then you have a ...drum solo. We don't want to forget the wonderful sound of this great prog musical instrument.....the Kazoo!!! The original vinyl release was a gatefold sleeve, the front designed again by Roger Dean. The inner fold had pictures of the band, with the album itself housed in a liner on which were printed the lyrics. Pennanen, Timo (2006). Sisältää hitin – levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972 (in Finnish) (1sted.). Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. p.166. ISBN 978-951-1-21053-5.

haunting sound of guitar or the melancholy of ''Rain''. Also ''Sunrise'' will become of their many famous anthems with a greatOriginal lead singer David Byron is remembered in the lyrics of "Between two worlds", while Thijs Van Leer gives "Tales" from "The magician's birthday" album a whole new dimension with some wonderful flute playing and yodelling(!). Hensley joins the band for "July morning", and remains on stage from then on. Byron's replacement John Lawton also participates later on, his distinctive voice contrasting with current singer Bernie Shaw's more Byron like sound. The highlight for me is the rare live performance of "Paradise/The spell" complete with Hensley's wonderful slide guitar solo.

This recording covers the first "party" held in 2001. The highlight is undoubtedly the appearance of founder member Ken Hensley, who wrote most of the band's most famous works, and contributed the Hammond organ element of their wall of sound. The band play a commendable set covering a cross section of their songs through the years. Top 100 Album-Jahrescharts" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. 1973. Archived from the original on 23 May 2021 . Retrieved 2 April 2022. organ that are penetrated with the scream-like yell of David Byron. It settles as the vocals are almost spoken. It builds.Themes are repeated. I like the organ play in Have you ever listened to ''Spider Woman''?? that's poor by URIAH HEEP standard! Can someone recall how sound ''Blind Eye''a b "Single - Uriah Heep, Spider Woman". Charts.de (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts . Retrieved 19 November 2018. Though undeniably a pleasant listen, Uriah Heep's The Magician's Birthday doesn't quite measure up to the high standards of the run of albums leading up to it. The soaring, fantastic atmosphere of Demons and Wizards occasionally peeps in here and there, which saves the album from total mediocrity, but the glorious heights reached on that album are nowhere to be seen here. Simply put, doesn't really have any truly memorable standout songs that remain with you after listening - something every Heep album from Salisbury to Demons and Wizards offered in spades. Simply put, I could listen intently to the album and then an hour later I couldn't remember what most of the songs sound like aside from Sweet Lorraine - something which certainly isn't true of Salisbury or Demons and Wizards. For the most part the production of The Magician's Birthday can be described as overblown... with several notable exceptions, and these provide the only real bright spots on the album. "Rain," a thoughtful and unassuming piece, gets a sensitive presentation which goes a long way toward camouflaging the inadequacies of its lyrical ingredients. And "Sweet Lorraine" has an amusingly eerie sound to it, thanks mainly to Hensley's neat Moog sythesizer work. But two songs don't make an album, and Uriah Heep's fifth effort is a decidedly limited excursion into areas better left unexplored -- at least for the ill-equipped. Worth it if you were bowled over by Demons and Wizards and don't mind that the artwork manages to be closer to the spirit of that album than the music a lot of the time, but The Magician's Birthday marks the waning of Heep's classic period in my view.