ALBUM OF THE DAY:
Neil’s Heavy Concept Album
https://youtu.be/xZl79kKBeCk
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. Other players on the album include ex-members of bands Gong, Spooky Tooth and Level 42.
Nigel George Planer (born 22 February 1953) is a British actor, comedian, musician, novelist and playwright. He played Neil in the BBC comedy The Young Ones and Ralph Filthy in Filthy Rich & Catflap. He has appeared in many West End musicals, including original casts of Evita, Chicago, We Will Rock You, Wicked, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has also appeared in Hairspray. He won a BRIT award in 1984 and has been nominated for Olivier, TMA, WhatsOnStage and BAFTA awards.
The title is self-referentially ironic, since progressive rock concept albums are supposed to have "heavy concepts" but "Neil's Heavy Concept Album" does not. Also, the front of the album sleeve is a loose parody of The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request album sleeve. The rear parodies the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with Neil wearing different outfits replacing the images of the four Beatles, and the text "A heavy time is guaranteed for all." replacing "A splendid time is guaranteed for all."
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 ("Hello Vegetables") in which Neil says the album was "a hassle to make and there's much too much technology and commercial stuff on it". Additional spoken tracks include Neil having a conversation with a potato in a sewer, reciting a poem to his rubber plant Wayne ("your roots are in the ground, my roots are in Twickenham"), and experiencing a flashback in the track "Paranoid Remix" which features Beatles-esque backwards noises and voices, and ends with a parody of the last chord from "A Day in the Life". A parody horror movie commercial, which sees vegetarian Neil being turned into a carnivorous monster after accidentally eating a hamburger leads into the original Planer composition "Lentil Nightmare", a dark heavy metal number that commences as a pastiche of the eponymous title track of Black Sabbath's debut album Black Sabbath and which subsequently quotes briefly from King Crimson's "The Court of the Crimson King" and features Planer singing in an uncharacteristic wailing, high falsetto. In the disco/rap number "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. "God Save the Queen" is performed as a cabaret number by a bad American standup comic who sounds identical to the American "comedian" Dino, also played by Planer, in The Young Ones episode Bomb.
The album was heavily promoted by MTV, which had embraced The Young Ones and served as the sole outlet 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 the table he was sitting under.
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
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
