The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Hot City

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: HOT CITY (1974/2009)

1) Vambo; 2) Man In The Jar; 3) Hey You; 4) Long Haired Music; 5) Sergeant Fury; 6) Tomahawk Kid; 7) Ace In The Hole; 8) Weights Made Of Lead; 9) Last Train.

The latest Harvey-related release "from the vaults" is only recommendable to serious fans with solid Scottish heritage. Hot City is the title of a shelved album that SAHB attempted to record in early 1974 — however, disappointed with the results, they abandoned the sessions and came back later in the year to re-record most of the tracks as The Impossible Dream. So, essentially, what you get is just an earlier version of that record, minus 'River Of Love' and 'The Impossible Dre­am' itself, plus just one previously unknown track — the vaudeville number 'Ace In The Hole'.

It is all quite perfectly listenable and enjoyable: these are not demo tapes, but full-fledged, expert­ly produced recordings (on part of the sessions, they worked with veteran Kinks and Who produ­cer Shel Talmy). Whether, however, they are better in any way than The Impossible Dream is debatable: obviously, Harvey did not think so, and me, I am somewhat reluctant to waste time over any sort of detailed comparison. Based on a few rag-taggy observations (for instance, the relative shortness of 'Man In The Jar'), I'd say Hot City is somewhat less theatrical than what it eventually became (this might have been the ultimate reason for Harvey not getting along with straightforward rock'n'roller Talmy). But that's really rag-taggy.

Also, 'Anthem' (here still bearing the original title 'Last Train') is much longer here, with the 'an­themic' part of it fully played twice, first as an intro and then as an outro. I agree with the band that it does not work; the "preview" of the majestic Scottish melody in the beginning sort of acts like a silly spoiler, and they were wise to remove it in the final version.

Bottomline: if The Impossible Dream figures on your list of 100 Greatest Albums Of All Time, Hot City is a must. At best, you will have the opportunity to enjoy your favourite record the way it has never been heard before, and at worst, you'll get some useful insights into its origins. But something tells me I am not addressing a heck of a lot of people in this paragraph.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Live At The BBC

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: LIVE AT THE BBC (1972-1977/2009)

CD I: 1) Midnight Moses; 2) St. Anthony; 3) Framed; 4) There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree, Mother; 5) Hole In Her Stocking; 6) Dance To The Music; 7) The Faith Healer; 8) Midnight Moses; 9) Gang Bang; 10) The Last Of The Teenage Idols; 11) Giddy Up A Ding Dong; CD II: 1) Next; 2) The Faith Healer; 3) Give My Compliments To The Chef; 4) Delilah; 5) Boston Tea Party; 6) Pick It Up And Kick It; 7) Smouldering.

Many, if not all, of these tracks had surfaced earlier on various smaller releases, but in 2009, fi­nally, someone did the job right and gathered everything that could be salvaged from SAHB's radio appearances in one place. The result is, of course, patchy, but just about everything apart from the last two tracks seriously rules.

The first disc contains full recordings of SAHB's two radio concerts from 1972 and 1973, respec­tively, with only one track ('Midnight Moses') duplicated — since the first show was promoting Framed and the second was promoting Next, what you get is a selection of highlights from both albums. I would not say they are necessarily better than the studio counterparts; since all the songs are still fresh, they mostly tend to stick to reproducing the originals ('Framed', for instance, does not yet get the extended audience participation workout), except Harvey is a little more loose and Zal is a little more ass-kicking, just what you'd expect from a live performance.

The only surprise in the tracklisting is a cover of Sly & The Family Stone's 'Dance To The Music', and it is understandable the band would soon drop it from the setlist: well-rehearsed and well-mea­­ning, but a bunch of mock-rocking Glasgow dudes doing one of the Sixties' most classic funk numbers, head-and-tails-oriented on Sly's "family style", can hardly be expected to work all that well (there is some ferocious bass work, though). My advice is to stick to Harvey originals.

The second disc traces the band's evolution through several other worthy recreations of their hits onstage (taken from the Old Grey Whistle Test and Top Of The Pops, no less), where the defini­tive highlight is Harvey's possessed rendition of 'Next' (it has also survived on video, and works much better in that form), although the other four tunes are at most one notch below. Unfortuna­tely, the album peters out quite badly, allocating unnecessary space for two performances of the SAHB without Harvey (recorded during Alex's leave of absence in between SAHB Stories and Rock Drill), with 'Smouldering', in particular, sounding like very, very bad Foreigner. But I sup­pose they had to use some of that material to fill out empty space (Disc 2 is pretty short as it is, compared to disc 1).

Regardless, this is a sure-fire thumbs up, even if it does support my thesis that "radio concerts" are not a very faithful representation of any band's live sound — most probably, recording "live in the studio" still triggers that part of the players' brain which is responsible for "studio" (clean, polished sound) rather than "live" (give 'em the show of their life), and it conveys the hypnotizing power of SAHB much less effectively than the Live album, or other archive releases that let you hear full shows from actual tours. But the pleasure is undeniable.

Alex Harvey: The Soldier On The Wall

ALEX HARVEY: THE SOLDIER ON THE WALL (1983)

1) Mitzi; 2) Billy Bolero; 3) Snowshoes Thompson; 4) Roman Wall Blues; 5) The Poet And I; 6) Nervous; 7) Carry The Water; 8) Flowers Mr. Florist; 9) The Poet And I (Reprise).

Perhaps by the time the early Eighties rolled along, Alex was bracing himself to regain his star­dom: with his new band, "The Electric Cowboys", he resumed touring and entered once more into the recording studio. With his tragic, untimely death on February 4, 1982, from a massive heart attack, all hopes were extinguished.

All we have left from this stage in his career is Soldier On The Wall, a posthumous release that puts together semi-finished (or so I hope) tracks from those last sessions and credits them to solo Alex Harvey. And, as is the usual situation with such cases, it is rendered more interesting by the shadow of death that looms, unforeseen, but threatening, over it — most of the songs, whether we want it or not, will tend to associate with the man's demise and acquire an extra mystical aura from the depths of our own subconscious. Which, although gruesome, is still a good thing, be­cause otherwise Soldier On The Wall does not look much like a record that could have restored Harvey's stardom, much less add something truly important to his overall legacy.

In general terms of meaning and atmosphere, it's the same old Alex: a little clownish, a little sad, a little pompous, a little introspective. In terms of arrange­ment, it suffers from an acute case of synthesizer-itis: the ugly Eighties' keyboard sound is all over the record, and the yucky blobs of electronic poison that announce the album opener, 'Mitzi', backed by equally yucky electronic drums, spoil most of the song's pleasures. Zal! Where are you, Zal? 'Billy's Bolero' is an interes­ting attempt at combining martial rhythmics with country-western, but, again, its being domina­ted by that half-dead sound immediately dates it, in the bad sense of the word.

