Live/Penthouse Tapes

Artist: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Label: Umvd Import
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Enhanced
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 731458669821
EAN: 0731458669821
ASIN: B000063KFY

Release Date: 2002-04-18

Live/Penthouse Tapes

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Tracks:

Fanfare (Justly, Skillfully, Magnaminously)
Faith Healer
Tomahawk Kid
Vambo
Give My Compliments to the Chef
Delilah
Framed

Tracks:

I Wanna Have You Back
Jungle Jenny
Runaway
Love Story
School's Out
Goodnight Irene
Say You're Mine (Every Cowboy Song)
Gamblin' Bar Room Blues
Crazy Horses
Cheek to Cheek

Similar Items:

Framed/Next
Impossible Dream/Tomorrow Belongs to Me
SAHB Stories/Rock Drill
British Tour 76
Soldier on the Wall

Album Description

UK remastered reissue combines the glam-rock band's Atlantic album, 'Live' (1975) & Vertigo album, 'Penthouse Tapes' (1975). Contains the hit single 'Delilah'. 2-CD set housed in a slipcase. 2002.

Customer Reviews:

NOT REMASTERED! !! Universal Digital Mastering deception!.......2007-02-27

I pulled this supposed remaster up on Adobe Audition, and aside from it being a few seconds SHORTER, yes shorter, than the Vertigo CD from years ago it is the same! Amazon reviewer "Pattic" is correct..How sad and what a ripp off!!. I tried finding a link for emailing Gary Moore at Universal Digital Mastering but could not find one. Unbelieveable...too late to save tons of people from this sham. 5 stars for Alex & band but this is a product, and as such, weak and deceptive!

SAHB at it's Best.......2006-11-10

If you enjoy The Sensational Alex Harvey Band's studio recordings you will love the live versions found on this album. The "Live" album let's you hear the power this band was capable of...Enjoy!!! I have the vinyl ( I'm showing my age) and the CD is just as Great.

The Motthouse Tapes/Live .......2006-09-19

The Sensational Alex Harvey band was formed in 1972, when a thirty eight year old Alex Harvey decided he should have one more crack at the world of rock superstardom. Alex's brother Les had died that year, having been electrocuted on stage by a malfunctioning microphone, with his band `Stone The Crows' in Swansea. Despite a ten year age difference Les and Alex had been close; although devastated by his young brother's death it made Alex even more determined to succeed. He went back to his native Glasgow, Scotland, to check out a bunch of young tearaways who had formed themselves into a hard rock act called `Tear Gas'. Words were spoken, ideas exchanged, and Alex persuaded these young lads to become his band.
In 1968 he had joined as guitarist the London based orchestra pit for Gerome Ragni and James Rado's iconoclastic musical `Hair'. This would have a heavy influence on Alex, making him more aware of the theatrical side of rock music and why it was so important to put on a good show to back up your music. As Alex himself once said he formed `The Sensational Alex Harvey Band' and in turn invented Pantomime rock, with plenty of `boo and hiss' and `look behind you'.
Tear Gas was quickly transformed from the normal long haired rockers in their jeans, boots and T-shirts to characters in Alex's show.
Of course on stage out front was the man himself, Alex Harvey, the first rock `n' roll pirate. Skin tight jeans, dirty red handkerchief hanging out his back pocket, a black and white hooped T-shirt, with Alex's huge head sticking out the neck (he needed a big head to store up all his creative thoughts), a mop of unruly jet black hair on his head, all topped off with a swaggering black great coat.
Zal Cleminson, a staggeringly good lead guitarist in his own right, was persuaded into a skin-tight green cat suit and clown's white slap on his face, which made every gurn of his face during his searing solos turn him from one minute into something quite comical, to the next something quite sinister, the perfect foil for the band leader.
On the other side of the stage with a bass guitar in his hand was Chris Glenn, who would be attempting his Elvis impersonations, but actually coming across more as one of Elvis's body guards. So while all the girls flocked around Alex and Zal, everybody kept their distance from the mean looking bloke on the left.
Behind the drums was Ted McKenna. Every band has to have a rock on which to build on and Ted McKenna was the rock that the `Sensational Alex Harvey Band' was built on, and absolute no nonsense drummer who could also turn his hand to any of Alex's little idiosyncrasies.
On keyboards, holding the whole thing together musically, no matter how far off on a tangent the others went, Hugh McKenna always kept the ship on an even keel, even though he always did look a lot more like a school music teacher than a rock `n' roll star.
So the scene was set for fame, fortune and frolics. Immediately the band started touring, playing anywhere that would have them, all the time working up their act. Vertigo signed them, and released the first album `Framed' (1973), which met with great critical acclaim but little else.
It was on the road, though, that the word was being spread. Seeing that they had a hit band on their hands the executives from Vertigo, smelling money, put the band back in the studio with famous glam rock producer Phil Wainman and gave them an unheard of in those days month off the road to record their next album. When it came out, `Next' (1973) was not an instant hit, but slowly crept up the charts. After more touring, appearing at the Reading Rock Festival, touring as support to Slade, and appearing on the British rock show `The Old Grey Whistle Test', it finally went into the British top thirty in early 1974.
That year the band set about consolidating their position at the top of the rock `n' roll tree, touring all over Europe and releasing another album, `The Impossible Dream' (1974) which went straight into the Top Twenty album charts.
But it was 1975 where they hit pay dirt. `The Sensational Alex Harvey Band' was the largest grossing live act in the U.K. Completing two extensive tours, headlining the Reading Rock Festival, releasing two Top Twenty albums (`Tomorrow Belongs To Me' and a fabulous `Live' album), plus a Top Five hit single with their version of `Delilah'. I do not think that `Top Of the Pops' ever recovered from having this lot on.
After the homecoming Christmas dates in Glasgow at the end of 1975, the band should have been given some time off to recover, particularly their leader. But the record company wanted more product, and the band was put back in the studio. With not much material written for a new album, the decision was made to put out what they had, and fill the rest up with some of the cover versions that they used to play in their live set. This may not sound like such a good idea, but what actually came out as `The Penthouse Tapes' (1976) is a real fun rock `n' roll album.
The album opens up with a fat slice of Glam Rock Alex style in `I Wanna Have You Back', followed by another band original `Jungle Jenny' which is possibly the naughtiest song ever recorded. Then who can resist the band's version of Del Shannon's `Runaway'? A throwaway rock through I. Anderson's `Love Story' and then perhaps the album's highlight, Alex preaches to his boys and girls that when you get freedom within the sweaty grasp of your hand you should hang onto it and not pollute the water supply. The band then breaks into a rampant version of Alice Cooper's `Schools Out', a brilliant piece of musical theatre.
Next up is one of the better known songs in Pattaya, `Goodnight Irene', a Jackie Lomax song. The famous Pattaya Tahitian Queen Rock `n' Roll bar plays this every night to let us all know to go home. Well, Woody better not get his hands on this version, as it starts off in its traditional dreamy manner, but in the hands of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band it is of course soon twisted round into a vicious rocker that would soon have the aisles of Tahitian Queen rocking again.
`Say Your Mine (Every Cowboy Song)' is a gentle parody on Country and Western featuring some fine pedal steel guitar from B.J. Cole. `Gamblin' Bar Room Blues' is sung with such conviction that perhaps somebody from the record company should have realized there was a problem lurking just under the surface. With tongue firmly in cheek the band then rocks through the Osmond's `Crazy Horses', although Alex himself had very serious concerns about the environment having already penned `The Tale Of The Giant Stoneater' from the `Tomorrow Belongs To Me' album, which dealt with green issues. (Those Crazy Horses were actually cars spouting carbon monoxide.) The album closes in style with a lovely tilt at Irvine Berlin's `Dancing Cheek to Cheek'. You just have to remember which cheeks Alex is talking about here.
The Penthouse Tapes charted well, but `The Sensational Alex Harvey Band' never recovered. Alex left the band in 1978 and the band imploded in his absence. Alex formed a new band, but never recovered his former glories and tragically Alex Harvey died of a heart attack while on tour in Europe in 1982, the day before his 47th birthday.
But at the height of their powers, his band was truly sensational.
You can buy `The Penthouse Tapes' as a two for the price of one now. So you get the `Penthouse Tapes' and `Live' for your buck: get onto [...] right now.
Mott the Dog.

