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Ajay
Forum Senior Member Joined: February 01 2013 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 221 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 07:25 |
I would hope so. I've heard interviews in which they talk about their influences, and Yes and Pink Floyd get namechecked.
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lucas
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 06 2004 Location: France Status: Offline Points: 8138 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 08:18 |
they had a strong Led Zeppelin influence in their early stuff. But they are more AOR-related than prog-related. |
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"Magma was the very first gothic rock band" (Didier Lockwood)
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 09:40 |
Torn between Dreamboat Annie, Little Queen and Dog and Butterfly, but plumped for the Led Zepp influence of Little Queen, (the re-issue CD with bonus tracks features a non-cringeworthy cover of Stairway). The unplugged live album The Road Home with John Paul Jones is another favourite.
The Big-Hair 80s era is alright but not high my list - too many terrible covers of Alone tend to spoil it, especially by alcho-pop pickled girls singing it badly on karaoke nights... it annoys me greatly when they scream Tooooniiight! instead of 'til now.
Edited by Dean - March 24 2013 at 09:41 |
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lucas
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 06 2004 Location: France Status: Offline Points: 8138 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 10:38 |
^
bad covers aside, "Alone" is a very good song. |
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"Magma was the very first gothic rock band" (Didier Lockwood)
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 10:46 |
Dean, that's a great cover on LQ!! They killed it.
And believe it or not, they still can....check out them performing it for the members of LZ....it's a big showy version but Page and Plant are clearly moved. Jason on drums naturally. |
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 11:01 |
way over the top, but if you can't do it at an occasion like that, when can you?
Ann is the only singer I've heard who can match Percy singing that song.
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 11:16 |
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Ajay
Forum Senior Member Joined: February 01 2013 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 221 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 11:25 |
Yeah. It never landed with me until I saw Ann perform it on The Road Home DVD, then it tore me to pieces. |
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Nightfly
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: August 01 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 3659 |
Posted: March 24 2013 at 13:23 |
There's a few of those later ones I haven't heard but I think I'd go for Little Queen.
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dragonspirit
Forum Newbie Joined: December 20 2008 Status: Offline Points: 5 |
Posted: March 24 2014 at 23:58 |
I've become a big Heart fan over the last couple of years. I think one of the band's greatest strengths is their progressiveness in the sense of developing and evolving. Although they're mostly hard and folk rock-oriented, they do calypso, blues, country, soul, new wave, 40's and 50's broadway-style, and many different kinds of rock. Although I didn't get to vote in this poll, I'd say that their best album is probably Little Queen. Since I don't limit myself to prog as a genre, I judge the albums based on overall music quality. As a rough guide for their albums, here's my take (with rating out of 5 stars): Dreamboat Annie: 4 Little Queen: 4 Magazine: 3 Dog and Butterfly: 3.5 Bebe Le Strange: 3 Private Audition: 3.5 Passionworks: 3.5 Heart: 3 Bad Animals: 2.5 Brigade: 2.5 Desire Walks On: 2 Jupiter's Darling: 3 Red Velvet Car: 2.5 Fanatic: 3 A lot has been already said on this forum about their early albums (Dreamboat Annie up through Dog and Butterfly). On Dog and Butterfly, a lot has been said about Mistral Wind. The studio version is frankly not that great. You should check out live versions of it. Also, High Times is mediocre, even though it was played live a lot. The album Bebe Le Strange is much more lively than Dog and Butterfly. Obvious highlights of the former include the title track and Even It Up. Strange Night is refreshingly different and worth a listen. Sweet Darling is a nice closer. I have atypical taste in that I really like their two early 1980's albums (the two before they sold out to the record company and relied big time on outside song writers) Private Audition and Passionworks. Both of these records are usually panned by the critics as among their worst, probably because of their lack of commercial success. Private Audition is much weirder of the two-- kind of like a Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy in its variety of genres and departure from the band's previous work. Passionworks is arena/hard rock, similar in style to the two better-known albums, Heart and Bad Animals. I think Passionworks is very underrated and holds up much more to both the test of time and to repeated listens than their later 80's work. From those three mid-80's to 1990 albums, basically the hit singles are the best (e.g. These Dreams, What About Love, Alone, All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You). Wild Child and Under the Sky are good on Brigade, but I can't remember anything else, sorry. I think that during and even after their sell-out 1980's/early 1990's period, Heart's song writing suffered a lot. It became increasingly conventional in structure and less spontaneous-sounding. This is especially noticeable on Desire Walks On, which I do not recommend, except for select tracks such as Black on Black II, Ring Them Bells, and Back to Avalon, the latter of which sounds like the Indigo Girls. Jupiter's Darling is another poor-selling album of theirs. It's pretty good, but some of the song writing feels like they were trying too hard to reach a younger audience. It comes across as cheesy. The heavy parts also seem kind of forced, but the song writing is otherwise decent. Red Velvet Car-- WTF and Sand are the two highlights for me. The rest of the album is okay to mediocre. Ann's vocal melodies are often unoriginal and lack conviction. Fanatic-- The studio version of Walkin' Good (featuring special guest Sarah Mclachlan) is a very well-written, accessible song, although some of the critics feel it's a weak point for the album. The studio version pales in comparison to live versions that I've heard. Mashallah is middle-eastern influenced and is another great song. 59 Crunch is lyrically funny-- another highlight. A few of the other songs are decent (3 stars): Rock Deep Vancouver, Dear Old America. Finally, I think live Heart is quite good. Check out their stuff up to 1984-ish but also from 1994-ish on, and especially after 2005. While Roger Fisher was in the band (pre-1980), they did a lot more live improvisation than afterward. The most recent line-ups (post 2005) play phenomenally well. In many shows, Magic Man, Crazy on You, Barracuda, and Mistral Wind are superior than the studio versions. Edited by dragonspirit - March 28 2014 at 15:59 |
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 25 2014 at 02:13 |
What?