The keyboards temporarily leave the stage on a couple of real obscure covers — Buddy Ebsen and Tennessee Ernie Ford's 'Snowshoe Thompson', a cheerful folkie rave about California's most famous mailman ('mush man mush man mush man go!'), and 'The Poet And I', an instrumental composition by Frank Mills to which Harvey added his own lyrics, a mish-mash of folk imagery loosely based on the works of Robert Burns. Thus do Native America and Old Scotland shake hands over the album's A- and B-side, and the rowdy craziness of the former greatly comple­ments the bagpipe stateliness of the latter (which almost manages to ascend the same height as 'Anthem' one decade prior to it).

Some decently rocking tunes on the second side manage, in addition to these two highlights, to save the album from a complete disaster, but overall, its musical hide leaves a lot to be desired. It's so very sad, for instance, that Harvey never left behind a SAHB version of 'Roman Wall Blues' — a tense, personal, more-than-anti-war song that he first recorded in 1969, with a limp, boring band, and then waited until 1982 to re-record, when its impact was so much subdued by lifeless electronica. Sad, because even through the cheap sci-fi murk of these keyboards it is still possible to hear Alex Harvey the likeable loner, too smart for his own good. But a thumbs down all the same — this is simply not a kind of record to which one will turn frequently as long as all the SAHB catalog is at one's reach.

Alex Harvey: The Mafia Stole My Guitar

ALEX HARVEY: THE MAFIA STOLE MY GUITAR (1979)

1) Don's Delight; 2) Back In The Depot; 3) Wait For Me Mama; 4) The Mafia Stole My Guitar; 5) Shakin' All Over; 6) The Whalers (Thar She Blows); 7) Oh Spartacus!; 8) Just A Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody.

Harvey's first true solo album in seven years, despite being recorded with an entirely different band, picks up exactly where Rock Drill left us off: less humor and goofiness, more torment and introspection. Perhaps sensing that almost no distance was left to run, Alex continues to concen­trate on long, semi-confessional epics, somewhat poor on musical ideas but very rich on lyrics (which you can't make out anyway, since the older he got, the more prominently he retreated back to his Scottish accent).

And it's a success. Over the years spent with the SAHB, Harvey gradually completed his trans­formation from funny clown to sad clown, but where the funny clown was hilariously sarcastic, the sad clown now reaches serious depths that the first decade of Harvey's career never even hin­ted at. The Mafia Stole My Guitar is an honest, personal, and gradually more and more captiva­ting piece of work; I miss Cleminson sorely — and so, apparently, did Harvey himself, given that he even inserted an indirect grudge on the subject into the very title of the record — and new gui­tarist Matthew Cang, although competent, merely supplies the riffs without being the determining force in the band; but the fact of the matter is that this particular record can live and not die with­out Zal's presence, when something like The Joker Is Wild never could.

Of course, Harvey wouldn't be Harvey if the record were wiped clear of its wildcards: Louis Pri­ma's 'Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Nobody' sternly reminds the listener that lounge entertainment still is, and will always be, Harvey's musical cradle, and the over-arranged, wildly futuristic arrangement of 'Shakin' All Over' may be one of the weirdest tracks Alex ever cut — but also effective, since, now that I think of it, the song's chuggin' riffage as originally practiced by Johnny Kidd and then the Who, just begs for a little "sci-fi treatment".

But the bulk of the record is occupied by the epics I mentioned — six minutes for 'Back In The Depot', five for the title track, seven each for 'Wait For Me Mama' and 'The Whalers'. Written as relatively simple, slow-to-mid-tempo "singer-songwriter" style panoramas, occasionally changing keys ('Back In The Depot' picks up speed at the end, 'The Whalers' turns into an aggressive rocker midway through before calming down again), occasionally built on ferocious hard riffage (title track), I can still see how many people would find them boring; they display neither the manic energy of a Springsteen nor the cool chops of a classic era prog-rock band.

In fact, they all depend on whether one has succeeded in getting Harvey's quintessential charisma under one's skin or not. Assessing the lyrics might help; 'The Whalers', for instance, uses the whaling process as a barely concealed metaphor for the vanity of fame and success ('I'll throw the carcass on the boil, sell my soul for bloody oil'). But one doesn't even need much English, I guess, to get the impression that this is a level of rock theater dangerously bordering on real life depres­sion and disillusionment. Throughout, Harvey sings without a single trace of the recklessness and invigoration of old — it's all painful, so much so that in places, the singing almost dissolves into laryngeal gulps and growls. But it's all meaningful, and I'm willing to buy into it.

So it's essentially that kind of a record where the brain cannot help you all that much — the only serious "musical creativity" goes into 'Shakin' All Over', everything else has to do with self-pity and world weariness and poor health and Nazareth. But I do feel for the man, and I understand self-pity and world weariness and poor health and even Nazareth, and 'The Whalers' at least is beautiful in its ugliness, enough to shed a tear or two and to warrant a thumbs up, with the brain gallantly ceasing the right of final decision to the emotional reaction. This might just be the most proverbial­ly "sincere" album from Harvey, and by the age of 44, everyone has a right to record a proverbially sincere album and expect some love and respect for it.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Rock Drill

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: ROCK DRILL (1977)

1) Rock Drill; 2) The Dolphins; 3) Rock'n'Roll; 4) King Kong; 5) Booids; 6) Who Murdered Sex; 7) Nightmare City; 8) Water Beastie; 9) Mrs. Blackhouse.

After SAHB Stories, Harvey and the Sensational Band temporarily parted ways, for reasons which are not easy to understand in retrospect. All I know is that Harvey needed some time off to tend to his ailing backbone, and he also engaged on a typically Harvey-style weird project: a spoken word album about the Loch Ness monster (!). In his absence, the remaining four recorded and re­leased a record of their own, suitably titled Fourplay, which bombed commercially and got lam­basted critically. I have not heard it; given Cleminson's presence on it, it may not have been all that bad. But apparently the split made everybody feel uncomfortable, and, in a year's time, Harvey and the boys were back together — although with one irreplaceable loss already: key­boar­dist Hugh McKenna, replaced by a weaker choice in Tommy Eyre (previously known as the guy who played the organ on Joe Cocker's 'With A Little Help From My Friends').

Still, none of them seemed happy. Harvey was still ailing (and also depressed about the recent death of his brother). The music scene was changing, making their sounds and styles less and less "relevant" with each passing month. And Cleminson, perhaps, was also thinking about a change of scenery: right after this record, he accepted the proposal to join Nazareth as a second guitarist. Things looked pretty dark, and this is a dark record. The very title, Rock Drill, does not seem to strive to make the listener happy, and its cover — a grim suit of armor against a shadowy back­ground — is the most eerie and depressing sleeve the band ever put out. To say nothing of the first impression once the music actually starts playing — the growling synthesizer tones that wel­come you out of the depths of hell are a far cry from the generally light and cheery intros on most other SAHB albums.

