Showing posts with label H. Show all posts
Showing posts with label H. Show all posts

12 June 2024

Humble Pie

“Eating Humble Pie” is an expression that means to be submissive or apologetic. Its origin goes as far back as the 17th century. The lord of an estate would give the umbles (the less tasty parts of an animal) to his servants. "Umbles" in Middle English was derived from the word numble (after the Middle French nombles), meaning "deer's innards." Typically, they were made into a pie. This became associated with a lower social status.

I knew the phrase more as the name of a rock band.

Humble Pie is an English rock band formed by singer-guitarists Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott in 1969. Often regarded as one of the first supergroups in music, Humble Pie experienced moderate popularity and commercial success during the 1970s with hit songs such as "Black Coffee", "30 Days in the Hole", "I Don't Need No Doctor", "Hot 'n' Nasty" and "Natural Born Bugie" among others.

The original line-up of members featured lead singer/frontman and guitarist Steve Marriott of Small Faces, singer-guitarist Peter Frampton of the Herd, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and drummer Jerry Shirley from the Apostolic Intervention.

Having been instantly labeled by the UK music press as a supergroup, the band chose Humble Pie in order to downplay such expectations.

Their debut album, As Safe as Yesterday Is, was released in August 1969, along with the single, "Natural Born Bugie"/"Wrist Job", which reached No. 4 hit in the UK Singles Chart. It is one of the first albums to be described by the term "heavy metal" in a 1970 review in Rolling Stone magazine. I always thought of them as being more "hard rock" than metal, but I'm not a critic. 

On 9 July 1971 Humble Pie opened for Grand Funk Railroad at their historic Shea Stadium concert, an event that broke the Beatles record for fastest-selling stadium concert, to that date. 

That year, Humble Pie released their most successful record to date, Rock On, as well as a live album recorded at the Fillmore East in New York entitled Performance Rockin' the Fillmore. The live album was certified gold by the RIAA. "I Don't Need No Doctor" became an FM radio standard in the US, peaking at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100 and propelling the album up the charts. 

By the time of the album's release, Peter Frampton had left the band and went on to considerable success as a solo artist. His live recording Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), had several hit singles, and has earned 8× Platinum by the RIAA in the United States.

The band went through many lineup changes. Steve Marriott died in a house fire in 1991. The band continued to tour and record and during 2018 Jerry Shirley (who still owned the Humble Pie name) created a new lineup that he would direct but not tour with and as of 2023 Shirley's "Humble Pie Legacy" lineup of Dave Colwell (guitar), Jim Stapley (vocals, guitar, Hammond, harmonica), Ivan Bodley (bass) and Bobby Marks (drums) were still actively touring.

12 March 2013

The Hooters



The Hooters are an American rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They gained major commercial success in the United States in the mid-1980s via MTV airplay with their album Nervous Night and songs such as "All You Zombies", "Day by Day", "And We Danced" and "Where Do the Children Go." The album achieved gold and platinum status all over the world.  



Rolling Stone magazine named The Hooters the "Best New Band of the Year" in 1985.

Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman originally met in 1971 at the University of Pennsylvania and had played in a Philly-bbased band called Baby Grand, which also featured local singer, David Kagan.

Hyman and Bazilian, along with producer Rick Chertoff, wrote and played on Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual and Rob Hyman and Cyndi co-wrote her classic song "Time After Time."

The Hooters formed and played their first show in the summer of 1980. Their eclectic blend of rock, reggae, ska and folk music brought them commercial success, particularly in Europe, in the late 1980s and 1990s. They opened the Philadelphia portion of the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985, and they played at The Wall Concert in Berlin in 1990.

The band went on hiatus in 1995, reunited in 2001, toured in Europe and released their first album of new material since 1993, Time Stand Still.

Though the likely guess for the origin of the band's name would probably be that it is a reference to the slang term for breasts, or the restaurant chain by the same name, or possibly some allusion to owls, all of those are wrong.

The name references the nickname for the melodica (AKA pianica, blow-organ or key-flute), a keyboard harmonica popularized in the U.S. by the Hohner company and of German origin. Rob Hyman plays the melodica in a number of songs by The Hooters and it became a distinctive part of their sound.

The Hooters released five studio albums between 1983 and 1993, a live album in 1994, and retrospective collections in 1996 and 2001. In addition, numerous other collections, live recordings and bootlegs were released in the U.S. and Europe. More recently, a new studio album was released in 2007, a double live album in 2008, and a five song EP in 2010.

The current lineup is Eric Bazilian: lead vocals, guitars, mandola, harmonica; Rob Hyman: lead vocals, piano, organ, accordion, melodica; John Lilley: guitars, lap steel; Fran Smith, Jr.: bass, backing vocals; Dave Uosikkinen: drum.

The Hooters will be doing a European tour in Summer 2013.



    Music video for "And We Danced" with melodica opening

She was a be-bop baby on a hard day`s night.
She was hangin on Johnny , he was holdin` on tight
I could feel her coming from a mile away.
There was no use talking, there was nothing to say
When the band began to play and play.
And we danced like a wave on the ocean, romanced
We were liars in love and we danced
Swept away for a moment by chance
And we danced and danced danced...

SOURCES

Band Members