Stoakes’ Song of the Week

Well, it’s still Prog month here at Stoakes Media and what a treat this will be for the ears. This particular song featured on Uriah Heep’s debut album and in fact was the opening track. Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble has almost achieved cult status within the Prog community and as debut albums go, impressive is an understatement.

Mick Box, the founding member is still, fifty years later guitar man for the Heep. I was lucky enough to see them a few years ago and let me tell you, What a band. There are simply no words. They were incredible. Taking their name from a Charles Dickens novel, they will be celebrating their fiftieth anniversary of the release of Very ‘Eavy Very ‘Umble’ next year…

But anyway, enough of that… Prog Rock is all super complicated, multi key and lots and lots of different scales and even more chords, right? Not in the case of this song. ‘Gypsy’, a song that runs for well over six minutes has just four chords.

Yes believe it or not, just four chords are used in this six minute and thirty seven second epic. Cm, G#, G and C#/C. Another interesting bit of trivia for you, the song doesn’t contain a chorus. The song is structured with an intro, outro and three verses, but no choruses!

The song made the German singles chart, hitting the heady heights of number 38, however the mainstream media generally hated the song and in fact, didn’t think much about the whole album. In fact Rolling Stone
magazine’s Melissa Mills began her review by saying, “If this group makes it I’ll have to commit suicide. From the first note you know you don’t want to hear any more. But, hey what do the music media know… Buggar all!

Uriah Heep have gone on to achieve huge success. They are one of the forefathers of not only heavy metal, but progressive rock today. They have also released twenty-five studio albums, two albums composed of re-recorded material, eighteen live albums and thirty-nine compilation albums. Melissa Mills, I think you have a problem…