The Nits Bremen december 1th 2006 | photo Marco van de Wielen

What a nice letter/review. There is never any competition between bands just good music. We have all become big NITS fans.
Cheers,
Mick Box ( Uriah Heep )


1. Nits and Uriah Heep (Ria Heeringa)
2. Bremen, December 1st 2006 (Ria Heeringa)
 

Message: 1 Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:22:33 +0100
From: Ria Heeringa Subject: [Nitslist] Nits and Uriah Heep To: nitslist@info.kulak.ac.be

Before I post any kind of review about the show in Bremen (later tonight, or later this week), I want to speak up in favour for Uriah Heep and whoever came up with the unlikely idea to bring them and the Nits together in one tour. My first reaction when I heard about it was much similar to those I've seen around on either Nits list: "The Nits and.... WHO!!??

" I remembered them from very long ago, when my brothers used to play them.
Half-forgotten songs, -except their three Dutch hits-, on which two things seemed to stand out: screaming guitars and a screaming singer. I decided however, that if anyone would bring two bands together on a commerical tour that musically would be so vastly different that no member of the audience for one, would appreciate the music of the other, would be a poor tour organizer. Ticket prices on double-concerts are bound to be higher, and only hardcore fans would pay the full price for a half-concert, bands would play for half the audience, or less, or the tour would not sell at all. So I was intrigued enough to check up on some of Heep's music. If I was going to gripe about poor choices and high prices, at least I'd know what to gripe about. (And when the subject of ticket prices came up after the show, even the band admitted that they thought those were on the steep side.)

I found that recently Uriah Heep has been playing -like the Nits- partly in an accoustic and partially in an electronic setting. I got hold of those live concerts, and was pleasantly surprised. Enough to check out more of their album stuff. And -like the Nits- they changed their style and music around a lot, especially in their earlier days, before moving to the hard rock they're best known about. Ah, the similarities... Someone on the yahoo list likened the combination of Nits and Uriah Heep to lobster armoricaine plus the cheap ketchup from your discounter round the corner. It was the dismissal out-of-hand which distressed me prety much at the time. And now that I've seen both in concert back-to-back, I want to make another comparison: a rose and a protea red.

The delicate and sometimes prickly rose for the Nits, the tough desert-hardened protea red for Uriah Heep. Whether you like rose shrubs better or protea bushes, that's entirely a matter of taste, and completely up to you. But both are many-layered, in shades of beautiful red, and they go quite well together in a bouquet.

Ria Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 22:14:51 +0100 From: Ria Heeringa

When two bands with very different backgrounds are booked together on one gig, one is bound to get an audience mostly interested in one or the other. In this case, the band with the bigger international name is bound to attract the greater part of the audience, and in Bremen the Uriah Heep fans most definitely outnumbered the Nits fans. Though the Nits were hired as a supporting band, it meant by no means that the Nits got the treatment of a warm-up band. Heep got more response -of course-, but you could see that the Heep fans warmed to the Nits music as the concert progressed.

Reactions at the start (Cars & Cars, Sketches of Spain and Henry Moore) were more or less: "where the *heck* is this going?" But Henk broke the ice pretty neatly when he introduced Giant Normal Dwarf -auf Deutsch- messing up a little, explaining how hard German for him was and the horrors of his schooldays when he had to learn it from a book called 'Schwere Wörter', but gave up on it, and now used Rob as his 'Schwere Wörter Buch'. The concert built from there. Henk's very funny deutsch/english introductions  (Wild West in Amsterdam East (explaining what his neighbourhood is like))continued throughout and the best performances (Les Nuits, The Hole, In the Dutch Mountains) got as big a response as from a regular Nits audience. The entire set was played on a livingroom-like set, though Rob played a larger bassdrum and a high hat, but only the one snare, a very small tom and some cymbals.

They thoughened up the setlist somewhat. The slow balads were left out. No Milkman, no Long Song, no Eiffel Tower for instance, No Swimmer either (snif!) Nor any of the more quirky songs too. It must be the first post-Henk concert I've heard that didn't feature Bike In Head. They left out the Red Dog as well, but that was probably because they were cooped together between the instruments, and Henk had no room to move or play the gong.