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The Dark Elf
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: February 01 2011 Location: Michigan Status: Offline Points: 12702 |
Posted: March 25 2014 at 21:45 |
Dreamboat Annie. That's it. I didn't care for them after that, except sexually, of course.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology... |
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TODDLER
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: August 28 2009 Location: Vineland, N.J. Status: Offline Points: 3126 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 11:29 |
I liked the song "City's Burning". Private Audition and Bebe Le Strange were interesting to me. For a short time they worked with Tower of Power and there was an interesting change in their music. I love Nancy Wilson's film scores and her guitar playing. I further love Ann Wilson's voice and her attitude about the music business. I admire her outspoken nature and tend to agree with all of her opinions.
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dr wu23
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 22 2010 Location: Indiana Status: Offline Points: 20477 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 11:31 |
The first 4 are all solid albums but went with Little Queen.
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin |
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HolyMoly
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: April 01 2009 Location: Atlanta Status: Offline Points: 26133 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 11:46 |
I'm not familiar with all the albums, but I'll go with Dog and Butterfly because it has Mistral Wind, Straight On (my favorite tune of theirs) and Dog & Butterfly (my 2nd favorite tune of theirs). Dreamboat may be a more solid album overall but I'm going to hand it to Dog because of its high points.
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My other avatar is a Porsche
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -Kehlog Albran |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 12:58 |
I quite like Dreamboat Annie.
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Mellotron Storm
Prog Reviewer Joined: August 27 2006 Location: The Beach Status: Offline Points: 12945 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 18:56 |
That was a cool read, thanks Dean. I only ever owned one Heart album back in the day and that was Little Queen on vinyl in the late seventies. I'm so impressed though with how amazing this band sounds even today. I think the vocals might even be stronger than back in the day. I saw a video of Soundgarden's singer(drawing a blank for some reason) introducing them for the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame ceremonies, both bands come from Seattle.
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"The wind is slowly tearing her apart"
"Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
Posted: March 26 2014 at 19:07 |
The first two albums are flat out amazing. After that things get less consistent but still there are great moments on each album.
Ann Wilson's voice has remained in tact into the 2000s making their live shows still quite good. |
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dragonspirit
Forum Newbie Joined: December 20 2008 Status: Offline Points: 5 |
Posted: November 04 2016 at 19:57 |
As an update to any Heart fans on here... Well, my earlier post on how underrated their two 1980's albums, Passionworks and Private Audition, are turned out to be unintentionally prophetic. They released a new album earlier this year, Beautiful Broken, which consists mostly of new versions of their old material. 2 songs were from Passionworks and 2 were from Private Audition. So it's nice to see that Wilson sisters also value their work from those two albums! Beautiful Broken is more or less a 3.5 star album, but it's not quite fair to judge it as an independent studio release because almost all of the material is either reworked older stuff or a cover (Two). What else? Ann Wilson's voice has been having a lot of problems, recently. As Finnforest noted, she had kept a remarkable amount of her range even into her 60's. In live performances, she started to strain a lot and sound rougher/scratchier in 2015, and there's been a very noticeable loss of range in 2016. I hope it isn't permanent! What else? Regarding live Heart, I don't really like 2015 and 2016 that much. I feel like often times Nancy is just going through the motions. There isn't much improvisation, either, which is really too bad. I feel like they need to work on side projects with different people for a bit to get back their creative juices! As far as fairly recent live recommendations go, their Bridge School Benefits performances (both pretty similar) on October 26/27, 2013 are worth checking out because they're more acoustic and are really good, too. I also would check out their June 14, 2014 Montreal show in which they played 8 Led Zeppelin covers (!) along with Jason Bonham on drums, which include 4 proggy songs. Edited by dragonspirit - November 04 2016 at 21:09 |
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Finnforest
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 03 2007 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 16913 |
Posted: November 04 2016 at 21:13 |
Hi Dragonspirit...I've revisited Bebe through Passion recently and appreciate them more now, particularly Bebe and the first side of Passionworks.
It's kind of interesting you mention the recent stuff not doing as much for you....now, I can't recall where I read or heard this so I don't want to try to name the person....but SOMEone.....I think it was an ex bandmate.....maybe Leese, maybe someone else.....but anyway, this person I can't recall but who is close to Heart basically came out and said......Yeah, their "new" band sucks. Sounded a bit disgruntled. I can't comment because I haven't heard them perform recently. |
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