Space-time continuum disruption, daddio! (Vol.1)

Hi there
It's been a while since I posted anything here, so all my audience, all three of them, have wandered off over there somewhere, ne'er to return. The only visitors to this blog now are bots, worming away in a futile imitation of real life...or summat.

Anyway...this here thing will be an intermittent series of revisits to ancient records that have been gathering dust and spiders in my memory. Some may have been significant to my musical and sundry other forms of development, some will not. First up is:

Uriah Heep - Wonderworld

This is an album I had largely forgotten about, until I happened across a thread on Farcebook discussing Uriah Heep's new album. They're still going? Blimey, Mick Box must be about 107! As is the nature of these things, the discussion meandered and ventured into discussing this album.

Released in 1974 it was the Heep's seventh album, and the last with what would come to be regarded as their most consistent (you can't use a word like "classic" where a band this lumpen are concerned!) line up, as sadly bassist Gary Thain was shortly to become a victim of his long addiction to H. If we are to believe Wikipedia, the band handled his problems with Yes-like sensitive pragmatism!

"During his last tour in the United States with Uriah Heep, Thain suffered an electric shock at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas on 15 September 1974, and was seriously injured. Due to his drug addiction he was not able to perform properly, and was fired by the band in early 1975".

I never actually owned a copy of Wonderworld, a mate recorded it on cassette for me, and I am now listening to it (on YouTube I hasten to add) for the first time in at least four decades. Gawd, this takes me back!

Taken on its own it's not a bad album, although very much of its time and not particularly memorable. Where it falls down is that by 1974 Heep had hit on a formula, and it sounds like a fading shadow of what went before. It sounds a tad tired, a rehash of past glories.

Also by 1974 my musical tastes were broadening fast, having succumbed to the educational delights of John Peel. Heep's somewhat plodding straight ahead rhythms and Byron's and Hensley's sixth form poetry-as-lyrics now belonged to an age when I was but a child.

I got as far as Something Or Nothing, track six of nine, so I did quite well. By then it was giving me a headache so I had to turn it off.

Expect the next installment soon... or not.


Thanks to Jan Erik Liljeström for the Heep thread that inspired me to do this!