27 thoughts on “Friday Utilitarian Music: Uriah Heep’s Bird of Prey”

  2. Noah, have you listened to either Angel Haze or Azealia Banks? They’re both rappers, and I really dig both of their styles (not so much the beef between them though; can’t we all just get along?). For representative songs, I would go with “212” by Banks, and “Werkin’ Girls” by Haze, although the latter’s Classick mixtape is pretty great too, with my favorite tracks being a harrowingly personal song that uses the music from Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet” and a version of Lupe Fiasco’s “Bitch Bad” that makes his attempt at social relevance look laughable.

  4. The Byrds, “Lady Friend”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldz-a3b4-cU

    Lots of Hendrix after reading Paul Gilroy’s striking analysis of Jimi’s work in the book Darker Than Blue:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpyUQ6iDcbA

    …and Aaron Neville’s new doo wop record is all kinds of amazing:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpyUQ6iDcbA

    And I’m going to throw in some Nina Simone, too, since she’s been on all week while I’ve been writing:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf9Bj1CXPH8

  5. I used to imagine going back in time to give my younger self some sage advice, but now I just imagine giving him mix CDs. In an effort to create the ultimate mix of post-high-school prog I’ve been listening to the complete post-80s output of Yes. It’s not as fun as I’d hoped. I like a couple items off their Magnification album, though:

    http://youtu.be/TwXoCF9N-js

    I couldn’t find Can You Imagine from the same album on Youtube for some reason, but the two songs, to me, would make perfect opening and closing credit tunes for some really fun anime, which is the highest praise I can give.

    After choking down a bunch of wak 90s prog (Yes should be banned from performing Close to the Edge live anymore… the opening licks used to be a bouncy jig, and now they sound like a lumbering old drunk staggering through an unfamiliar kitchen) I’m washing my ears out with this:

    http://youtu.be/nl7sK_AoGCY

    I enjoyed that dopey Uriah Heep piece. Reminds me of how offended Mom got when I played “All My Life”:

    http://youtu.be/g7y3mSgsniI

  7. As for me, I’ve been kind of obsessively listening to the 13th Floor Elevators in the last few weeks. Deep, Texas weirdness. Obsessive acid eaters and Contemporaries of Jack Jackson and Gilbert Shelton!

  8. Aaron- I think Magnification is really good. I recall reading some of your own blog posts about the band and no I dont think it is fanboyish to say Tormato is an amazing album because it really fucking is, so much fun! I dont have any of their 60s, 80s or 90s albums yet, apart from solo albums. Sad how they clearly dropped the ball and I think a lot of them have a lot of regrets. If only they could have gone back in time and do it all over again better.

  9. Robert, you are now an honorary member of my family, since only my family reads my blog. Anyway, the truly fannish reaction to Tormato is to poop all over it the way I do; it is indeed a perfectly entertaining album, but it’s guilty of not being Close to the Edge, thus the pooping.

  10. Only one of their albums is Close To The Edge, so that means the rest of them would be pooped on. I’d rate Anderson’s Olias after CttE and Relayer. Going For The One is the overrated one in my opinion.
    I actually did a distorted drawing of Anderson singing Olias on my blog.

  11. Swedish transvestite sample-based jazz duo Koop:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en9i7pcRm4I
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zfKCavdE0I

    and British band The Go! Team. Imagine Sonic Youth covering the Jackson Five plus Saturday morning cartoon themes, girl bands, and schoolyard chants,all sounding like a distorted fifth-generation re-recording. I love this band so much, their most recent album in particular:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_VoUayg2gs
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuCHfwcdEvM
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q41DBQ_psRk

  13. @Daniel–I didn’t know Windsor-Smith did that cover! I think I have a later reissue of that record. Does it have “The Airport Song” on it? Love that Crosby track, too.

    Way back in the early 90s one of the college bands I played in was planning to do a cover of “Lady Friend,” Ride/shoegaze style, then we realized that the Ride covers we had in the set clearly owned a debt to that track anyway!

    I’m actually a huge Crosby fan–Byrds, CSN, his early solo records. If Only I Could Remember My Name is such a beautiful record…

  14. And my favorite Elevators record is probably Bull of the Woods (though I love them all). I’ve been chasing that heavy reverb guitar sound on “Livin’ On” for years now…

  16. @Brian – Yeah, “The Airport Song” is on there. There are numerous versions of PREFLYTE available, some with really stupid cover art, but I think the contents are all the same. That Barry Smith cover illo is just great though and that version of the LP is worth picking up just to have it.

