Vambo Rules OK ~ SAHB

I've been watching my new DVD 'Inside the Sensational Alex Harvey Band', one of the 'Inside' series where people you've never heard of talk about the subject band between film and sound clips. This one actually has lots of interviews with the band and some excellent footage from the '70s, both live and on TV.

SAHB aren't a band I'd listen to every day but bung on a CD now and again and I go 'wow'. Hard, driving rhythms, Zal's wailing guitar and Alex's expressive Glaswegian vocals, all combined to make a unique and very recognisable and original sound. Very theatrical in their stage presence, the music they played and the lyrics Alex spat out, very much an early/mid '70s band that most people who remember them at all probably think of their hit with 'Delilah'. SAHB was the first band I ever saw live, back in 1973 when they supported SLADE, so I have a soft spot for them.

Alex Harvey was a great front man and band leader and it's quite sad that he never really made it big. He started playing in bands in the late '50s, was in 'Hair' in 1966 and so by the time SAHB was created in 1972 he was in his mid/late 30s. When I saw SAHB they'd issued 'Framed' and were promoting 'Next' on the SLADE tour, both a mix of driving rock and some dark and very unusual theatricality. An excellent live band and creative in the studio, who knows what they would have progressed to if they'd held it together.

Alex left in the late '70s and started a solo career and died in 1982 the day before his 47th birthday. Out of a long musical career, SAHB was his peak and most creative time, with 'Delilah' and 'Boston Tea Party' probably being SAHB's biggest and well known hits.

Some of my favourites are:

Sargeant Fury - a '30s pastiche with great honky tonk piano

Tomahawk Kid - based on 'Treasure Island' with the wonderful lines, "Yo Ho Ho, Lets be bold my Captain, And I'll hold your hairy hand, Let's forget the treasure, And we'll skip across the sand."

There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mama, They're Burning Big Louie Tonight ~ the title says it all!

Next ~ a tale of sex and gonorrhea and brothels and whores and the army and ... oh, just about everything sleazy...

Last of the Teenage Idols ~ autobiographical about Harvey himself, wonderful when he screams out the title as the chorus

Boston Tea Party ~ I loved this when it came out in the summer of 1976, so different from everything else in the chart at that time

So many great songs. There's a good compilation with samples from all the albums called 'Faith Healer - An Introduction to SAHB'. 'Faith Healer' is another favourite song, sinister and throbbing with menace - beware!

The other members of SAHB still get together now and then to play live. I can't quite imagine them without Alex. I'm listening to 'Anthem' at the moment, drums and bagpipes, a song that I think was played at his funeral.