Live = 25 stars, Penthouse Tapes =3 stars.......2005-10-26

These two-fer discs can be somewhat annoying for obvious reasons. Often you will have to shell out for an album that you either don't want, or you already have, in order to get one that you do want.

That aside, the classic "Live" is worth the price alone as far as I'm concerned, with the Penthouse Tapes as "bonus disc" ala DVD.

If there are any SAHB fans out there who haven't heard the live album, you need to own this...now. The prevailing opinion of people in these jaded times, is that live albums are pointless, and I'd have to agree. In the days of modern production, and tightly choreographed stage shows, the most compelling reasons to make a live album no longer exist, however, in the 70's there were 2 very good reasons, especially for hard rock and prog-rock outfits:

1) For hard rock/metal bands, the production techniques of the time tended to render the studio albums dry and lifeless. The drums sounded like little shoeboxes and the big, crunchy guitars had barely any distortion at all, due to middle-aged engineers and producers who grew-up on Elvis forcing the guitarists to turn down. But the live versions! Ahh yes. All you need to do is play and old 70's Judas Priest studio album, then put on the live one to understand it all. The guitars were huge and ballsy, and the drums thundered. The live versions were much heavier, simple as that.

2) Bands in those days tended to "jam" and improvise on their material live, so that a 5 minute song on the studio album might be 20 minutes long on the live version, giving you a much different take on the material.

These days of course, that generally isn't the case, but it was back then. And I can't think of a better example than SAHB live.
The version of Faith Healer that kicks off the album is loud, dark and heavy, sounding more like Black Sabbath than the more avant-rock studio version with it's clean, clangy guitar. In fact, it wouldn't be inaccurate to call SAHB live a very quirky and unusal heavy metal album.

Of course, which sound you prefer will be a matter of taste, and you can take this as much as a warning as a recommendation if you tend to dislike heavy rock, but believe you me, if you haven't heard the live versions of these songs, you are definately in for a very different(and for me superior)take on the band's catalogue. Probably my favorite album of all time, and I don't say that lightly.

The Penthouse Tapes takes a lot of flak for being a "quickie throw-away" album full of covers. well, yes, it is that, but I still think it's a fun record, with some great stuff on it (although the cover of Alice Cooper's school's out is pretty awful), and I find myself pulling it out more these days than I used-to.

All in all you can't go wrong here. Vambo still rools ok?

Oh, and as a not insignificant sidenote, these are not remastered. The versions of Live and Penthouse Tapes included here are exactly the same as the previous single Vertigo releases. Yeesh.

Open Your Ears - Please!!!.......2003-11-21

I do not own this particular compilation, but I have two other verisons of each of the single CD releases [and of course I have my trusty old vinyl], and while I applaud the previous reviewer's insight and suggestion to provide an expanded version of LIVE - Please kindly refrain from bashing Penthouse!

Give it a listen - Cheek to Cheek ala Alex!!!

Nothing short of Brilliant!!! And lets not forget Runaway, and School's Out!!! Please!!!

So, I ask that you put your predisposed disposition aside, crank up the volume, open your ears, and let the TAPES blow you away...

[Of course, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a wee bit biased when it comes to Alex :-)]

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