Sunday morning music

 

Last week I put up the full fourth studio album, 1972's "Demons And Wizards", from British rock group Uriah Heep.  It seems to have struck a chord (you should pardon the expression) among a number of younger rockers who hadn't heard of the group.  That's very surprising to me, considering their popularity alongside contemporaries such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and the like, but that was half a century ago now.  Makes me feel old . . .

Anyway, I've had a number of requests for more of Uriah Heep's music.  I've accordingly chosen several of the hits from their first five studio albums (excluding the fourth, of course, which you heard last week).

Let's begin with "Gypsy" from their first album, 1970's "...Very 'Eavy ...Very 'Umble".

From the same album, here's "Come Away Melinda", an anti-war song that encapsulates the "fear malaise" that laid heavy on early 1970's society at the height of the Cold War and Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

From their second album, 1971's "Salisbury" (named for the military training area on Salisbury Plain in the UK), here's "Bird of Prey".

And from the same album, the major hit "Lady In Black", that's been re-recorded by a large number of other artists and groups since its first appearance.

From the album "Look At Yourself", also released in 1971, here's the hard-rocking eponymous title track.

Also from that album, one of the group's longer songs, and a major hit for them:  "July Morning".

Passing over their fourth album, which we heard in full last week, we come to 1972's "The Magician's Birthday".  From it, here's "Sunrise".

That's a very brief summation of their first five studio albums, out of a total of twenty-five released to date.  None of their subsequent releases were as popular, but Uriah Heep remained a major influence in the British rock scene (and, to a lesser extent, in the USA).  They're still performing (albeit with only one of their original members).

Peter