SAHB Stories

Release Date 1976

Information here comes from the All-Music Guide and from the album..

ALBUM RELEASES
1976 LP Mountain 112

PERSONNEL
Alexander Harvey -- Guitar, Vocal
Zal Cleminson -- Guitar
Chris Glen -- Bass
Hugh McKenna -- Keyboards
Ted McKenna -- Drums

Recorded at
Basing Street Studios, London
Engineer: Phill Brown

Mixed at Air Studios, London
Engineer: John Punter

Art Direction: Mike Daud (AGI)
Photography: Gered Mankowitz
Logo design: Geoff Halpin

ALBUM TRACKS

side one

Dance To Your Daddy

Amos Moses

Jungle Rub Out

Sirocco

Boston Tea Party
Sultan's Choice
$25 For A Massage
Dogs Of War

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SAHB Stories by Allan Jones/MM A Rock and Roll band, Alex Harvey once observed, should be like a miniature theatre, a wild and exciting combination of creative talents - "four musicians, a dancer and a mad scientist"- entertaining its audience with an enthralling sequence of vivid and dramatic images. In concert, the SAHB have consistently achieved that ambition of the theatrical and the bizarre, with Alex's increasingly loony scenarios being played out against a background of adventurous and authorative rock music.

SAHB's albums have contained moments of comparable power and grandeur, but they have tended, one could argue in retrospect, to lack a certain overall consistency. Perhaps the albums (apart from the last pair, "Live" and "The Penthouse Tapes", which were really no more than entertaining asides), were too often only reference points for the stage spectaculars Vambo and the gang were designing to accommodate the various developments in the Vambo trilogy, which involved three albums. "Next", "Impossible Dream" and "Tomorrow Belongs To Me". None of these aforementioned trio seemed to exist successfully and totally as a recorded work. rather, they existed as loose collections of ideas, some remarkable, like "Faith Healer", "Hot City Symphony", "Anthem", "Tale of the Giant Stone Eater" and "Give My Compliments to the Chef", and others which were quite frustrating in their comparative mundaneness. In this context "The Penthouse Tapes" particularly arrangements of songs like "Love Story" and "School's Out" can be seen as an important transitional statement.

The increasing sophistication of the band was matched, on that album, by the growing confidence of their producer David Batchelor, who so conclusively captured the groups dynamic panache and versatility. On "SAHB Stories" both the band and Batchelor have surpassed themselves. It is a more mature and assured statement than any of its predecessors and offers evidence of the group's current composure and confidence. The recent SAHB single "Boston Tea Party", which opens the 2nd side of this album, will already have suggested the new mood of restraint which characterizes the collection, with the exception of the merciless and savage "Dogs of War".

Without radically changing their musical approach, the band have introduced a sense of refinement which has not often been apparent on previous recordings. Here they have elected to subdue their usual ferocity in favour of a more considered style which allows them to display their versatility and emphasizes the unique musical voice they have now assumed. They are, of course, still capable of the most abrasive assaults, as they prove on "$25 For A Massage" (a wonderfully sluttish piece of work), "Jungle Rub Out", a strange and lurid narrative which introduces us to a bizarre cast of characters (Vambo always did mix with a curious crowd of delinquents), and the exotic "Sultan's Choice", which features some typically neurotic Cleminson guitar.

But even on these numbers the ragged, jagged edge which one usually associates with the band (and, perhaps, for the first time on record SAHB exist totally as a band, with Alex's vocals and personality fully integrated into the overall mood of the production) has given way to a more reasoned and coherent approach which those who have previously been distanced from the group's music will find easier to assimilate.

This new mood is most vividly realised on Hugh McKenna's Arabian Nights fantasy, "Sirocco", a beautiful, elegant composition with distinctly menacing undertones and a mysterious, hypnotic rhythm. "Dance To Your Daddy" (destined, I'm sure, to become a classic of the band's repertoire) combines vividly this new mood and their old ferocity, combining, as it does, a lethal Cleminson riff (reminiscent of Zep's "Immigrant Song") and a positively ethereal chorus, the most wistful vocal Alex has ever recorded, and a final section which has Hugh McKenna creating an atmosphere of chilling calm. The whole cut is entirely seductive and really quite charming, so you can leave your jackboots at home for this one, Adolf.

Finally, there is the extraordinary "Dogs of War" the most powerful statement made by the band since "Anthem" and a sensational masterpiece. As the title implies, "Dogs" is a vindictive attack on mercenaries of quite unprecedented force. Alex makes the most dramatic vocal introduction possible "WHOSOEVURR TOUCHESS WUN HERR ON YON GREY HEAD", he roars as the band revs up and into a vicious atomic overdrive, "DIES LIKE A DOG... MARCH ON!" Then all hell breaks loose and those of a nervous disposition run for cover. "Dogs" is, without doubt, one of the most devastating examples of orchestrated malevolence and genuine anger and rage any rock band has recorded. I cant think, in fact, of any another band who would have had the nerve to attempt such a piece and succeed. It's an awesome climax to an important and very impressive album. March on!

Review courtesy Ulf Nawrot: Used here without permission.