I can remember being just a little guy sitting in the basement staring in awe at my older brother's folk quartet called, 'The Westbound Folk'. When I was old enough, I got a second hand acoustic and started doing Dylan songs like my big brother. Then I heard Grand Funk Railroad and I was enthrawled! I saw Grand Funk at the height of their career (the same show as their first live album). I fell in love with the drums and never looked back. I was a head banger! But something was missing. Bands like Grand Funk became a dime a dozen and then the first wave of British Hard Rock arts like Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath began to appear. Somewhere in the onslaught I managed to hear the Hypnotic Stomp of 'Gypsy' and knew that I had found something magical. Heep had what was missing from those other bands, they had MAGIC!! The emotive vocals of the great David Byron, the power and pain of Mick Box, and the passion of Ken Hensley became the triumverate of which all things musical must pass. Every album was pure ecstacy, each one captured and expressed part of me. Heep became the soundtrack of my youth.

As a drummer and singer I travelled around in cover bands in search of fellow musos that I could hook up with and play this wonderful music. Alas, it wasn't to be, due in no small part to my own appetite for 'celebration'. By the time I got sick of playing covers of music I couldn't stand let alone relate to like Heep, Heep had fallen from the heights that they had reached and no one at all seemed to even like the band let alone want to play any of their music. I tried to perservere, but the late seventies and eighties left me with a bitter taste in my soul and I was forced to turn away from the music scene and set out on my own.

I picked up the guitar again and began to write in earnest. Soon I had a fair catalogue of original material, but no one to play it with, and I'm not that good on guitar to do a solo thing. Through all this I still jammed whenever the opportunity arose, but I would never commit to a band for much more than a few gigs. My enthusiasm for cover bands was null and void. I settled into my new career as a computer tech and soon (5 years!) graduated to Lan Administrator, all the while strumming my guitar and singing my songs onto my old Teac reel to reel. During all this time of course, I began to be a real web surfing dude and after a few years of searching for anything related to Heep I came across Hani's Heep page. Something in me moved and I got in touch with Hani and soon began to transcribe a profile and to compile articles to write some bios and before I knew it Hani's site blossomed into the great site it is today. Although I can only speak for myself, I think all of us owe a great debt of gratitude to Hani, who is in no small part responsible for getting us all together.

Anyway, soon there was the mailing list and lots of lively discussions. The information became so great that I cancelled my subscription to UHAS, preferring instead the instant gratification of the internet. Somewhere in all this, Dave White organized the St. Louis Heepvention. At first I wasn't interested. even when I found out that Ken was to come. I'd gotten lazy over the years and it seemed to be too much trouble, but later common sense prevailed and I couldn't miss it. That was a turning point for me. It inspired me to forge ahead musically where before I was stagnating. Since then I've gotten a 4track recorder and recorded some Heep songs over the internet with Bob Dreher and Dave White, two of which appeared on the CD that Dave presented to Mick and Ken. I hope we did them justice! Now I'm interested again and the imagination is on fire! I've met some new 'FRIENDS!' and hope to see them all soon and another convention. It finally happened, I've finally found the musos I'd been looking for all those years and the future is wide open. Thanks Hani!!! Thanks to all of you and I wish you all the best!!

Rock On,
Joe