from 2006 or thereabouts - a while before Trevor succumbed to pancreatic cancer. With latter day Heep, he was essentially the lead guitarist - one octave lower! If I may quote him from an interview: "I know I overplay. All the time (laughs). But it's the only way I know how to play bass, I can't play simple and believe me I've tried. Blame Jack Bruce!"

Heep were never as big in Germany as, say, Deep Purple or Status Quo, but they had (and have) their strongest following here and could fill large halls easily in their 70ies heydays while still being good enough for regular touring here (at least once a year) of small halls to large clubs, but always full. I only saw them recently with Wishbone Ash and Nazareth opening for them (and Don Airey of DP deputizing for their regular keyboarder who had tragically lost his adult son to cancer over Christmas). They make a solid living and the current line up has been the most stable and long-living one - these guys have essentially (voc, guit & keyb) been together for 34 (!) years now, with only the drummer (Lee Kerslake left for cardiac health reasons) and the bassist (Trevor died in 2013 and had been sick for a while before that) being changed/replaced once. Box/Lanzon (the - compositionally very gifted - keyboarder) are now the chief songwriting team and Lanzon's Hammond is the most dominant instrument (at least since Trevor left, he was immensely loud live  ), even more dominant than the Hammond is with DP (!!!) or how it used to be with Heep in the days of Ken Hensley who was no shrinking violet with his overdriven organ either.

[slinkp]

Today I've been attempting to reconstruct the mix tape (actual tape from the cassette era) that changed my life.
Not everything on it is on spotify, but I got most of it, though I can't remember the running order:


This was my intro to the "underground" music of the time (circa 1987) and my aesthetic was permanently warped after playing this tape hundreds of times ... I would broadly classify it as a range of post-hardcore indie-label music of North America. A few of these bands (notably Minutemen and Husker Du) have stuck with me to this day.  Sadly I never got to see most of these live (the exceptions being Soul Asylum who I found kind of boring, and Butthole Surfers who I saw in '88 during the "two drummers, three strobe lights, naked dancer" era ... it was a bit scary, almost too pyscho / trippy for my teenage brain to handle, but it was definitely NOT BORING and a memorable experience for sure)

If you don't have Spotify here's the list:

Husker Du - Something I Learned Today
Husker Du - I Will Never Forget You

Black Flag - Account for What

Minutemen - Jesus & Tequila
Minutemen - Nothing Indeed
Minutemen - Vietnam
Minutemen - June 16th (instrumental)
Minutemen - Martin's Story ("What you makin' man)
Minutemen - Dr Wu
Minutemen - Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love

Butthole Surfers - Ladysniff

Killdozer - Hamburger Martyr
Killdozer - Cranberries
Killdozer - I'm Not Lisa

Scratch Acid - Crazy Dan
Scratch Acid - Big Bone Lick

Soul Asylum - Religiavision
Soul Asylum - Closer to the Stars


Not on spotify:

Nomeansno - Dad
Nomeansno - Obsessed

Victims Family - Song X (studio version from Voltage and Violets)
Victims Family - George Benson - from Voltage and Violets
Victims Family - ? - Voltage and Violets track 1 I think?

Big Black - Crackup

[westen44]

Robin Beck, known way more in Europe than the U.S.  For a while, Suzy Bogguss got some attention, though.  She had her time in the spotlight, although at least in the U.S. Robin Beck didn't.  It wouldn't be the first time and it won't be the last that someone gets noticed more outside their own country.  In fact, I was just talking to someone in Denmark about this yesterday. 

[Dave W]

Johnny Bush is 85 today and still going strong. This is from a performance last year. Real country music.

[Pilgrim]

Some of the best two-step music I've heard.

For those in Deutschland and other points across the Atlantic.....

[Dave W]

Recorded on this date in 1959. One of my all-time favorites.

[Pilgrim]

The opening to that Ray Charles number is so distorted I wasn't sure for a moment if it was a guitar or piano. Sounds like Link Wray went after the speaker cone with pencils and a hunting knife. 

Great tune, though.  I watched the movie Ray recently and his music was just compelling.

Dick Dale used to play the hook from What'd I Say during his shows, get a back-and-forth "What'd I say" going for a couple of minutes with the audience, then slide into other tunes.  The audience always loved it.

[Dave W]

The opening to that Ray Charles number is so distorted I wasn't sure for a moment if it was a guitar or piano. Sounds like Link Wray went after the speaker cone with pencils and a hunting knife. 

Great tune, though.  I watched the movie Ray recently and his music was just compelling.

Dick Dale used to play the hook from What'd I Say during his shows, get a back-and-forth "What'd I say" going for a couple of minutes with the audience, then slide into other tunes.  The audience always loved it.

It was an electric piano.

And Link Wray never did that. If he had, Archie Bleyer would have thrown him out of the studio. He invented the story years later, after Dave Davies said he did.

[uwe]

Recorded on this date in 1959. One of my all-time favorites.

What Ray plays with his left hand was my first bass line ever - from the Harvey Vinson book, in 1977. 



I remember jamming on it 12 bar style for hours - literally hours - in our rehearsal space. And since the bass instruction book showed it in the key of A, but the two fledgling guitarists demanded we play it in E and I couldn't transpose from A 5th fret to E empty string, I proceeded to play what I had learned in A seven frets higher, 12th fret in E. It had a devastating effect on my young (16) mind - it got me addicted to playing high registers! 

Still play variations of it to this day (by now I'm proficient in every key, thanks for asking), e.g. when I'm checking out a new bass or a restrung one. I guess I could have started off with something worse even though it took me decades to realize it was a Ray Charles piano run! 

[uwe]

Some of the best two-step music I've heard.

For those in Deutschland and other points across the Atlantic.....

Pah, as a lifelong Deep Purple fan one is educated in such things too! Those threads that don't end in Ritchie Blackmore, end in Tommy Bolin, didn't you know?! 



We even get line dancing here!

[slinkp]

My latest obsession is Kate Bush's live album "Before the Dawn".
There are few artists who have got under my skin and stayed there for quite as long a time.
Like everybody, I had assumed that there would never be any more Kate Bush live performances, and was astonished when she did a month of shows in 2014.
I find it almost absurdly moving that this document even exists. Wish I could have been there.

There appears to be no footage on Youtube except the official video of "And Dream of Sheep", which was a promo and also shown during the concerts (I am unclear on whether the pre-recorded vocal was used live).
Her voice is deeper. I like it.


Some of my favorite songs on the live album are the ones I wasn't familiar with before - like "Joanni" and "King of the Mountain", both originally from 2005's "Aerial", which I overlooked and now need to get.
People looking for the early songs will be disappointed though. Nearly all of "Hounds of Love" was performed - and nothing at all from the four albums before it!

I looked it up and noticed some familar names in the live band for this version: Omar Hakim on drums, John Giblin on bass, and on guitar David Rhodes (from Peter Gabriel's band).

[Dave W]

Two from Emmylou and Mark Knopfler

[uwe]

My latest obsession is Kate Bush's live album "Before the Dawn".

That's a good live performance (have had the CDs for some time) and from what I heard people were in awe at her concerts.