Uriah Heep - Uriah Heep Live
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Free Music Notes for Uriah Heep Live
Free Music Review: The Essential Uriah Heep Release
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the one! Weather you are a casual Heep fan or a hardcore heepster, Once you have heard the studio albums that came before, the power and polish that only touring experience will give a band is all evident here. I have loved this record since I purchased my vinyl copy in 1974 and I enjoy it as much today as then. In my opinion the only other Heep release that is as strong an effort is Sweet Freedom, being a studio release its kind of a different animal but is a great piece of work.Both of these also feature what I feel was the best Heep line up of ALL ! Byron,Box,Hensley,Kerslake and Thain!!!Free Music Review: Only for extreme die-hard Heepers
Hit: 3 Stars
I'll keep this short and right to the point - The band sounds sloppy on this disc. None of the songs are better than their studio counterparts, and in many cases are worst. For example, July Morning is slow and lethargic compared to the studio version on Look At Yourself, and doesn't have the atmosphere and mood of the original Moog synthesizer part.This sounds too much like a bootleg. BUY THE STUDIO ALBUMS!
Free Music Review: Great Classic Live Set
Hit: 5 Stars
This is by far one of the best live albums of its day, alongside Made In Japan. This concert displays the original band at its height, with the gorgeous vocals of the late David Byron, who is masterful on July Morning. The band opens up with Sunrise (recently added to their set list after thirty years!), a telling song that builds with power. We sail into Sweet Lorraine, a wonderful 'Rock and Roller that you can stand up and Boogie to', as Byron tells the crowd. Traveller in Time is next, a hard-rocker that segues into the band's most popular tune, Easy Livin. These four songs are performed much as they are on the album, as Uriah Heep keeps to the faith of the songs (and proabably didn't really know how to improvise on stage, as is evident as to the tightness of the songs played in this set). Gypsy is played in its entirety, including the now left out instrumental intro, and a keyboard and drum solo is added. Tears in my Eyes displays Ken Hensley with a nice slide guitar solo. This is a classic rock album by one of the longest lasting bands in rock and roll history. Heep must've been a glory to see live at this time in their carrer...long live the memories of David Byron and Gary Thain. Long Live Heep!!Free Music Review: BEST LIVE RECORDING OF THAT ERA!
Hit: 5 Stars
England's Own Uriah Heep was at the peak of their career on this live album...So what do you get??? One of the GREATEST live recording ever.This album is great!All the Wizards on this album Ken Hensley,organ,David Byron, Vocals, Mick Box, Guitars,Gary Thain,Bass,and Lee Kerslake performed remarkably!!!If you have never heard Uriah Heep in your entire life before.This is the Ultimate album to start with, and.... David's even got CHEWING GUM stuck to his booth!Free Music Review: Heep's first live output
Hit: 4 Stars
Hot on the heels of their genre forerunners Deep Purple, Uriah Heep hastened to capitalize on the success of Made in Japan with a double live album of their own within the very same year. Notwithstanding the obvious press comparisons with Purple, Heep's only live outing during their artistic zenith (the '74 '75 and '79 concerts would be released some time later, the first two only a few years ago) is altogether different and should not be analogized with Made in Japan. Unlike the latter, Heep's songs in Live 1973 are much closer representations of their studio recordings than Purple's renditions which typically deviated from the studio versions to a substantial degree through their legendary jams. That Heep largely adheres to the original recordings is wise, for they cannot improvise like Purple; while all capable musicians in their own right (especially in this classic lineup with the incomparable Gary Thain), their jams come across as loose, disorganized solos, not as a cohesive organic unit like Purple. Thus, Live 1973's one foray into extended improvisation- "Gypsy"- is largely a failure which makes one yearn for the resumption of the song's third verse halfway into Lee Kerslake's meandering drum solo; Heep simply cannot attain the splendid guitar/keyboard interplay of Purple's "Wring that Neck." Nevertheless, this is not a vice for the band, for Heep's greatest asset is songwriting, and their chief distinction from their more technically gifted metal peers like Purple in the 1970's is in their