Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 38 on 11/04/2008.

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City rhythms

Edinburgh might claim to have the picture book history, but Glasgow is the pulsing heart not just of Scotland but arguably of Britain too. Dominic Roskrow reports

Do you remember the Sensational Alex Harvey Band? You can learn a lot about a place by looking at the musical groups that grew out of them.

And The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were quintessentially Glaswegian.

The band were a raunchy, rough and ready rock band fronted by a singer who seemed to be permanently inebriated. “Are you going to the tea party?” he sang, “going to the Boston Tea Party?” And it wasn’t so much a question as an instruction, and one to be obeyed or ignored at your peril.

SAHB were of a time and a place, a bunch of drinking mates who were fun to have on your side but you suspect wouldn’t be adverse to the odd punch up or worse. Such was Glasgow in the early 70s.

Fast forward 35 years and take a look at the city’s music scene now. Arguably the city’s most championed bands at the moment are Franz Ferdinand and The Fratellis. Both say much about the modern day city that spawned them – sharp, clean, smart, literate, cosmopolitan, disciplined and professional, they are just about everything that the Sensational Alex Harvey Band weren’t.

Bands such as these are ambassadors for a city that has worked hard to rid itself of its reputation for drunkenness and violence, for bitter sectarian divisiveness and a deeply ingrained switch-blade culture.

And it has successfully moved way across to the other side, offering a totally different cultural experience to that on show in Edinburgh. It hasn’t attempted to outperform the capital in history and heritage but has.....

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By Dominic Roskrow

Section : Regional Focus

Page number : 31