Like almost any decade you can shake a stick at the 70s was an odd period in British fashion history. It was downright uncomfortable for those of us who lived through it as fashion conscious but self-consciously lumpen youths. Let's face it, flared trousers do not flatter the fuller figure, and as for 'slim fit' shirts, I believe the label speaks for itself, but let's leave them in the closet, shall we? The flowers and the pacifist pretensions of the late-60s had withered and died away to be replaced, among other things, by brickies in drag. There was Slade and The Sweet and there was... well, there was that bloke who dressed in tin foil, too. But they were strictly for the kids - and oh, how innocent we were. For the more mature in taste, and the art school crowd there were also the early manifestations of David Bowie and Roxy Music, and somewhere in the middle, yet ever so out on a limb, there was also The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. No art school graduates these, I'll be bound. The Sensational Alex himself was a wee Glaswegian jewish hardnut and tenement funster of the old school. His rhythm section looked like complete barmpots too, and then just for good measure, there was that guitarist... Don't let that clown's costume and the mincing about on stage fool you for a second, hen...
More than anyone else who's dressed up as a pirate in the name of popular entertainment before or since, ha, ha, me hearties, Alex Harvey just might have been the real deal.
"Next" was written by Jacques Brel, and so it's well suited to the seedy, cabaret setting The SAHB gave it - and with what decadent gusto and crumpled pathos! It's a song with a story to tell, a one act tragedy set to a sinister, edgy tango and Alex Harvey succeeded in making it sound like a distressing reality. Scott Walker made the same song sound, well, just very well sung, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q_T0jehqpQ and with a vastly overblown orchestration that makes the whole tale insipid. Walker's voice is often a wonder to behold, but it isn't the voice of a man who's ever held a small and dirty army towel around his belly. Likewise Brel's own on stage clowning went too far and rather undermined the song's robust content.
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