    Re: CSN(Y) I’m less than enthusiastic, though I’ll certainly make exceptions on a per-song basis. Ah, but Crosby’s “If I Could Only Remember My Name” now, that really is a masterpiece though you’d never guess it looking at the shoddy cover photo and logo. The hot pink “Got Coke?” photo of Crosby on the inner sleeve doesn’t help either. But what an astonishing album that is, with great backing from various Airplane/Dead/CSNY members and David’s haunting multi-tracked vocals. It’s like Crosby’s PET SOUNDS.

    Re: Ride, yeah their Byrds fixation was pretty clear. The Byrds’ influence was/is vast. Even the aforementioned YES covered the Byrds (“I See You”) and managed to make it sound very YES-ish.

  17. Ah, I forgot about that Yes cover, which I’ve always enjoyed, especially as “I See You” is one of my favorite Byrds tunes. I need to listen to that first Yes record again.

    There seemed to be a period in the 1980s and early 1990s when the Byrds’ influence could be felt everywhere from Husker Du and The Feelies to the shoegaze bands and the early alt-country acts like Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco. I got my first Rickenbacker because of McGuinn, and some college friends of mine and I would look for all the Byrds albums in the cassette cut-out bins of our local record store. (I could never get that Ric to stay in tune, though, especially playing late-night gigs in New England in the winter. My Fender Strat was always more gig-worthy.)

    Marty Stuart’s last few records have done an excellent job of carrying on the legacy of the later, Clarence White-era Byrds. We saw Marty and the Fabulous Superlatives last winter and he had White’s B-bender Tele with him. What a band! Now if only he and the guys would play a cover of “Truck Stop Girl” or “Just A Season.”

  18. Indeed. And across the pond, one can hear a huge Byrds influence in the early Primal Scream (before their Stones/disco fixation kicked in completely) and above all, in the sound of the Stone Roses’ first album.

    Clarence White was truly gifted and his contribution to the Byrds’ sound was immense, not just on the country songs, but on some of their more lysergic moments as well, e.g. his astonishing playing on “Change is Now” from THE NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS.

  19. Not sure why Uriah Heep’s experimentation is considered “progressive.” From an musical evolutionary standpoint, it was a dead end — which isn’t exactly progressing anywhere.

    In any case, I’m a fan of a lot of bands from that era which some label as progressive: Moody Blues, Rush, Yes, Uriah Heep, etc.

    All experimented quite a bit, and generated some interesting music in the process.

    But, to be honest, a lot of groups experimented back then. Some of it was crap, but some of it broke new ground and was great.

    I was listening to the first album of Mom’s Apple Pie the other day, released in 1972, and their music was all over the place — but mostly in the crap category. However, the last song on Side 2, “Mr. Skin, is quirky but interesting, I think — not quite as quirky as “Bird of Prey” — but quirky nonetheless.

    In any case, I love going through old albums from the late 1960s/early 1970s, because I never know what I’ll find.

  21. Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, its genre definition is pretty vague.

    As I mention in my previous post, the majority of bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s were “progressive” because almost all of them experimented — even bands like the Beach Boys (“Pet Sounds,” 1966).

    In that regard, I’d say that progressive rock was more a step in the evolutionary chain of rock than a separate genre. But what do I know, anyway? I’m just some schlep who loves music, but can’t play a note.

  22. I don’t think it’s really vaguer than any other genre definition? That is, somewhat vague, sure. But it’s not about whether something is inventive or experimental. It’s about the use of elaborate, quasi-fusion and or quasi-classical arrangements, mostly, and focused on guitars (and sometimes keyboards.) The Beach Boys certainly had complicated arrangements, but not really fusion or classically influenced, and way more focused on vocal harmonies than classic rock guitar pyrotechnics.

  23. “Progressive” is a rock critic term. The question of whether these bands actually represented “progress” of some sort is kind of pointless. Most “surf bands” weren’t actually surfers either (except for Dick Dale!).

    Justice Potter Stewart famously observed that while he could not define hard-core pornography “I know it when I see it”. My feeling is that the definition of progressive rock is a bit like that. (Actually, I believe most genre definitions are like that). It’s very subjective.

  24. True enough. One thing is for sure — some great music came out of the late 1960s and 1970s.

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