Happy The Man member - Michael Beck Original Drummer/Percussionist Ep 1 - Hidden Moods
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Song Breakdown - Hidden Moods From the first Happy The Man album
Please Subscribe !! I will continue these videos, breaking down more Happy The Man Songs !!
I have a VERY short (1minute) super 8mm home movie that I shot when you all opened for Renaissance in DC at the Warner Theatre, Sunday, Feb.27, 1977. Your arms flailing away at that mesmerizing drum set! I sent a VHS copy to Kit way back in about 1980! I recorded EVERYTHING you all gave to WGTB to play. Purchase all the Lp's and CD's I can get my hands on. What an amazing group of amazing musicians. Thank you for all the incredible music!
Prog royalty!! I love each AND EVERY track they have recorded and released. Fantastic song writing and musicianship!
I was there and saw it all. Pretty much every show. We got HTM to play at my High School. I had to go in front of the Student Council and explain to them that the $500 was well spent. I still have the ticket. May 22 1976 at George Mason High School. Hung out with Mike and Kenna at Assateague Island in the sand dunes. Treasured memories. Thanks so much.
I absolutely LOVE H.T.M. !!! You guys are AWESOME....
Love HTM! I treasure my vinyl albums.
You should be proud of that band Michael, it's outstanding. I just finished listening to that entire album. So damn good, so good. Thanks for giving us this music.
I was so FORTUNATE to have seen HTM several times at Madison College (today JMU). Each musician was a formidable force and as an ensemble, they took a back seat to no one. Mike Beck was so creative and articulate with his approach and phrasing. As many times I saw them perform at school, their performance of Deaths Crown at the Black Briar dinner theater in Harrisonburg was one of their hallmarks because of its originality! Cheers, Mike!
This is fantastic! Please keep doing these insightful and entertaining videos. Bruford should engage with his fans like you with yours.
Your 70's kit setup is one of the best I've ever seen.
Im fan of your Work in HTM. Love you and greetings from 🇨🇱 Chile South América.
how beautiful song.... modern musicians must listen this masterwork
Thank you Michael! Long time HTM fan here.. Please do more
Happy the Man is wonderful band and Mike Beck is one of the most greatest progressive rock drummers in history.
Michael you are truly an inspiration. thank you for your contributions on such a masterpiece.Happy The Man/Happy The Man
Thank you Kk.
HTM- Still my favorite band of all time. As timeless and fresh now as when it was first created. A major influence on my musical career in too many ways to mention.
This was the song I played every beautiful morning for months away in my college dorm daze during my fabulous romanticist youth! It's so sweet and optimistically gorgeous! !!!!!! I'm from DC and one of your earliest fans being a huge disciple of the infamous progressive WGTB radio station! The Life saver of intelligent music of my youth! Those were the DAZE!
We had to hop in the car and drive up to the top of the bay to hear HTM on WKHS, Kent County High School. Even the stations in Baltimore didn't play them
Frick'n awesome Mike. Thank you for the demo. You are way up there with my top drummers. Allan White. Peter Erskine. Max Roach. Your drumming is forward, where the snare is on beat, where I'm used it offbeat. I was just listening to the Happy The Man cd and found your vid.
The greatest American band there ever was. Still in awe of those compositions decades after I first heard them. And to think this band existed in my neck o' the woods! I actually spoke to Kathy Moore from Cellar Door about them fairly recently.
Every time i saw them my eyes were glued on Mike. Watching him do his "Kung Fu" walking around his kit, picking up the HUGE cymbal , dropping it on the stage and be sitting down playing before it hit the stage
OUTSTANDING! I could not have been more thrilled find and watch this video. Also to hear there are more to come is so exciting. Love Happy The Man. Thank you for making this Michael!
thank you
We love you dude!
You guys were easily one of the best bands ever assembled. So many people I know have cited HTM work when discussing highly influential bands. Every song is a musical voyage written and performed by MASTERS. Thank you for creating music which revives my ears. With respect to influence, I seem to hear some Pat Matheny and Phil Collins, maybe some Gentle Giant. Anyone else, maybe some jazz drummers??
Happy The Man's sound was and still is majestic! I wish there were more videos of the band.
Thanks Michael! I loved your playing with the band- you brought a very nuanced but symphonic quality to the band, yet rocked it when it called for it. You were also a lot of fun to watch! It is fascinating to hear your analysis of the music. I look forward to more!
Thanks Glen .... I love your comment on the nuanced, but, symphonic quality I brought to HTM. That was what I was hoping for .... Our music called for that, I think, out of a drummer. I will do my best breaking down the rest of our music ... and, hopefully some story's of the studio, and road.
Hi, Michael.
From brother Ken (now in the pacific NW)
You look great and hope you are doing well.
Ken
I was privileged to see you work the big kit many times in and around D.C. HTM remains special, and the subsequent records and incarnations of the band were great, but on that original LP your writing and stylings were key to the bands innovative and groundbreaking sound. Thank you for revisiting these songs!
Jeff, thanks for the nice comments ... much appreciated. Hopefully I can do each HTM song I played on justice when covering them. Been awhile! Quite fun to do.
Thanks for going into all this detail! I hope you do more of these. New York Dream Suite, Leave that Kitten Armone, Portrait of a Waterfall, ...
Thank you so much for doing this!!! So grateful! Full performances would be so awsum! Peace
Thank you for doing this, Mike!
