Neil's Heavy Concept Album
| Neil's Heavy Concept Album | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Studio album by Neil | |
| Released | 1984 |
| Recorded | 1982-1983 |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Label | WEA International |
| Producer | Dave Stewart |
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [1] |
Neil's Heavy Concept Album is a 1984 recording of songs and spoken comedy routines by British actor Nigel Planer, in character as the long-suffering hippie Neil from the BBC comedy series The Young Ones. Production, arrangements and keyboards are by Canterbury scene keyboardist Dave Stewart, who also plays guitar, bass and drums.
Contents |
[edit] Concept
The title is self-referentially ironic as there is no coherent unifying theme that progressive rock concept albums by definition have.
The album followed the success of the Neil single "Hole in My Shoe" — a cover version of Traffic's 1967 hit — which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom.
The album starts with a spoken apology in which Neil apologizes for the album's quality and commercial overtones. Additional spoken tracks include Neil having a conversation with a potato in a sewer, reciting a poem to his rubber plant, and experiencing a flashback. Also included is a parody horror movie commercial, which sees vegetarian Neil being turned into a carnivorous monster after accidentally eating a hamburger.
Among the originals is the Planer composition "Lentil Nightmare", a dark metal number that quotes from King Crimson's "The Court of the Crimson King" and features Planer singing in an uncharacteristic loud, high falsetto. In "Bad Karma in the UK", Neil's mother (played by musician Barbara Gaskin) admonishes him to watch his I Ching, chew his food eleven times, and remember his expectorant.
The album was heavily promoted[citation needed] by MTV, who had embraced The Young Ones and served as the sole outlet[citation needed] for the original LP in the US. A television commercial for the album had Neil in character talking about his "really beautiful" album, displaying a hole in his shoe, and hitting his head on a table.
The album sleeve is a loose parody of The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request album sleeve.
[edit] Track listing
| Side One | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Hello Vegetables" | Nigel Planer | 0:26 | ||||||
| 2. | "Hole In My Shoe" (Traffic cover) | Dave Mason | 3:40 | ||||||
| 3. | "Heavy Potato Encounter" | Planer, D.L. Stewart | 0:42 | ||||||
| 4. | "My White Bicycle" (Tomorrow cover) | Keith West, Ken Burgess | 3:31 | ||||||
| 5. | "Neil the Barbarian" (narrated by Nigel Planer's brother Roger) | Planer, Stewart | 1:12 | ||||||
| 6. | "Lentil Nightmare" (narrated by Stephen Fry) | Rik Mayal, Simon Brint, Rowland Rivron; additional music by Stewart |
5:47 | ||||||
| 7. | "Computer Alarm" | Planer | 0:36 | ||||||
| 8. | "Wayne" | Planer, Nick Revell | 1:36 | ||||||
| 9. | "The Gnome" (Pink Floyd cover) | Syd Barrett | 2:29 | ||||||
| 10. | "Cosmic Jam" | Stewart, Brint, Rivron | 2:26 | ||||||
| Side Two | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length | ||||||
| 1. | "Golf Girl" (Caravan cover) (featuring Dawn French as a not-so-nice fairy godmother) | Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlan, David Sinclair, Richard Sinclair | 4:40 | ||||||
| 2. | "Bad Karma in the UK" | Planer, Rivron, Brint | 2:17 | ||||||
| 3. | "Our Tune" | Planer, Stewart | 1:13 | ||||||
| 4. | "Ken" | Planer | 0:41 | ||||||
| 5. | "The End of the World Cabaret" | Planer | 1:09 | ||||||
| 6. | "No Future (God Save the Queen)" (Sex Pistols cover) | Sex Pistols | 2:12 | ||||||
| 7. | "Floating" | Stewart | 1:39 | ||||||
| 8. | "Hurdy Gurdy Man" (Donovan cover) | Donovan | 3:46 | ||||||
| 9. | "Paranoid Remix" (incorporating "Hole in my Shoe") | Stewart, Planer, Barbara Gaskin, Ted Hayton, Mason | 1:59 | ||||||
| 10. | "The Amoeba Song (From 'A Very Cellular Song')" (Incredible String Band cover, from The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter[2]) | Mike Heron | 1:19 | ||||||
The cassette version of the album is very similar but features the track "Cassette Jam" following "Cosmic Jam" where Neil does an impression of the album being broken on tape like in "Cosmic Jam" and then "Brown Sugar" where Neil discovers some buskers performing the track by The Rolling Stones and joins in with them. After "The Amoeba Song", it features two additional tracks: "Go Away", where Neil tries to explain the album has finished, and the B-side of "Hole In My Shoe", titled "Hurdy Gurdy Mountain Man."
There is a title inconsistency on the listing of track 9. The LP lists "Paranoid Remix" but the vinyl cover has "Paranoia Remix"
[edit] Personnel
As listed and described on sleeve notes:
[edit] Horrible Electric Musicians
- Bryson Graham - heavy metal drummer
- Gavin Harrison - flash studio drummer
- Pip Pyle - drunken cabaret drummer
- Jakko Jakszyk - heavy and psychedelic guitarist
- Dave Stewart - keyboardist, heavy metal bassist, useless drummer and fifties guitarist
- Rick Biddulph - cabaret bass & Rickenbacker 12 string
[edit] Beautiful Acoustic Musicians
- Jimmy Hastings - flute, saxophone and piccolo
- Annie Whitehead - trombone
- Barbara Gaskin - backing vocals
- Ted Hayton - backing vocals on "Hole In My Shoe"
- Rick Biddulph - 12 string guitar
[edit] References
- ^ Allmusic review
- ^ "The Incredible String Band- The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter". Making Time. December 1999. http://www.makingtime.co.uk/cdrev1299.html. Retrieved 29 December 2010.
[edit] External links
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