unique and unrivaled ability to blend heavy metal with mystical art rock. That being said, Heep are quite talented at improvising insofar as it pertains to an already existing song structure; with a solid foundation already established, they can enhance a song provided that they largely adhere to its original tone and atmosphere. Thus, the extended versions of "July Morning" and "Circle of Hands" not only showcase the best elements of these regulated jams but elevate the songs above their studio recordings, particularly on Hensley's lyrical outro keyboard solo in the latter. (Whereas Hensley performed the mournful slide guitar solo on the studio, Mick Box assumed this role in Live 1973 to enable Hensley to undertake the keyboard solo.) "July Morning" likewise receives an excellent extended interpretation in which Box, in constrast to his rather subdued performance in the studio version, embellishes the song with tasty (and remarkably fast for the time) guitar solo fills towards the climax. Fittingly, at the conclusion of "July Morning," Heep affix a recapitulation of the arpeggiated keyboard intro which provides stronger closure and finality to the song than the gradual fading in the studio version. Virtually all the songs are given stellar live performances, the standout being "Tears in My Eyes," whereby with Hensley switching to guitar the band skillfully reproduces the psychedelic ambience of the studio recording's innumerable accoustic/electric guitar overdubs in the song's interlude which in the strict sense could not be duplicated live with two guitars. Nevertheless, Live 1973's most disappointing element is not the plodding "Gypsy" but the presence of a pointless Rock N' Roll medley. While Heep's renditions of these 50's classics are decent and make fluid transitions from one song fragment to the next, it is its inclusion, not the quality of the actual performance, which warrants criticism. For a band having just released its first album, the retention of such covers in the live set would be understandable, yet it is less justified for one which already had several recordings to its name at the time of its first live album. For Heep, which had accomplished an unparalleled feat of unleashing five spectacular albums in three years, it is even more mystifying that they should waste time on this medley when they already had a fantastic trove of their own songs to perform. One could endlessly speculate on other tunes they easily could have covered instead- "Walking in your Shadow," "Rainbow Demon," "Shadows of Grief," "I'll Keep on Trying," "Poet's Justice," "Time to Live," etc. Although covers do supply a change of mood, this was completely unnecessary in Heep's case when they have a tome of fantastic Hensley ballads- "Blind Eye," "Echoes in the Dark," "Rain," and "The Park," among a few- a tragic neglect as Heep, in their prime, evinced incredible musical diversity matched by few bands to this day. To Heep's credit, much of the meatiest music from Look at Yourself and Demons and Wizards (with the crucial exceptions of "I Wanna be Free" and "The Spell" respectively) is performed, but most of The Magician's Birthday and the eponymous debut is sadly sidelined and Salibsury- arguably the most ethereal album ever produced by a hard rock band- criminally neglected in its totality. Conspicuously, both "The Wizard" and "Lady in Black" are likewise omitted, only to be oddly resurrected by the '79 tour, a time whereby Heep had undergone a departure leagues away- both musically and lyrically- from their early 70's apogee. Strikingly, Heep does a fragment of "The Magician's Birthday" live, yet considering that they are performing the trickiest section of the song- "Happy Birthday to Magician" which featured numerous studio vocal overdubs- with brilliant accuracy, it is surprising that they do not present it in its entirety.
Still, we should feel grateful that Heep performed as many of these gems as they did, for with the release of each subsequent album they continued the unfortunate tradition of gradually eschewing their old classics for new, less ambitious, and increasingly commercial opuses. As if subconsciously highlighting their musical decline after The Magician's Birthday, during the Sweet Freedom Tour Heep already scrapped "Tears in My Eyes," "Circle of Hands," and "Traveller in Time" from their set list. Nevertheless, these above-mentioned criticisms do not detract from the overall excellence of the album; they are simply at hand to probe why Heep, a band with such a fantastic catalogue, inveterately continued to neglect many of its finest songs live, a misfortune which sadly lingers to the present.