Yet it is not a bad album. It is pretty bad if one approaches it expecting another typical slab of flashy SAHB cabaret, alternating crazy headbanging with good biting humor and just an occasio­nal streak of darkness to make things more serious. Rock Drill thrives on the darkness: it cranks up SAHB's progressive, complex side to the max, with the only light number, an innocent country rocker called 'Mrs. Blackhouse', thrown on at the end in a totally who-the-heck-cares manner. Hence, the possibility of disappointment — unjust. What kind of music would you be writing under the circumstances listed above, anyway?

It may be true that the results downplay Harvey's main strength: theatricality. For instance, 'The Dolphins' is a solid six-minute mini-epic, but it is the kind of material that we'd rather associate with the likes of Rush, or just about any other seriously-minded second- or third-generation prog rock outfit. Its lengthy romantic guitar solos and solemn piano riffs leave Alex with very little to do — he is simply belting out the lyrics, without at all "getting into character". Yet this lack of uniqueness should not discredit the music, which is quite evocative by itself.

Also, Harvey is much more prominently featured on the second side, where it is his presence, after all, that adds the proper bite to the faceless boogie of 'Who Murdered Sex?', the faceful punkish boogie of 'Nightmare City', and the album's generally acknowledged highlight — 'Water Beastie', probably a leftover from Harvey's solo album on Loch Ness, forever memorable upon first listen due to the unbeatable chorus: 'Look at the monster, look at the monster, look at the monster in distress'. If these numbers are generally less flashy and more "dim" than we'd like them to be, this does not mean that they will not, in time, be able to speak to you the same way some of Harvey's more immediately impressive material can. Come to think of it, 'Who Murdered Sex' and 'The Dolphins' are, in a way, more intellectually rewarding than 'Framed', even if the latter is so much more basic fun.

All of this means that Rock Drill is unquestionably a thumbs up for me, particularly for the brain department, although the heart sometimes gets a mighty adrenaline rush as well — especial­ly mid-way through 'Dolphins', when Cleminson's solo breaks through the grayness and mud and soars up to heaven in a last desperate swan song for the original band. No great shakes, the record, but a fittingly, instructively grim (and thought-provoking) terminus.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: SAHB Stories

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: SAHB STORIES (1976)

1) Dance To Your Daddy; 2) Amos Moses; 3) Jungle Rubout; 4) Sirocco; 5) Boston Tea Party; 6) Sultan's Choice; 7) $25 For A Massage; 8) Dogs Of War.

Recovering from the temporary bout of "all-coveritis", Harvey, Cleminson and Co. go back to relying upon their own forces, as they deliver yet another serving of the usual stylistic melange. SAHB Stories is not one of their most acclaimed albums (even though, surprisingly enough, it brought them their highest bit of commercial success with the single release of 'Boston Tea Par­ty') — it came out at a time when the Harvey formula was quickly becoming obsolete, and 'punk' values were replacing 'glam' at an alarming rate. But, ripped out of its historical context, it can proudly measure up to any other solid SAHB album of the decade.

It is dark, though. As you look back on the band's career, you can definitely see the early comic overtones gradually recede and give way to a much bleaker vision of the world. At some point, you no longer have any lightweight vaudeville, and even basic headbanging rock'n'roll is begin­ning to be presented with a strong touch of bitter lemon. Looking at the lyrics to some of these songs, it's relatively easy to crack the usual smile, but the music, per se, is not smile-inducing at all. 'Dance To Your Daddy', for instance, would seem like a title destined to accompany some cute pop-rock ditty, but why, then, is its main riff so reminiscent of Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song', and what do all the aethereal bursts of synth soloing and angel choirs have to do with it?

Indeed, most of the time the band is bent on one of two things: churning out grim, unfriendly riffage ('Amos Moses'; the unbearably catchy 'Sultan's Choice') or engaging in ominous, unsett­ling atmospherics (the never-ending, but somewhat hypnotic 'Sirocco'). Every once in a while they venture out into funky territory ('Jungle Rub Out' and especially '$25 For A Massage', also reminiscent of Zeppelin, but this time of their funk explorations on Physical Graffiti), yet im­pression-wise, these numbers do not stray too far from the overall darkness. Even 'Boston Tea Party' itself, no matter how much it seduces us with its superficially friendly singalong chorus of 'Are you going, are you going to the Boston Tea Party?' — the one whose superficial friendliness sold it so well to British audiences in 1976 — recalls the whole story of American independence in a bitter vein, and that chorus is oddly unengaging: it transfers neither joy nor sorrow, getting stuck in your head for a reason that is impossible to understand.

It may be so that the band was simply caught in a state of confusion and tiredness, and Harvey was already suffering from his spine problems. It may have been a conscious decision to 'morose up' their act. The bottomline is that the album is a downer, from the initial deception of 'Dance To Your Daddy' and right down to the openly sadistic, murderous conclusion of 'Dogs Of War', one of the most hateful tracks ever recorded by the band (and something tells me they really meant it). But downers can be masterpieces, and far be it from me to accuse these songs of slackness or to­tal 'genericness'; most are fabulous creations, with the utmost care paid to the smallest details — things like 'Sirocco' may be fairly simple in their basic execution, but what matters is the impres­sionistic sonic landscape painted by all sorts of unpredictable brushstrokes from the band's array of gui­tars and keyboards. (It doesn't exactly give out an impression of a real sirocco — rather a pre-feeling of one — but it hardly matters).

Since it is also quite consistent — not one track that feels completely out of place — the brain and heart department concur in their thumbs up, although it is still unclear which of the two is more instrumental in this decision. The heart rather goes after the basic charms of 'Sultan's Choice' (top-notch riff + catchy chorus + on-the-edge lyrics that could be about sex slave trade = first rate gut level pleasure), but the brain is most impressed with the likes of 'Dogs Of War', so we'll just leave them at that and move along.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: The Penthouse Tapes

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: THE PENTHOUSE TAPES (1975)

1) I Wanna Have You Back; 2) Jungle Jenny; 3) Runaway; 4) Love Story; 5) School's Out; 6) Goodnight Irene; 7) Say You're Mine (Every Cowboy Song); 8) Gamblin' Bar Room Blues; 9) Crazy Horses; 10) Cheek To Cheek.

Usually, the decision to record an all-covers album serves as a sharp separation marker between the artist's "classic years" and the "creative slump" — The Band and Todd Rundgren immediate­ly come to mind. This is not a God-enforced rule: David Bowie, for instance, somehow managed to form an exception to it. But the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, unfortunately, did not.