The only quirky song that was kept was Walter and Conny, and it was played without Henk's introduction to what the song is about. The background projector showed some new footage however, with an old text-book titled Walter & Conny. The bridge was a little jazzier than usual, an interesting version. Henk commented afterwards that this was the rejected theme for the new James Bond movie. Even the softer songs appeared to have a bit more 'bite' than usual, and they made for interesting versions. Sketches of Spain got a very beautiful intro, but the arrangement was stronger, Rob added some new touches, Henk played around with the timing of his lyrics. A little too much in one case, where he completely lost his cue and had to leave out an entire line. Henk went entirely accoustic at the start of Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof ("Can you hear me?", starting the intro on guitar, with Robert Jan joining him softly on keyboard-accordeon, when Henk decided to use his other guitar for the song.

Robert Jan continued the intro, while Henk hastily changed. "Can you hear *me*?" They just played the intro and the first verse without amps, when Rob joined in, they volume was cranked up again. The Dream was an exuberant and fast-paced version, with Rob in a particular fine form. He and Robert Jan kept glancing and grinning at eachother throughout the concert. After the concert we found that Robert Jan had a touch of the flu, and wasn't feeling too great, but it never showed during the concert. Looking back on it, he didn't sing all his backup lines. But he appeared up-beat and energetic, and his playing was flawless. The song that stood out in the main set of the concert was The Hole. A first in a semi-accoustic set-up, though all that was really missing was the full Ludwig drumkit.

But Rob handled it well with his small set. Amazing what he managed to do with just the one snare drum, bass drum and a few cymbals... The intense and very tight version of the song got a thunderous applause, and it was too bad that it was the second to last song, because people were really starting to like what they heard. In The Dutch Mountains was clearly the best-known song, and the applause they got afterwards was enough to bring the band back for an encore. Henk said: "I've been sitting here on stage all night, and watching this guy on the first row with this beautiful t-shirt I'm very jealous of, of The Beatles. And it's like he's been telling me something. "Play something by the Beatles".

So I thought that was the perfect introduction to the customary Twist And Shout/House on House encore, but to my surprise they played an amazing version of Norwegian Wood, with Henk sounding more like John Lennon than ever, Rob playing with only his hands on drum and small tambourine, and Robert Jan accompanying it with harp and bass sounds. If the crowd hadn't been won over by then, this song would have done it. Henk made a lovely transition to the Uriah Heep set, after telling how they had been invited to play along on this tour, and how they didn't know Uriah Heep personally, and thought of them as these big wild men with big tatoos that they were a little afraid of. "In a world that is changing, where people of different colour have to live together, where people of different religions have to live together, bands who play different kinds of music should also go and play together, like we do now. And it's great to be here." Uriah Heep started off majestically, with a great version of Question. A five-man line-up, with two remaining from the original band.

Guitar-player and bass-player played accoustic instruments thoughout. So no screaming guitars at all. And the singer at some point made the comment that the upcoming some really meant to have two electric guitars, so why it was inserted was anyone's guess (probably because even without those the song sounded great). The other instruments were keyboards and drums.

The lead-singer sometimes played a tambourin, but didn't play any guitar this concert. With five players and Heep's repertoire, the sound was heavier than that of the Nits's set. But never at one point one got the impression that this was a hard rock band at work. (Well, at least with eyes closed, because the longhaired band-members and their equally long-haired fans were a dead-giveaway). On stage was no mindless three-chord band, there were five musicians sitting there. Five members bring in five voices, and the they sang three- four- and five-part, with the excellent version of Firefly as their best example.

They delved thoughout their past, from the very first album in 1970, with my personal favourite "Come Away Melinda" (introduced with a very small snippet of Gypsy), to their most recent Sonic Origami from 1998, with songs like Question and Heartless Land. They kept the audience involved, by telling little stories (how the got the intro of a song by using a boiling tea-kettlewhistle, and everyone thinking they were playing one of these new expensive synthesizers "We got great track, a good sound to it and a great cup of tea"), and joking around, or letting them join in the singing, with songs like Innocent Victim and Lady In Black ("And *that* is why this song is in the top three of songs that record shops refuse to play in their store")

The concert ended with a great sing-along version of Easy Livin' All in all this was a very entertaining concert, the Nits set was great, and for a Nits fan, there was much to enjoy during the Uriah Heep songs. Though I paid a pretty steep price for a ticket, I feel that it was worth every penny.

Setlist Nits: Cars & Cars Sketches of Spain A Touch of Henry Moore Giant Normal Dwarf Nescio The Keyshop J.O.S. Days Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof Walter & Conny Les Nuits The Dream The Hole In The Dutch Mountains
 ----------------------------- Norwegian Wood

Setlist Uriah Heep: Question Wise Man Circus Heartless Land Come Back Why Did You Go Innocent Victim Firefly Pilgrim July Morning The Wizard Sunrise Tales ??? Lady In Black

 ------------------------------- Easy Livin