Uriah Heep - Demons and Wizards - Mercury Records 1972

 

Art by Roger Dean

    Like many French Canadians in the early 20th century, my grandmother immigrated from Quebec to Lewiston, Maine in 1921 to work in the textile mills. After the textile mill boom of the 1850s to the mid-late 20th century, these mills began to close down. This gradually led to a run-down and abandoned downtown area. Within this downtown was Lisbon Street. It had once flourished as the location for many prominent department stores and businesses that shut their doors or moved to malls on the outskirts of town. One building on Lisbon Street was even owned by my great grandfather. This building even adorned our family name of Laplante engraved on top of itself. Sadly that building is gone like many of the prominent businesses that lined Lisbon Street. 

    By the 1990's, few businesses remained except for the head shop, the insane bright yellow five story Lewiston Pawn Shop and a few more seedy businesses. One business was the always intriguing massage parlor aptly named The Relaxalon.

    In the mid 90's there was one new business in particular that was willing to take on the risky venture of opening a restaurant on Lisbon Street. It was named The Executive Diner. I have no idea why they named it that? There was absolutely no trace of any business men anywhere near there. If there were, they were definitely not any executives. They did however cater to one type of customer. Teenage dorks with way too much free time. Kids just a few years away from the freedom of adulthood. Doing time in the form of teenage years. Waiting to be paroled into the future of a lifetime of new problems to solve. 

    This cast of characters was like being in a 90's skateboard video in the last year that skateboarding was still about punk rock. That time right before my bewilderment of witnessing its unabated transformation into hip hop. There was another place in a local parking lot of a church where everyone skated and hung out. I remember the day in that parking lot when the Operation Ivy tape (that was played most all of the time) was taken out of the boom box and replaced with a Cypress Hill tape forever. This was one of the first big fashionable shifts I witnessed in a subculture. Which geared me up to learn to expect change and even if it took me awhile to be mature enough to accept it. Which is still up for debate.

    Also backstage with these cast of skaters was us awkward punk kids. Living in the half truth of thinking we were outsiders. When I think back on it, I sometimes feel at least for me, that I was really more like one of those embarrassing kids in the most cringey Sonic Youth videos of all time, "Dirty Boots." Sometimes when you're a 15 year old punk kid from Lewiston, Maine, you think you're Sid Vicious but you're really more like the the power dorks in the Dirty Boots video. Especially the ones making out on stage before stage diving with their flannels tied around their waists. I still can't tell if Sonic Youth are being sarcastic with this video or not? It really seems like they're not. Embarrassing 90's moment activate!

 

    Despite our varying degrees of embarrassing authenticity, we ambitiously attempted to create a punk scene like that of nearby Boston, while living in the reality of a small New England town. A town that was bordering on the characteristics of a movie like Gummo. A painfully white experience entangled in the results of a poverty stricken and forgotten mill town. Relentlessly out doing itself in American absurdity. Pushing us to forfeit and travel to cities for representation.

 

    For the majority of our time in our small town, to entertain ourselves we got inventive. Executive Diner had a small basement with a pool table and jukebox full of CD's. We would often times find ourselves killing time in this basement. Either playing pool or going to a handful of punk and metal shows within those few short years. In the jukebox was a magical grail that everyone gravitated to. It was a CD named Demons and Wizards by the English Rock band, Uriah Heep. We were too young to know who they were. They definitely never played them on Maine's most notorious classic rock station, WBLM, "The Blimp." Which was an obvious and unoriginal nod to Led Zeppelin while playing the fuck out of them too.

    We were fascinated by this CD. Our teenage mindset was perpetually stuck in a state of not taking anything seriously. As soon as whoever it was that randomly found Demons and Wizards in the jukebox, we became obsessed with it. From the cover art to the music itself, we thought this album was the most ridiculous thing from the 70's we had ever heard or seen! We would only play the song "Rainbow Demon." It became a ritualistic communal experience to blast that song and make pretend it was the heaviest song ever written! Everyone had their preferred air instrument of choice. Mine of course was the air organ! Others would use the pool cues as guitars when they couldn't help themselves to not play air drums. The goal was to try and act as serious and triumphant as fucking possible without laughing but we always failed. It was just too funny to us how serious Uriah Heep made this song sound about a demon of a rainbow kind.  

