Time for a musical interlude as I haven’t done one in over a month. I’ll post videos from one of my favorite bands, Heart. Led by sisters Ann & Nancy Wilson, the band was one of the pioneers for future female-led bands. Ann sang, Nancy played guitar and through the years, have added and subtracted various band members.
The core of the band has been the Wilson sisters and they started in Seattle in the early 1970’s before hitting it big around 1977. They played hard and folk rock before being forced to sing power ballads in the mid-1980’s by their record company. In the mid-1990’s, Heart went back to its hard rock roots where they’ve stayed.
I’m going to post six videos here and they really don’t even begin to broach their discography, but perhaps during a Videos of the Week, I’ll go all out and post a whole bunch of their music.
Right now, let’s begin in 1976 and a live appearance by the band on a TV show (not sure which one), but this is “Heartless.”
I can’t believe I found a video of a performance I actually saw on TV. This is from the California Jam 2 in 1978. ABC played this on a late night Friday, I remember it being on after midnight and it went for about 2 hours and I watched the whole thing. Watch how hard the band works on stage. Oh, before I forget, this is “Barracuda.”
Let’s move to Heart’s power ballad era, but instead of showing those horrible videos that MTV played, I’ll post a video from a concert the band did in Seattle in 2003. This is “Alone.” And a very nice acoustical version. Ann and Nancy had some very nice harmony.
From the same concert, here’s Nancy singing “These Dreams”. Again, great harmony.
Since you see the beginning of “Mistral Wind” in the last video, I’ll add it so you can see it in its entirety.
From that same Seattle concert, Heart covers Led Zepplin’s “Black Dog.” Heart really loved Led Zepplin and often paid tribute covering their songs live. Ann pulls this off so well.
And flashing back again, this time to 1976 and NBC’s Midnight Special which never played at midnight, but always at 1 a.m., here is “Crazy on You” and Nancy’s awesome acoustic beginning to the song.
Ok, that’s actually 7 videos, but once I start finding good songs, I just want to post them. Down the line, I’ll do a Videos of the Week with Heart. Press releases coming up.
