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Uriah Heep

— By Paul McGowan —
Uriah Heep
My office door was open last night just before quitting time. I hardly noticed that James from customer service was grinning at me. "So, you still rock out," he said with a touch of incredulity. And he was right. I had turned up the volume on my little recording studio monitors as the fingers of keyboardist Ken Hensley stroked the Moog synth. It was Uriah Heep on stage in Germany in front of 100,000 fans, as recorded by yours truly, in 1972. Now that was some rockin' heavy metal—music I miss and just can't get any more. Today's headbanging music isn't the same as it was in its infancy. I had just finished putting together a thirty-minute podcast interview pulled from my archives with the 70s band, Uriah Heep who, along with Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, were the mainstays of heavy metal crowd pleasers in the 1970s. Over their 49 years of playing music, they released no less than 25 studio albums, 18 live albums, and 39 compilations. They're insightful, excellent musicians, and real crowd pleasers. I hope you have a chance to listen to my podcast interview with Uriah Heep. You can go here to listen, or if you've subscribed, it'll pop up in the morning automatically. And that live recording with Ken Hensley romping on his synth I mentioned? I've included a good dose of it at the end of the interview. It was recorded from within my homemade mobile recording studio—built into the back of a Volkswagen van—on a stereo half track master. I had direct access to all the microphones and equipment through cables feeding back to the van so the sound quality's pretty decent. My stage crew was lead by none other than my wife, Terri McGowan. But, that was 46 years ago. Here's a picture of that mixing board I built. Note in the background the Ampex 350 tape deck I recorded everything on. I hope you enjoy the podcast. It certainly brought back some great toe-tapping memories for me.

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