This is a strange collection: beginning with two original — and not half-bad — numbers, but then dedicating most of the rest of its space to Harvey's "deconstructions", which are, to put it mildly, hit-and-miss. It's almost as if they'd started recording a proper album, but then ran out of ideas midway through studio time and decided to fool around instead. Tomorrow Belongs To Me may have been avaricious in respect to catchy melodies, but it still bubbled with creativity; Penthouse Tapes is the band arrogantly coasting, and they're loving it.

The selection is very, very Harveyesque: today, post-modernist freaks have arguably tried out every combination and concoction that is mathematically possible, but in 1976, only on an Alex Harvey record — not even on a Frank Zappa one — could you discover Del Shannon shaking hands with Jethro Tull, Irving Berlin ride in tandem with Alice Cooper, and Leadbelly and Jimmy Rogers sharing the apartment with the Osmonds. The very idea to put prog, glam, and pre-war blues together was so novel it could sell the album on its own. Today, though, it's dated in the nasty sense of the word: it doesn't really matter how outlandish your idea is unless you have the chops, brains, and guts to get it to work properly.

And out of all these numbers, nothing manages to captivate me with one exception: 'Gamblin' Barroom Blues'. I don't even know why. But I'm guessing that Alex sensed some sort of special common bond between himself and Rogers — both had a penchant for giving themselves up to bouts of drunken loneliness, and despite all of Harvey's trademark wildness, nowhere ever in his live show does he come across as more believable than when he morphs into this miserable, piti­ful little guy. The swagger of 'School's Out' goes nowhere — it is impossible for him to surpass the dark fires of Alice — but the retro-sadness of 'Gamblin' Barroom Blues' hits hard, much har­der, at least, than all of his stiff pre-war blues workouts on The Blues.

As for the originals, 'I Wanna Have You Back' is competent barroom rock in the 'Gang Bang' vein, and 'Jungle Jenny' is a Tarzan tale that does get to be both hilarious and insinuating ('Jungle Jenny can't get any'). There's also, I believe, some sort of cowboy original midway through the record, but I probably forgot about it for a reason. So, a couple good ones, but not enough to pre­vent me from thumbs down-ing the album, as I absolutely fail to see the point of these covers, and I deeply resent the idea of Harvey dragging the band down to the level of his pre-Sensational days. Zal Cleminson does not deserve to be wasted that way.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Live

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: LIVE (1975)

1) Fanfare; 2) Faith Healer; 3) Tomahawk Kid; 4) Vambo; 5) Give My Compliments To The Chef; 6) Delilah; 7) Framed.

Strange that, in the era of triple live albums de luxe, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band decided to go along with just one LP's worth of material, giving the listener but a snippet of all the delights that constituted their live show. Where is the hard rock punch of 'Midnight Moses'? The tango tragicality of 'Next'? The film-noir satire of 'Man In The Jar'? The cathartic solemnity of 'Anthem'? The only explanation is that, perhaps, the band consciously did not want to give any pretext for being associated with the pomp of progressive rock; but in retrospect, they hardly needed to be afraid. It's a good thing that, at least, we now have a solid bunch of releases from the archives to remedy that early mistake.

Granted, Live only works well if you have no idea what a SAHB live show actually looked like (or, perhaps, on the contrary, it doesn't work well unless you have some sort of idea). At their peak, the band put out a theatrical show second to no one, with the possible exception of Alice Cooper if you're into all that decapitated dolls and live snakes stuff. Zal Cleminson's Pierrot makeup and proto-KISS stage antics were a big part of it, of course, but Alex provided the lion's share of entertainment, with each number sporting a different personality tailored after the song's "message", and his grimacing and miming alone were worth seeing the show; unfortunately, very few of them were captured on tape, but what there is is some of the funniest, most cleverly staged and most impossible to ignore video material from the decade.

Without the visuals, one could easily complain about a number like 'Framed' extended to a ten-minute running time, during much of which the band does not even play anything; in between, Alex is busy changing clothes (onstage), tearing through paper prison walls (I presume), stuffing a pair of freshly-licked stockings in his mouth (at least, that's what he does in most of the preser­ved filmed versions), and running through the entire emotional palette while trying to convince the audience of his innocence, asking if they believe him in between each phrase. It isn't particu­larly deep, of course, but it's great old-timey entertainment, and it has no way of being well trans­lated onto a picture-deprived recording.

On the good side, the band did deliver great overdriven music on stage; 'Vambo', in particular, shines during its extended instrumental break where Zal is given ample time to demonstrate his impressive chops (and no drum solo!), and the other songs are, expectedly, "dirtier" and more ag­gressive in their delivery than the better polished studio versions. By way of track listing, we're usually expecting some small surprise on every deserving live album; here, said surprise consists of Tom Jones' 'Delilah', which was actually a regular presence at the band's mid-Seventies show but somehow never made it onto a studio album. It's one of their best stabs at deconstruction, perfectly capturing the catchy melody of the original but, at the same time, wildly mocking its inescapable schmaltz (the very idea of Alex Harvey giving a Tom Jones impersonation is enough to tear the canopy off the altar).

Since this is, after all, a great band at their live peak, I cannot help but put my thumbs up in to­tal approval; but the track listing isn't entirely satisfactory (choosing 'Tomahawk Kid' over 'Midnight Moses' was simply wrong), and if someone somewhere out there, for once in someone's life, de­cided to do good, Live would have been re-packaged with a thoroughly expanded track list, and with an added bonus DVD containing whatever can be salvaged from the band's thin archival collection of live footage. Such a release would have been absolutely priceless, and recommen­dable above even the best SAHB studio records. Until then, we can't get no satisfaction.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Tomorrow Belongs To Me

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME (1975)

1) Action Strasse; 2) Snake Bite; 3) Soul In Chains; 4) The Tale Of The Giant Stone Eater; 5) Ribs And Balls; 6) Give My Compliments To The Chef; 7) Sharks Teeth; 8) Shake That Thing; 9) Tomorrow Belongs To Me; 10) To Be Continued.

This is probably the most Zappa-like album ever recorded by the band — in light of the presence of unpredictable multi-part whacko stories like 'The Tale Of The Giant Stone Eater' and the big fan favorite 'Give My Compliments To The Chef'. Thus it will have the most appeal to those who appreciate the zany theatricality of Harvey, but may cause a slight fall off for those (like me) who only appreciate it as long as it's propelled by the musical skills of Clemenson.

Not that the latter aren't evident on here, but the balance is clearly tipped in favor of Alex, with Zal stepping somewhat out of the way; he is felt throughout, but not always heard. The only Big Riff, for instance, that manages to be memorized after a bunch of listens is the one that drives 'Snake Bite' — and only because it's a clever variation on the riff of 'Whole Lotta Love'. But even on that track, as well as most others, the band is downplaying their hard rock component and con­centrating on a mixture of vaudeville, art-pop, and basic barroom brawl instead. ('Ribs And Balls' is the lone exception, but it's just a small interlude between the "epic" compositions).

