Magician's Birthday

Product Information

nowadyas (even if Demons And Wizzards is a close match). Definitly a 5 star album with all its glory. advantage of the opportunity.....much to my chagrin as i think it was just a way to fill up the time allowed to fill up an LP and RIAA Database: Search for Uriah Heep". Recording Industry Association of America . Retrieved 15 November 2018.

If you believe what you read in Circus (and I do, I do!!) Uriah Heep organist Ken Hensley's original plan for this album called for a total concept opera-like work about a five-hundered-year-old magician who hosts a birthday party to which he invites all of his supernatural acquaintances. But Ken's fellow group members were less than thrilled by the project and talked him into limitng his contribution to just five songs. studio and it sounds like that. MAGICIAN'S BIRTHDAY has never been a favorite of mine, i rarely listen to it despite some very As the french language says: ''sans queue , ni tete'' would describe this ''epic'' ( without head , without tail)Top 100 Album-Jahrescharts" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. 1973. Archived from the original on 23 May 2021 . Retrieved 2 April 2022.

Blind Eye and Sweet Lorraine. In fact, the whole album works very well and the only song that seems out work, with a nearly 4 minute guitar solo, as well as some of the band's best fantasy storytelling. So unless you're a Though undeniably a pleasant listen, Uriah Heep's The Magician's Birthday doesn't quite measure up to the high standards of the run of albums leading up to it. The soaring, fantastic atmosphere of Demons and Wizards occasionally peeps in here and there, which saves the album from total mediocrity, but the glorious heights reached on that album are nowhere to be seen here. Simply put, doesn't really have any truly memorable standout songs that remain with you after listening - something every Heep album from Salisbury to Demons and Wizards offered in spades. Simply put, I could listen intently to the album and then an hour later I couldn't remember what most of the songs sound like aside from Sweet Lorraine - something which certainly isn't true of Salisbury or Demons and Wizards. For the most part the production of The Magician's Birthday can be described as overblown... with several notable exceptions, and these provide the only real bright spots on the album. "Rain," a thoughtful and unassuming piece, gets a sensitive presentation which goes a long way toward camouflaging the inadequacies of its lyrical ingredients. And "Sweet Lorraine" has an amusingly eerie sound to it, thanks mainly to Hensley's neat Moog sythesizer work. But two songs don't make an album, and Uriah Heep's fifth effort is a decidedly limited excursion into areas better left unexplored -- at least for the ill-equipped.

On The Go

Original lead singer David Byron is remembered in the lyrics of "Between two worlds", while Thijs Van Leer gives "Tales" from "The magician's birthday" album a whole new dimension with some wonderful flute playing and yodelling(!). Hensley joins the band for "July morning", and remains on stage from then on. Byron's replacement John Lawton also participates later on, his distinctive voice contrasting with current singer Bernie Shaw's more Byron like sound. The highlight for me is the rare live performance of "Paradise/The spell" complete with Hensley's wonderful slide guitar solo.