Mark Heard

Fingerprint

Review and Notes

Mark Heard's second album (not including his self-produced album), Fingerprint is available on CD; it's been re-issued by Via (the same people who brought us the 77s boxed set, 1 2 3) under license from Fingerprint Records, Fingerprint was released in 1980, and includes a wide variety of Mark's early styles including light rock ("I'm in Chains"), James Taylor ballads ("Nowadays") country hokey ("Just the Same"), early CCM/Pat Terry ("One More Time"), John Denver ("Epistle"), live Looney Toonz-type silliness ("Es Tu Mer Leid") and Norman-Stonehill silliness ("Threefold Amen" (actually Mark Heard style silliness, but Norman & Stonehill are better known and did similar things)).

Mark's production & engineering talents are already as evident as his musical talents. Mark & Janet did the photography, and Janet added some BGV.

This is an excellent album, if far different than his later work.

A Few Notes

These come from personal knowledge, correspondence with Mark, or the orphans-of-god mailing list.

The Pat Terry Group (Pat Terry, Sonny Lollerstadt and Randy Bugg) and Mark Heard all hung around together, and had some influence on each other - especially Pat and Mark. When Larry Norman liked Mark's crude demo and asked for a full-blown demo, Mark turned to the PTG for help, and recorded the demo in their studios, with various musical assistance from them.

Mark's first few studio albums were all connected with Larry Norman. Mark, Larry & Randy Stonehill all occasionally apeared on each other's albums, and Mark & Randy later collaborated with Phill Keaggy on Sunday's Child.

Mark never divided life into categories the way so many of us do. Life itself was both sacred and humorous - hence one album (like his concerts) often contained ``deep'' songs, light-hearted songs, commentary, and whatever else was on his heart or mind at the time.

``Brown Eyed Sue'' was written for his wife, Janet Sue Heard, who had brown eyes.


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Last updated: 07 September 1999

Copyright 1994 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved. [an error occurred while processing this directive]