Friday, April 20, 2012

A Record a Week: Herman's Hermits - On Tour



SIDE 1.
CAN'T YOU HEAR MY HEARTBEAT
I'M HENRY VIII, I AM
THE END OF THE WORLD
FOR YOUR LOVE
I GOTTA DREAM ON
DON'T TRY TO HURT ME

SIDE 2.
SILHOUETTES
HEARTBEAT
I'LL NEVER DANCE AGAIN
TELL ME BABY
TRAVELING LIGHT

This record has all the sounds of the British Invasion. The band began playing R&B style music, but probably due to the success of The Beatles, their manager geared their sound that direction. Propelled from the success of their version of 'I'm into something good', the Hermits began their career as a Brit-pop group.

You can totally hear the sound on this record. It has all the straight-forward sound of the early-Beatles pop music. It also has the wonderful sound of music recorded by minimal microphones and production. The downside to that is you get songs that fade out like I gotta dream on, where the producer/engineer didn't fade out enough before making a straight cut, resulting in a harsh stop mid-fade out.

This is one of those bands I am sure I heard as a kid (I know for sure I heard 'something good'), but may have mistaken for the Beatles. As I listen to more music, I realized I have grouped everything I heard as a kid into one of about 5 or 6 artists, never bothering to distinguish bands of similar style.

When I was a kid, I used to scour the neighborhood near our cottage to search for upcoming concert posters for the Kee To Bala and then hang them in the cabin. I can't find anything on the internet to verify this, nor am I near the cottage to check it myself, but I am fairly certain the next generation version of Herman's Hermits was listed on a couple of them, alongside regulars Doug and The Slugs and others. I guess we'll never know! (because I am terrible at remembering to check these types of things)

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