Therefore, to truly love this album, you must truly love 'The Tale Of The Giant Stone Eater'. It isn't catchy, its several sections aren't particularly wonderful in the melody department, and the whole "rock theater" schtick isn't even novel any more. But the band still manage to gather them­selves and give Harvey's over-the-top delivery of this harrowing tale of stone shortage and dying trees a properly over-the-top musical backing. The odd truth is, this should probably be seen ra­ther than heard, but no footage of any live performance has surfaced, nor can this be found on any live album — so I'm not even sure it was ever performed live. It's odd, and it requires a seriously acquired taste to be loved.

The other piece on here which clearly contains a chunk of Harvey's soul is 'Give My Compli­ments To The Chef'. It's more solid dynamically, slowly unwrapping from a quiet electric piano led dirge to all-out rock fury, stuffed with obscure, Dylan-style, lyrics ('Leo sits behind the desk, he wanna see the woman cooking gravy, nobody sent no argument and I gotta go and join the Royal Navy') and "progressive" synthesizer squeaks and bleeps. It's meaningless if you try to take it apart, but somehow works when strung together, like the last desperate rant of the seasoned madman, driven to the very brink of existence by our nice society.

And only a seasoned madman, I guess, would want to end the album with a completely straight­forward, dead-on serious rendition of 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me', a song which unsuspecting fans could mistake for an honest, heartfelt attempt to recreate the serenity and solemnity of 'Anthem', but also one which those who are aware of its true origins might be appalled at (if you happen to be in the first category, it's a great stimulus to check out the pleasures of Cabaret). It is rumored that Harvey allowed himself to appear on the German stage dressed up as Hitler, and this is just another bit of uncomfortable titillation that the man thrived upon. You'll find it either fascinating or disgusting, but, in all cases, thought-provoking.

My gut reaction is that Tomorrow Belongs To Me, with its heavier than usual emphasis on the Show rather than the Music, is a notable step down from the previous trilogy of albums; but it is still consistently interesting, and, given that my brain respects it more than my heart loves it, I'd like to give it an intellectually-motivated thumbs up with the possibility of further warming up to it in the future. But experience tells me there'll always be unusual individuals in all corners of the world that would be simply delighted to hum 'The Tale Of The Giant Stone Eater' in the shower, so, all you unusual individuals, this one's for you!

Alex Harvey: Alex Harvey And His Soul Band

ALEX HARVEY: ALEX HARVEY AND HIS SOUL BAND (1964)

1) Framed; 2) I Ain't Worrying Baby; 3) Backwater Blues; 4) Let The Good Times Roll; 5) Going Home; 6) I've Got My Mojo Working; 7) Teensville USA; 8) New Orleans; 9) Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger; 10) When I Grow Too Old To Rock; 11) Evil Hearted Man; 12) I Just Wanna Make Love To You; 13) The Blind Man; 14) Reeling And Rocking.

Out of those people whose musical career took years and years to get off the ground, Alex Har­vey must hold an indisputable record. Success and notability weren't his until the launching of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band in 1972 — yet The Alex Harvey Soul Band was active and kicking around the circuits of Scotland and lands to the south since at least 1959, when the Beat­les were still the Quarrymen and Elvis was still in the army.

But was there anything particularly worthwhile about the Soul Band? No, except for perhaps a damn fine good taste in selecting their cover material (the scarce information we have on this page from Harvey's past does not include anything on original songwriting). They performed quite a lot of diverse material, almost completely shutting out the more "commercialized" US and UK pop hits and concentrating instead on everything from rockabilly to R'n'B to electric blues to even digging out and rearranging old pre-war blues standards (Harvey's special predilection for these golden oldies would result in an entire album dedicated to them — see below). In all that, they arguably had little or no competition on the British/Scottish scene of the early Sixties.

This is where the praise comes to a dead end, though, because the band's only album, as far as I'm concerned, holds only meager historic interest. It was recorded on the heels of their (traditional for all British bands of the period) big break on the Hamburg club scene, and dressed up as a "live" album, with overdubbed audience noises, although the sound quality is way too good for anyone to be duped — it may have been, and probably was, live in the studio, but that's about as live as it gets. The fourteen songs faithfully run the gamut of whatever was listed above, and eve­rything is done with a proper amount of professionalism and, perhaps, even some excitement, yet there is nothing in these performances that somehow improves on the originals or, more impor­tant, changes them into something worth hearing on its own.

Harvey himself, although blessed with a powerful voice, was still light years away from capturing his tragic madman stage persona, and, although he is nowhere near as obnoxious on this record as he is on The Blues, simply makes no competition to the other guys in the business. His sidemen are competent, but competent the way your local barroom band would be competent after having played in the barroom each night for five years. The "edge" is missing, if you know what I mean. If you don't, see for yourself — try to compare the band's performance of Leiber & Stoller & The Coasters' 'Framed' with the song's radical reworking on the same-titled debut from The Sensatio­nal Alex Harvey Band eight years later. The latter is a demented rock theater masterpiece; the former is... a cover of Leiber & Stoller & The Coasters' 'Framed'.

In short, this is a pretty bland album if you take it in the context of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates (who rocked out better), the Beatles (who had better songs), the Beach Boys (who had better vocals), the Dave Clark 5 (who had a riskier and edgier sax player), the Animals (who had a cra­zier frontman), the Rolling Stones (who had a far more dangerous and provocative sound), the Americans (who wrote all these songs that Harvey covered), the Russians (who had just flown Gagarin into space three years ago), and the Romulans (each of whom looked more handsome than Alex Harvey could ever hope to get). If you manage to strip away the context, it all comes across in a far more positive light, but I guess Avril Lavigne could also be thought of as the epi­tome of punk if one didn't know anything about punk. Thumbs down from the heart that did not manage to get wound up, and likewise from the brain that tried to justify the album's existence but found it easier to justify Asian despotism.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: The Impossible Dream

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (1974)

1) The Hot City Symphony, Part 1: Vambo; 2) The Hot City Symphony, Part 2: Man In The Jar; 3) River Of Love; 4) Long Hair Music; 5) Sergeant Fury; 6) Weights Made Of Lead; 7) Money Honey/Impossible Dream; 8) Tomahawk Kid; 9) Anthem.

God loves a third: The Impossible Dream concludes the trilogy of Alex Harvey records that no honest rock music lover should live without. If there's a breach in this fortress, it's that by now we know what to expect, and the record offers no amazing new surprises. You'll have the crunchy hard rock, you'll have the vaudeville and music hall, you'll have the generic blues-rock made non-generic through sagacious arrangements, you'll have a little bit of sensitive soulfulness, and you'll have the usual puzzled feeling of not understanding how much on here comes from the heart and how much goes as an appendage to Zal Cleminson's clown makeup.