I was there before Rick got out of the Army. So I got to see all of the beginning concerts and became a HTM fan quickly. One question ...do you still have Jolly Chimp ...the cymbal-banging monkey toy? I miss those days in Harrisonburg and glad I got to experience the birth of HTM. Great memories :)
The drum work on the original HTM record has always been my favorite drum work on any record without me even noticing it for years (Commonly the best artistic endeavors are of this nature) . While the core drumming itself is great, and is up there with the most competent prog drummer of the time. The magic is in the subtle textures, and ambiences, and all the nuanced sounds at the right places. One of the reasons to why I think the original album was better then Crafty Hands, which is a great record in itself. The First HTM has a lushness, ambience and dreaminess to it that makes it totally unique. I think a lot of modern bands and drummers should get their ears up for this artistic approach to drumming. Thanks for uploading this video, it was really educational and made me appreciate my favorite record even more. Kit Watkins and you have been a great inspiration influence to my keyboardplaying and musical development! 🙏
My brother David was being mentored by Stan when you guys were at Patterson St. I was there to pick David up because he wasn't old enough to drive. David told me all about the band but I hadn't heard any recordings or seen any performances. It wasn't long and HTM played at Wilson Hall and I've been an avid fan every since. Thanks for the video.
Michael!!! So so so so glad you have made your presence known on youtube!!!! I was too young in 1975-78 to be exposed to HTM, but I got exposed in 1979, saw Kit and Coco many times during 80-82. Michael, are there any Photos of HTM opening for Hot Tuna or Yamstasha in 1977? Cheers and great to see you and I'm gonna love this series of your Song Breakdowns!!
Alan, no pic's or video's, I know of ... with us opening for Hot Tuna or Yamatasha. The Yamatasha show was great, in Milwaukee .... were you there?. The best was hanging out in the dressing room talking with Michael Shrive, the drummer, about his drum solo with Santana, in the Woodstock movie. Thanks for the nice comments ....
@@michaelbeck6897 Man i wish i was there, no I came along too late to see HTM, I've seen the Backstage passes Rick put up on the Happytheman.com website. Hey I have a great copy of the Gems and Germs tape that has among other things an amazing stripped down version of Hidden Moods and a vocal-less version of "On Time As a Helix..," really clean copy if you want a CDr let me know where to send it. Cheers.. Oh and man play more on your videos, Can you demonstrate that outro section with all the polyrhythms going on!! That blows my mind.. That and that "siren" section in New York Dreams Suite. Best, Alan
Pops, this is awesome! Now I can cop your beats!
Your drumming/percussion played a HUGE part in making the Happy The Man album stand out from everything else of the period and of today. Crafty Hands wasn't the same without you. Yes, it had the amazing compositions and musicianship of the three Ws, but it lost the avant garde edge of the first album. HTM is my bar when looking for new music. Please do some more videos, especially one for New York Dream Suite.
Thanks for the detailed description of your thinking on this piece. It begs the larger question of how much resistance you received from the composer when you applied your creativity in a way that wasn't what the composer was trying to achieve. How were any creative differences resolved?
BTW, that album changed my life.
Thank you for helping to make that happen.
What a delight to see you explaining this. Too bad we didn't see it 45 years ago -- but I'll take it. You look no worse for wear.
Thanks so much .... I will hang on to that last line .... no worse for wear! Ha ha
Along with the Dixie Dregs, and the more classically prog band Kansas, HTM were American fusion/prog icons!!
Other American honorable mentions would be Return to Forever and Frank Zappa
New York Dream suite! Good to see that this music is still so alive! I know a few people including me in Holland that keep saying HTM is the best prog they ever heard! Remember that, and it is the best band they never say being performed live.
This band had some unusual talent. I would have like to see them go in the direction of Caldera, Weather Report, Electrik band, etc., but they had their own special style that was theirs, and I guess that is the way it should be. I just had my own vision of what the band could do in the other fusion styles.
Can you play the entire song, all the parts with out stopping ?
Michael can you touch base on the gear used to record the album.drum brand , pieces, sizes, cymbals etc...and the live kit if not the same.maybe include in this series if you prefer.
Did you manage to preserve the core equipment?Thanx Kk
So i managed to catch the Starborne video, did TH-cam yank it down for infringement or something??? It was great, where'd it go?!?!?!? :-0 So Michael, are you writing/recording anything these days? I only know your playing from the HTM album, the word I heard from back in the day - early 80's, was that after HTM you moved to Ohio and got involved at a university as a music director. Any truth to that? And I have an awesome recording of HTM in late 77 at The Cellar Door in DC (Possibly an Ace Pace recording, whatever happened to him??) and you guys were doing tunes that ended up on Crafty Hands. Michael I could just poll you for all sorts of HTM lore!!! Please don't stop sharing your stories and song breakdowns. Did you know that your album made Rolling Stones top 50 best prog albums of all time!!! Just Google "rolling stone 50 best progressive" and the 77 HTM album is on the top of the first page!!
you guys were men absolute heroes in 1980. Check out my band Apprentice's album "Rough Draft" one TH-cam if you'd like to hear my compositions and great band that were heavily influenced by the great Happy The Man.
Michael, this is great. I have been a fan of HTM since 1980 when the guys in band I was playing with in Charlotte, NC turned me on to you guys. We even ended up playing “Wind Up Doll Day Wind” from Crafty Hands. Fast forward to 2006 when I met Kit and we did some recording together which resulted in me being on a couple of tracks of two of his albums (SkyZone and Field of View) as well as me releasing a two track EP of some improvised pieces that we recorded at my house. All of these and more are on my Bandcamp page if you feel so inclined to check out here: billsmith.bandcamp.com/
I look forward to seeing the rest of the videos that describe what you did with each piece on that first album.
¿Did you use a Fibes or a Rogers drums and that time and what brand of cymbals did you use?
cool, but needs more cowbell