This gig was due to take place at the ABC in Glasgow. But after that burnt down earlier in the year luckily the gig manged to get moved to SWG3. A venue in the west end of Glasgow I hadn't been to before. Uriah Heep are my Dad's favourite band so has seen them many, many times since they formed in 1970. This was my 3rd time in seeing them but I reckon I haven't seen them for a good 10 years or so.
Tonight there was only 1 support act which I think was half down to who it was and the other half down to the fact it was an early show meaning it finished about 10.15pm. The main support were the Von Hertzen Brothers. When I said before the gig to my Dad that this was the support act he was very pleased as he had heard and reviewed quite a few albums by them before and was impressed by them. I checked out their latest album "War is Over" before the gig too and thought it was very good. To open their set they started with the first song "War is Over" off the latest album of the same name which was 10 minutes plus. This was just the start of a wonderful prog rock set which lasted for 50 minutes. A very generous amount of time for a support act but throughly deserved given the quality of the music.
This set the stage nicely for the Heep. While I wouldn't say I was a major fan of the Heep. I am familiar enough with their hits now to be able to appreciate them live. The first half of their set seemed to focus more on the new album "Living the Dream". I have only listened to this albums a few times before the gig but what I was impressed by was how good these songs sounded live. It just felt like the quality between the new songs and the old classics stood side by side on the same level. One stand out for me was "Take away my soul" which had this amazing guitar solo which seemed to go on for at least 2 minutes. It was incredible and it was one of those songs I just didn't want to end.
Of course as well as promoting the new album they played all the classics too which the crowd were only too pleased to hear. The likes of "Rainbow Demon", "Gypsy", my personal favourite "Look at yourself". They also played their biggest audience participation song "Lady in Black" which went down a storm. Finshing their set with my Dad's favouite song "Easy Livin".
Uriah Heep were celebrating releasing their 25th album when releasing "Living the Dream". And to be frank they are still sounding as good as ever. It will be interesting to see how long they will keep going for but right now it seems the crowds are loving them and they clearly are still loving performing. And long may that continue.
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