Melody Maker 3 Jan 1970
Almost inevitably, the music reviewed or played in the early part of 1970 was recorded or released in the course of 1969, and I’ve already touched on some of it. One short snippet that caught my eye is this note of an album by pre-fame Alex Harvey that I’d not only never heard, I’d never heard of it at all.
It’s all on YouTube and I link to it below, but it’s fascinating, not least because the delivery and persona we know and love from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band is already intact, but things hadn’t quite clicked in the way they did when he met Tear Gas and SAHB was born.
But not for want of trying.
Alex is joined by his brother Les (of Stone the Crows) on lead guitar and the album is about half-and-half originals and covers, and two of the originals, Midnight Moses and Hammer Song, later crop up on SAHB’s brilliant 1972 debut album, Framed. SAHB fans (and if you aren’t one you ought to be), will be surprised and delighted by Midnight Moses played with equal aggression as the later SAHB version, but with added horn section.
Another of the originals, Broken Hearted Fairytale, mentions ’16 men on a dead man’s chest’, presumably the same 16 men who later crop up on The Tomahawk Kid. The covers include Jumping Jack Flash, which Harvey had covered with his earlier Soul Band (also with brother Les, and with an excellent horn section), and would cover again with SAHB.
I mentioned yesterday the notion of continuity, and the continuity through all of this is Alex’s voice and delivery, not just the aggression and twisted malice that he often affected, but also his phrasing, his way with delivery of syllables, sometimes stretched, sometimes purposefully distinct. And of course his theatricality.
Not mentioned in the short note in Melody Maker is Laurie Baker, who plays bass and an early VCS3 (I think) synthesiser. I would guess Baker and Harvey met while they both played in the pit band for Hair in London. See also his Wikipedia entry.
The title track of the album, which currently sells for over £200 on Discogs, is a setting of Auden’s poem of the same name.
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