But then, this is probably expected, and the good news is, the Sensational Band's style is so tho­roughly and utterly demented that, once they're on a roll, nothing can be truly predicted. Take even the weakest tracks on here: 'Weights Made Of Lead' is standard 'Green Onions'-style 12-bar, but certainly Booker T. & the MGs would have never thought of spicing the song up with such a fun clavinet-imitating funky guitar part as Cleminson invents for the recording. 'Sergeant Fury', in theory, should bore to sleep everyone who shivers at the name of Fred Astaire, but it is hardly possible to resist the energy of the song, or the cheesy, but seductive gay overtones in Alex's cho­rus of 'I wanna be rich and famous, I wanna be just the same as the stars that shine on the Christ­mas tree...'. In short, even where it's "common", it's a ton of fun; and where it is less than a ton of fun, it is never common.

Yet in all seriousness, The Impossible Dream is centered around two major compositions. 'Hot City Symphony' features two parts, the first of which is a slower, but not any less overwhelming re­working of 'Vambo' (by now, 'Vambo' was Harvey's scenic alter ego), and the second a Zappa-in­fluenced mock-detective story about a 'Man In The Jar' (who 'wanna get out' and is 'smashing the glass', so be careful!). Running over thirteen minutes, it doesn't feel one second overlong sin­ce you should be too busy following the misfortunes of the man in the jar to care about anything else.

But the album's true piece de resistance is 'Anthem', a song that begs for usage of this word even if it already weren't its title. Here, after fooling around with us for the duration of almost another entire record, Harvey suddenly turns around 180 degrees and yields a song of tremendous perso­nal power, or, perhaps, even national power — he does not usually parade his Scottish heritage on record, preferring it to seep through unconsciously, but here he hauls out the bagpipes (in fact, he'd even regularly haul out the pipers onstage) and leads the band in a glorious spiritual chant à la "Hey Jude", but with a religious twist provided by the angelic vocals of Vicky Silva; unfortu­nately, I am unable to locate any extra info on who she was, but it is her inspired performance, by all means, that rips the song out of its classy, but traditionally-based Scottish music flowerbed and skyrockets it way up to seventh heaven.

To call the tune "pretentious" would be the equivalent of remarking, with a straight face, that the Grand Canyon — in case you didn't know — is pretty deep. The real question is whether you're overwhelmed or not, and I am overwhelmed. I am, in fact, saddened: Harvey's 'although it's true I'm worried now, I won't be worried long' may have been just a gospel cliché when he recorded the tune, but it proved only too true, and if you trace the live performance of the tune on Youtube you'll see how many people are offering their R.I.P.s: this is the anthem of Harvey's life, and it's also the ultimate funeral song if there ever was one. (And it's difficult for me to believe that it has not served as an inspiration for McCartney's 'Mull Of Kintyre', although, of course, all anthemic Scottish music does sound pretty much the same).

For 'Anthem' and 'Hot City Symphony' alone, the brain and heart would gladly unite in a joyful tandem and lift their thumbs up high, but honestly, I can't find one truly weak spot on the album. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll smash your head up against the wall — and yes, you'll be offered plenty of cheese, but haven't you heard? Scottish cheese is pretty damn good.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Next

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: NEXT (1973)

1) Swampsnake; 2) Gang Bang; 3) The Faith Healer; 4) Giddy-Up-A-Ding-Dong; 5) Next; 6) Vambo Marble Eye; 7) The Last Of The Teenage Idols.

The loony carnival continues on Next, an album that stretches the capacities of the band to the limit — in fact, to the limit of becoming offensive, as not a few people even today express genu­ine indignation at a song whose chorus goes 'Ain't nothing like a gang bang to blow your blues away'. Well, what do you know: offensive for sure, but who could argue with the truth of it?

Next is not afraid to take risks, not only lyrical, but plenty of musical ones as well. There's only seven tracks, one of them multi-part, one — a lengthy, slow-developing art-rock romp, and the rest are an even wilder mish-mash of styles than Framed; but this is to be expected from the sort of meaningless, but exciting and titillating "rock cabaret" that Harvey and the gang are going for. The question is, does it excite enough? Under the musical leadership of Cleminson, it certainly does, enough for it to be completely unnecessary to make sense of it all.

Then, come to think of it, there is a general sensible thread running through the whole thing: sex, sex, sex, sleaze, and sex again. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that Bon Scott, in his stage and studio persona, must have been hugely influenced by the Harvey of Next, a fact rendered even more plausible by the brawny Scottish heritage of both gentlemen. But The Sensational Alex Har­vey Band was, of course, a more adventurous outfit than AC/DC, and in their everlasting quest for more raunchiness, they channel as many naughty spirits as they are able to find the proper seats for within the confines of one record. The spirit of barroom brawl on 'Gang Bang'; the spirit of Southern rock on 'Swampsnake'; the spirit of heavy metal on 'Faith Healer'; the spirit of rock­abilly on 'Giddy Up'; the spirit of doo-wop on the outro section of 'Last Of Teenage Idols'; and, wildest of all, the evil Voodoo spirit on 'Vambo Marble Eye', a veritable Ogoun Badagris of a rock tune, all covered in the fireclouds of Cleminson's wah-wah playing.

Once all these spirits have taken their places, I cannot see how an album like Next could fail to be one of glam-rock's quintessential statements, a record that perfectly holds its own alongside Elec­tric Warrior or even Ziggy Stardust. Speaking of the latter, one exact thing Bowie and Harvey had in common was an adoration for Jacques Brel; the title track is a tango arrangement of the latter's 'Au Suivant', with an excellent translation/reinterpretation of the lyrics and perfect place­ment — it cuts across the middle of the record, interrupting the schizophrenic spirit dance for a few minutes of intelligent pause, as if the tired actors, clowns, and mimes took their masks off to catch their breath. Allowed to wallow in their misery a little while. Then it's show time again, and Harvey's/Brel's promise — 'I'll do anything to get out of life, to survive, not ever to be next!' — is cut short as the masks are up to the ominous wah-wah intro to 'Vambo'.

Of course, Next, like all Harvey albums, is clownish, meaning that it will never be able to achieve the same level of critical respect as Ziggy. In the eyes of the thinking person, it's more like a spoof on Ziggy-type material than an independent thinking person's artistic statement. But every now and then, clowns come closer to the uncomfortable truth than thinking persons, and, besides, Harvey wisely alternates between the clown's clown and the tragic clown — the latter is mainly seen on 'Next', but also emerges later during the first part of 'Last Of The Teenage Idols', where the tragic clown seems to be making fun of the clown's clown. There's real substance here behind the cabaret, which is how things should indeed go with all high-class cabaret; it only takes a will­ingness to go beyond the smut of the twenty seven guys of 'Gang Bang' to realize that.

