Universal Music pay tribute to the short but prolific musical life of enigmatic Glasgow blues-rocker Alex Harvey with the biggest-ever, career-spanning, cross-label collection of his work. A total of 217 fully remastered tracks (with much of the material from the original master tapes) includes 21 that are previously unreleased, and a further 59 that are appearing officially on CD for the first time.
Alexander James "Alex" Harvey (5 February 1935 – 4 February 1982) was a Scottish blues/rock musician. Although Harvey's career spanned almost three decades he is best remembered as the frontman of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, with whom he built a reputation as an exciting live performer during the era of glam rock in the 1970s.
Joker Is Wild was the second album and created by Alex Harvey after the Soul Band. The album was released in 1972. Some time after 1972 the album Joker Is Wild was reissued and repackaged, the album song listings stayed the same, but the album was credited as being made by "The Sensational Alex Harvey Band" even though Alex Harvey wasn't with this band at the time, and the title was changed from Joker Is Wild to This Is.
Two discs of 1972-1977 BBC performances by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band with excellent sound are collected on this set, though it's not quite as lengthy as you might assume, adding up to about an hour and a half in all (with only about half an hour on the second disc). There aren't great surprises in store for those familiar with Harvey's BBC work during this, his commercial peak. As was also true of his records, his reputation as a truly sensational live visual performer isn't quite mirrored by this audio-only document. Too, the only song that doesn't appear on his studio releases of this time is a 1972 cover of "Dance to the Music," which might be energetic but certainly wouldn't give Sly & the Family Stone cause to worry.
Harvey's merger with Tear Gas, a faltering rock band, was the smartest move of his career. With a heady mix of theatrics and driving rock, SAHB quickly made a name for themselves across England, releasing this album along the way. Harvey struts and yowls and gets raunchy (prefiguring the SAHB version of "Delilah") while Zal Cleminson rips up the territory with some astounding guitar work. A great debut and a hell of a rock album.