The tears of the world keep falling/Until we stand together

Friday 13 June – no live music this weekend, so you’ll have to put up with me drivelling on about something else instead.

So, Uriah Heep, that’ll be some crusty old band from the seventies then. New album produced by Mike Paxman, the man that guided Judie Tzuke’s career? Hardly a credible advert for a British prog band. But let’s not judge a book by its cover. Wake the Sleeper is the Heep’s 21st studio album and for me, symbolically, is the key of the door to the prog-rock mansion.

Their first studio album for almost ten years, this is a true return to the form of 1982’s Abominog. The replacement of Lee ‘The Bear’ Kerslake by masterclass stick wielder Russell Gilbrook makes a pleasing enhancement to the Heep’s bottom end sound, while Trevor Bolder (he of The Spiders From Mars) takes over on bass.

This is exceptionally good music played by exceptionally good musicians, exemplified by the Bolder-penned Angels Walk With You with it’s incredible mid-riff crisis between the guitar of Box and the keyboards of Lanzon. Even now I have the chorus of Overload zipping around in my head. There isn’t a duff track on this album and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Ya boo sucks. I’ve got tickets to see Black Stone Cherry at Fibbers on Wednesday 25 June. So I thought that I’d better get someone to buy me their album. Thank you Father’s Day. I knew they would be good, but their eponymous studio album is absolutely top notch. A bit like The Answer or Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Slash-style middle-eight riffs thrown in for good measure. BSC have the knack of making individual and original tracks that somehow retain the band’s essential sound. Outstanding tracks are: Rain Wizard, Lonely Train, Hell and High Water, and their cover of The Yardbird’s Shapes of Things. BSC are currently touring with Def Leppard and Whitesnake and are due to release a new album, Folklore and Superstition, in August this year so I’m guessing that they will be showcasing new material. As you might have guessed, I’m really looking forward to this gig.