Last hurrah should go to Cleminson, who continues honing his musical skills — the guitar playing on 'Vambo Marble Eye' and 'Faith Healer' is exceptional, and his tango riffage in unison with the piano on 'Next' is a perfect desperate foil for Harvey's perfect desperate singing. There is a great video of a performance of 'Next' from the Old Grey Whistle Test with Zal, in his trade­mark Pierrot makeup that he always donned at the band's live performances, not only plays, but mimes along to Alex's singing: the two make quite a lovely couple. Thumbs up on all the tracks, unanimously agreed upon by the heart and brain departments alike.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Framed

THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND: FRAMED (1972)

1) Framed; 2) Hammer Song; 3) Midnight Moses; 4) Isobel Goudie; 5) Buff's Bar Blues; 6) I Just Want To Make Love To You; 7) Hole In Her Stocking; 8) There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree, Mama; 9) St. Anthony.

By late 1972, Harvey had permanently teamed up with fellow Scotsmen band Tear Gas (from Glas­gow), led by guitar wiz Zal Cleminson, and the results were astounding. All of a sudden, in a matter of moments, the exact same musical approach which, on Harvey's first solo albums, soun­ded stupid and boring at the same time, turns out to be both intelligent and exciting.

It was up to Cleminson to transform Harvey's act from weak lounge-like parody into one of the toughest, raunchiest glam-acts of the decade. You get fat crunchy riffs à la Sweet, but more me­morable, wall-of-sound guitar overdubs that David Bowie never dreamed of, and, where the need arises for it, a brawny Glasgow barroom-rock atmosphere to rival the drunken-est escapades of Slade. But all over it Harvey's pre-post-modern persona still looms as large as ever, and now, when it has a solid musical backbone, it's no longer laughable, but rather hilarious — and, at ti­mes, sincerely intimidating.

Just for a laugh, it is advisable to play the old and the new versions of 'Midnight Moses' back to back. Unless you're a staunch hard-rock hater, I can't even visualize the perspective of someone willing to prefer the original, what with all the fury that Cleminson invests in this reworking. The brass section has been retained for 'I Just Want To Make Love To You', but now it's also being propped up by terrific guitar work, not to mention the tight rhythm section, and now the extended coda is involving, not excruciating.

Whether it is the old stuff or the new stuff, there is nary a weak spot on the entire album. Leiber and Stoller's 'Framed' is recast as a slow, plodding, mammoth Seventies' rocker; 'Isobel Goudie' is Harvey's tongue-in-cheek contribution to the progressive excesses of the age, replete with dark distorted organ chords and smooth transitions between quiet/hypnotic and loud/bedazzling (as would probably befit a song about a creepy Scottish witch!); we then get our feet firmly back on the ground with 'Buff's Bar Blues', Harvey's best-ever drinking song with a jaw-dropping guitar solo from Zal (but what sort of a drinking song would ever in­clude a verse like 'drinking up Spumanti, reading John McLain, his sister in the grubber and his brother was the same' — and who the heck is John McLain anyway, and how do you even spell him properly?); we get a wonderful retro vaudeville number ('There's No Lights On The Christ­mas Tree, Mother' — apparently because 'They're Burning Big Louie Tonight'); and we round things up with the sacrilegious naughtiness of 'St. Anthony', a track that not only throws a suspi­cious light on the nature of St. Anthony's temptation (and even his true ability to resist it), but also wraps the poor saint in a web of wah-wah and not so wah-wah guitars that raise some of the loudest ruckus and rumpus to come out of the British Isles in the early part of the decade.

In short, Framed is a fascinating musical journey, and double so when it is taken in the context of all the disasters of the previous limp decade of Harvey's career. Wholesale admirers of the man's talent and personality will argue that it took the arrival of the sarcastic spasms of the glam rock era to properly put Alex in his place, while in the Sixties he was simply steadily being ahead of his time, and they may be right, too, but the fact is, being ahead of one's time is not always a good thing — "ahead of the times" may be just as disastrous in terms of pure listenable power as "behind the times", and if it took Cleminson's hard-rock backing to make Harvey sound like an ironic versatile showman rather than silly irritating clown, no one is required to wreck one's brains trying to spot the future ironic versatile showman of 1972 in the silly irritating clown of 1969 or earlier. And this is certainly not downplaying Harvey's own achievements: I doubt that the work of Tear Gas could have easily stood the test of time without being linked to Harvey's personality, either. The Harvey/Cleminson match was — no second opinion about it — clearly made in Heaven, and if they had to wait ten or twelve years to find each other, well, who are we to judge Heaven's judgement? Thumbs up.

The Joker Is Wild

ALEX HARVEY: THE JOKER IS WILD (1972)

1) The Joker Is Wild; 2) Penicillin Blues; 3) Make Love To You; 4) I'm Just A Man; 5) He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother; 6) Hare Krishna/Willie The Pimp; 7) Flying Saucer's Daughter.

Another failed effort, also relatively hard to locate for a good reason. It is unclear who exactly is backing Alex on the album; accounts are contradictory, but at least one point of view is that all the members of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band were already on board for this session. I find this unlikely to be true, and completely baffling if it is true, because in that case there is no ratio­nal explanation at all to the miraculous transition from the unfunny boredom of The Joker Is Wild into the hilarious hard-rocking dementia of Framed.

Basically, Harvey is dragging on his "humorous" deconstruction schtick, with almost uniformly disastrous results. His take on heavy blues-rock, illustrated by 'Penicillin Blues', is like some ear­ly Led Zeppelin or Jeff Beck exercise in 12-bardom, but without any of the amazing guitar pyro­technics; instead, we just get a bunch of self-consciously "dirty" lyrics that are neither primitive enough to be convincing nor subtle enough to be enjoyable. (Case in point: 'you got such bad blood baby, looks like you need a shot — but I want to have you turn around, 'cause I wanna see everything else that you've got'. What is this, high school?).

It is just as painful to listen to Harvey's interpretations of 'I Just Wanna Make Love To You' (too ugly to be sleazy), 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' (the level of parody is about the same as if you and I got drunk in a downtown bar and started karaokeing), and Zappa's 'Willie The Pimp'; the latter is tied together in a medley with 'Hare Krishna' (!), and neither is funny or fun. Maybe this can be someone else's idea of humour, but I find myself completely unable to even raise a smile — and this is coming from the exact same man who, several months later, went on to make one of the most joyful records of the decade!

About the only thing that vaguely manages to entertain is the closing number, 'Flying Saucer's Daughter', a satire on heavy psychedelia where the music is marginally more complex and hea­vier on the sonic effects, and the lyrics marginally elevate beyond schoolboy pap. Even so, its fire and fury are pitiful next to the fire and fury of 'St. Anthony' (the album closer on Framed), and the tune has very little individual value. So, it goes without saying that this is a thumbs down in all respects — and the overall conclusion is that you just can skip the entire career of Mr. Harvey prior to the Sensational Band altogether. Apparently, though, sometime in mid-'72 the Flying Saucer's Daughter tweaked Mr. Harvey's brain a bit, and he's never been the same afterwards, to the great delight of all of us.

