HEAT OF THE MOMENT

I think that it was in late 1981 or in early 1982 that I read in a newspaper or in a Rock magazine about the formation of ASIA. a new band formed by four former members of some Prog Rock bands. John Wetton (ex- member of KING CRIMSON, URIAH HEEP, UK and others) was the main founder of the band, and in late 1980-early 1981 he met Steve Howe (ex-member of YES), and both started planning to form a new band and to write songs together. It seems that ASIA also was put together by a manager and by some record industry executives, and in fact several other musicians auditioned to be members of the band (Trevor Rabin, among them). But the original line-up was ready by 1981 with the addition of Cal Palmer (ex-member of ELP) on drums and Geoff Downes on keyboards (ex-member of THE BUGGLES and YES).

By mid 1982 I remember that I visited one day a record shop in my city (one of the several record shops which were closed in 1982-83 after another economic crisis in my country), and I was seeing the LPs there, when the person who was selling the albums there was playing in a turntable the first ASIA's album. I asked him: "Which album is that?" and he showed me the album cover of ASIA's first album. The song which I was listening to then was to "Heat of the Moment". I don't remember if I stayed in the record shop enough time to listen to the full album or if it was played in full, but I liked a lot "Heat of the Moment". It maybe was until some weeks later that I bought the album in another record shop (maybe the prices of the imported LPs were cheaper in the other record shop, I don't remember well now). But some weeks later I went to the first record shop that I visited to buy a T-shirt which had the cover art of the album printed at the front. Very good memories of that time.

Maybe Wetton and Howe started the band, but in the end the best working songwriting team in the band was by Wetton and Downes, who wrote the main Hit Singles that the band had.

"Heat of the Moment" is a song composed by Wetton and Downes which curiously has Steve Howe playing the main riff of the song. It is mainly a song written for the guitar, and it obviously has a lot of Pop Rock influences with very good arrangements. The lyrics are also very Pop Rock influenced, without having "deep meaning". So it was a song mainly written having Radio playing in mind. But it is a very good song. But I don't like the official video of this song which I watched to in youtube some years ago.

In the Side B of this single there is "Time Again", the only song of the band which was credited to be written by the four original members of the band (Downes-Howe-Palmer-Wetton). It really was a song with a lot of Prog Rock music inlfuences which some songs of their first album still had. It maybe was the most Prog Rock song that their first album had, and it worked very well.

If ASIA was a disappointment for a lot of Prog Rock fans with their albums having a lot of Pop Rock songs, it still had a lot of quality in some songs, with some of them still being influenced by Prog Rock ("Time Again" was one of them). Their first album is very good despite that criticism. And both songs from this single are very good.

John Wetton died in 31-January-2017. The band is going to do a tour with Billy Sherwood replacing Wetton. Even Wetton asked Sherwood to replace him even before his death from cancer. Wetton knew that maybe he couldn't tour with ASIA due to his health problems. Howe was replaced some years ago by a young guitarist called Sam Coulson.

ASIA's first album was released thirty five years ago in 8-March-1982.