    The song starts off with an organ part that demands the listener to play close attention to the sermon that is about to unfold. Then the vocals of  David Byron come in as the ultimate narrator to the voyage of the one in question. The Rainbow Demon. The one who "lives for his sword and his gun." This is where we acted as serious as possible.

"There rides the rainbow demon
On his horse of crimson fire
Black shadows are following closely
On the heels of his desire"

David Byron - Vocalist. Equestrian enthusiast. Rock and Roll arsonist.

    

    Then the simplest of straight forward 4/4 drum beats of Lee Kerslake begins in unison with our air drums, fists and obnoxiously hyperbolic facial expressions! We would snarkily yell at each other, "It's just too fucking heavy!!! I can't fucking believe it!!!" Then the chorus would come in and we would all sing along like we were the proud choir from our High School's weekly Saturday detention roster. Adding a resounding "fucking" to it. Making it rule even more!  

"FUCKING RAINBOW DEMON!" 

    In the actual epic chorus, is an over dubbed vocal that has eighth note "ah ah ah ahs" in the "O" part of the word demon. It's absolutely awesome and ridiculous! Not to mention the hilarious spectacle of a bunch of teenage dorks singing along with it.

    The second verse has an even more priceless vocal over dub where there's an "ooh" and "aah" on the one and three of the beat. It made for a preposterous call and response sing along from us jabronis. This leads up to the ultra stripped down, stand alone drum fill of Kerslake, followed by a brilliantly placed "Woo!" Rinse and repeat the verse and chorus one more time and you have the makings of "our joke song." The one that would come up in conversation every time we saw each other. "Dude, fucking Rainbow Demon!" We'd try and recite the lyrics but we would mostly be wrong on purpose. Plus we sounded Like Peter Brady trying to sing a falsetto.  

    "Fucking Rainbow Demon (ah ah ah ah)! Pick up your heart and run! Fucking Rainbow Demon (ah ah ah ah)! Riding on wings of crimson fire!"

    

 

    Special moments like this only came around organically so often back then. It was our impromptu teenage comedy troupe spontaneously breathing life into our "joke song." It wasn't served up to us from the internet as a cheap form of entertainment soon to be easily forgotten. We owned it, acted it out and it was of our amusement for many years. Like the ritual of playing a vinyl record, we took all the effort to get the joke out of its sleeve just for the delivery of a punchline. It seemed fleeting in the moment but this "joke song" has stuck with me forever. It wasn't just a hilarious memory I shared with a bunch of people including one of my best friends. A friend who has sadly since passed away. It was a free pass only teenagers are allowed to have to make fun of something we don't quite understand yet. A kid just beginning to scratch the surface of a life long commitment to try and expose myself to every cranny of rock music obscurity. The joke became even funnier when I ironically became a fan of Uriah Heep.

    I did eventually buy Demons and Wizards on vinyl a long time ago as a novelty for the song "Rainbow Demon." Because I had only heard that album and with my history of making fun of them, I had long self proclaimed Uriah Heep, "Deep Purple light." As I dug deeper into their discography, I soon realized that label was unfair. I fell in love with their albums Very 'Eavy ...Very 'Umble and Look At Yourself. I promise to do a redemption blog on Look At Yourself and explain in depth how amazing it is. I've even seen them live twice now and they were fucking incredible! When watching them destroy my face, I would laughingly say to myself "I can't believe we used to make fun of these guys. what a bunch of assholes we were!" 

    There's some great songs on Demons and Wizards like "Easy Livin" and "Poet's Justice." However no matter how great Uriah Heep truly is, there's nothing no one can do to prove to me that "Rainbow Demon" isn't ridiculous. It's forever entrenched in my comedic DNA. I've got a handful of skaters and punk kids from 90's Lewiston, Maine to back me on this. I don't need to get it or have the desire too understand it from any dinosaur rocker. I refuse to and it's far too late. Trust me, Uriah Heep ain't the only band who gets laughed at and mutually admired. Black Sabbath invented that duality for me. There's just so many awkward Ozzy moments to choose from.

 

Here's my best dramatization of rocking out to "Rainbow Demon" as a teen.

We miss and love you Andrew Kott! Wherever you are, I can only imagine you're riding on wings of crimson fire somewhere in some insane Roger Dean dreamscape.

"Today is only yesterday's tomorrow" - from the song "Circle of Hands" by Uriah FUCKING Heep. From the album Demons and Wizards. Pretty fucking deep huh?

Luke Laplante - 

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