Alex Harvey: Roman Wall Blues

ALEX HARVEY: ROMAN WALL BLUES (1969)

1) Midnight Moses; 2) Hello L.A., Bye Bye Birmingham; 3) Broken Hearted Fairytale; 4) Donna; 5) Roman Wall Blues; 6) Jumping Jack Flash; 7) Hammer Song; 8) Let My Bluebird Sing; 9) Maxine; 10) Down At Bart's Place; 11) Candy.

After several years of relative inactivity, during which Harvey's main bit of public visibility was working with the original team for Hair, Alex tried to revive his fortunes and assembled a full rock band to produce his first true "formal" album as a solo artist. Considering that these days, you're lucky if you even come upon it in an old pile of recycled vinyl, you can imagine just how successful it was. Thank God for the digital era.

Then again, maybe not. The more I listen to Roman Wall Blues, the better I understand just how much of a difference The Sensational A. H. Band really made. Roman Wall Blues has it all — Harvey's genius-madman image, the post-modernist lyrics, the inventive and deconstructive song­writing, the stylistic diversity — but it doesn't have the one ingredient that really matters: well-played music. Maybe if you make a serious effort and evaluate this on its own, forgetting all about the tremendous musicianship of the aptly titled Sensational Band, it will be easier to warm up to the tunes. But there is really no need to: in the light of Framed and all that followed, Roman Wall Blues is just a prelude, a rehearsal, a weak demo version of the delights to come.

Alex himself must have known that, because he took the trouble of re-recording some of the best songs on this collection — such as the blues-rock rave-up of 'Midnight Moses', or the dark quasi-folk of 'Hammer Song' — with the Sensational Band. This is very laudable, but in the meantime it does not excuse the limp blues-and-brass backing on this record, and I am not even mentioning cases when it ceases to be backing and starts to be fronting — as on the exquisitely boring four-minute jam 'Down At Bart's Place'.

The worst problem, though, is that with poor musical backing, Harvey continues to sound annoy­ing rather than exciting. Depending on your constituency, you can think of his take on 'Jumping Jack Flash', for instance, as a masterful exercise in deconstruction, or as a silly clownish parody whose aims and goals are uncertain and whose effects range from neutral to negative. I prefer 'neutral', but that means the track simply has no reason to exist. They even re-record one song from Hair ('Donna'), but it doesn't go anywhere serious either.

I certainly understand why the record bombed — it's one of those albums you don't really know what to do with. It doesn't rock hard enough, it isn't nearly as funny as it could be, the hooks aren't tremendous, and the mood is neither heartily sincere nor explicitly insincere. It sort of slips through your fingers and through your ears, and few of us like records that slip through, so it's a thumbs down, from both the heart that finds itself offended for not being offered any emotional food and the brain that does not feel intellectually satisfied, either.

Alex Harvey: The Blues

ALEX HARVEY: THE BLUES (1964)

1) Trouble In Mind; 2) Honey Bee; 3) I Learned About Women; 4) Danger Zone; 5) The Riddle Song; 6) Waltzing Matilda; 7) TB Blues; 8) The Big Rock Candy Mountain; 9) The Michigan Massacre; 10) No Peace; 11) Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out; 12) St. James Infirmary; 13) Strange Fruit; 14) Kisses Sweeter Than Wine; 15) Good God Almighty.

The Blues, an absolute discographic rarity these days, was recorded at the tail end of Alex Harvey & His Soul Band's career — in fact, by the time it was recorded the "band" consisted of just about Alex himself and his brother Leslie (later of Stone The Crows fame, still later of the "first noted guitarist to have himself electrocuted on stage" fame). Information on the circumstances and participants of this recording is very limited, of course, but since the only instruments on it are an acoustic guitar (presumably played by Alex) and an electric guitar (presumably played by Leslie), I imagine that's about all the information we're ever gonna get.

Do not worry about the record being practically unavailable — it is so for a good reason, because The Blues is simply not a very good album. It is fairly unique for its times, though. Back when everyone else in Britain was busy jumping on the R'n'B wagon, and the only blues style that got attention and respect was Chicago electric stuff, Alex Harvey was willing to dig deeper and go further than that. No 'Little Red Rooster' or 'Rollin' Stone' will be found here; he covers some really old and (at that time at least) obscure tunes that come from the pre-war era — although I have a weird feeling that his sources were mostly white players, old folk, country-blues and bluegrass stuff (e. g. Woody Guthrie or Jimmy Rogers, whose 'TB Blues' is covered), because I only recognize 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out' and, of course, 'Strange Fruit' as songs made popular by black performers. Certainly 'Waltzing Matilda' and 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain' have little to do with the blues as such — but they're pretty old tunes all the same, and some people do have this manner of calling everything released before the Fifties as 'blues' unless it's Bing Crosby.

Stylistically and manner-wise, The Blues is a bit similar to the atittude of the Holy Modal Roun­ders on the other side of the ocean: very irreverent, rather paranoid, relatively unpredictable. But not as funny or inventive. And quite likely to induce headaches, because Harvey, in his overri­ding desire to sound off-the-cuff and different, overscreams. A few tunes are pleasantly quiet and modest, but much, if not most of the time, they turn into screamfests where any hope of subtlety is lost. Take the same 'TB Blues', for instance: Rogers' original, sung in his usual sweet, lulling voice, worked so well exactly because of the gruesome dis-coherence between the death-wrapped lyrics and the sugary, nonchalant voice, but Harvey's take on it doesn't even sound authentic when he imitates an agonizing man's paranoia — it sounds drastically overplayed, not funny, not terrifying, just annoying.

Annoying is the word, which I have some time ago sworn not to abuse, but there's hardly a better chance to use it in all sincerity than in this review. Most of these songs are annoying. 'Trouble In Mind' — annoying. 'Danger Zone' — annoying. 'No Peace' — annoying. 'St. James Infirmary' — very annoying. Thank God at least 'Strange Fruit' isn't annoying, but even so it's only notable for historic reasons, because I cannot imagine any sort of spiritual or material need for anyone to listen to a 'Strange Fruit' that is not done by a Billie Holiday or, at least, a Nina Simone.

In short, it's not hard to understand why Harvey had no hopes of making it big at the time, or why this stage of his career has not gotten a better treatment in retrospect. For 1964, this was way too weird, for any decade later than that, this is way too boring and annoying. And although, from a purely brainy-intellectual point of view, I am sometimes tempted to thumbs-up the record, my heart always overrides this decision with a no-go thumbs down all the way.