Scott of Thunder, have you ordered yet?

[westen44]

^^^

Those Slade videos must have only played a few times then.  Otherwise, I would have noticed them.  Thanks for posting those, though.   

[westen44]

The Old New Borrowed and Blue CD came in today.  I really liked it and ended up ordering Slade in Flame and Slayed.  I hope that's all the Slade albums I'll be ordering for a while. 

[uwe]

Those two got a least some rotation. Though I was never much of a Run Runaway fan, too folk-jiggy for me. But I'm partial to My Oh My (and Lea's delicate lead bass melody lines in there), that is one of their great, great ballads.

Michael, your life can simply not continue without a copy of Nobody's Fools!

[uwe]

While DuBrow may have wanted to be Steve Marriot, he simply didn't have anywhere near the amount of charisma and raw talent that Steve Marriot had. He was no Noddy Holder, either.
And in an attempt to provide a tenuous but de rigueur Rainbow/Purple connection... when watching the "Hear n Aid" sessions video, the DuBrow segment is most uncomfortable. Likewise the Don Dokken portion, but that's for another day...

DuBrow was a very limited singer, true. I thought he was more than a decent frontman though, some rogue charm, at least until he had his cool-looking receding hairline covered with that silly poodle, which made him look like all other LA Metal front men. Quiet Riot really lost something for me then and it corresponded with them attempting to make their music more melodic which didn't really work out either. That intermezzo with the Rough Cutt singer fell flat on its arse too though he was at least twice the vocalist of Kevin.

[westen44]

I looked into ordering Nobody's Fools last night.  But since I don't use Amazon the only other place I've found I can order it from is a fairly obscure record shop that I've been having technical problems with the last few months.  As of now, I can't figure out how to order anything from them because there is a glitch which prevents me from signing into their site.  I've just sent them an email.  Maybe they can do something about it.  I hope so.  This glitch has already kept me from ordering several CDs from them over the past several months. 

[uwe]

Noddy, in his best Wolverhamptonese, has some tales to tell:

[westen44]

The record store emailed me and said the problem was their fault.  They're going to try to find a way to correct the problem and get the Nobody's Fools CD to me.  I hope so.   

[westen44]

Noddy, in his best Wolverhamptonese, has some tales to tell:

I especially got more insight on the Reading and Hucknall performances.  I didn't know about the background on most of those things. 

[uwe]

My first Slade gig around 1978/79 or so will always be etched in my memory for the only gig I ever witnessed where the music was so loud, a guy standing beside me by the bass bins of the outsize PA (they were playing a club, yet had a PA in there large enough for a mid-size hall, parts of it reached up to the ceiling of the place) caught nosebleed! At that point in time, Ten Years After's Hear Me Calling was their opening number and they would only play it over their backline in the half-dark until Noddy hit "hear me calling ... LOUD!!!" and the guy behind the mixer would switch on the full PA and the lights. It was a physical experience (as the guy with the then immediate nosebleed could attest to, but even he dug it and was unperturbed!).

What followed was a tour de force of energy (similar in intensity only to the J. Geils Band which I saw at that exact same venue around that time somewhat later too - they had just released Love Stinks) like I never saw before or after. By the third number, Jim Lea was standing on one of the PA towers and doing an unacccompanied bass solo - it was friggin' amazing. This was in their "wilderness years"*** - their hits had dried up, they were without a decent recording contract, had failed to crack America amd were even in Germany viewed as a spent force and on the verge of only diminishing returns on the golden oldies circuit. But you wouldn't have known it from that gig, which was boisterous and brimming with self-confidence.

***The period about which they sang in their 1985 single "Do You Believe In Miracles?", their ode to Bob Geldof and his Band Aid organisational feat (long after both the Boom Town Rats had split and his solo career failed to igite) who in 1979 (at the height of the "I Don't Like Mondays"-craze) had asked them backstage after a Slade gig at a low key venue why they were still even bothering to carry on:



I love the coda of that song where at 03:20, 03:30 and 03:40 they start interpolating the "Feed The World/Let Them Know It's Christmas Time"-melody.

It was in the winter of '79
When the band was at a low
Then we met yer man that they called 'The Mouth'
At a party there on show

He said "Why'd you carry on this way?
I could never go to that!"
But he had to learn he was just the same
One step forward two steps back

Can you hear me now
Oh do you believe in miracles
Just as only dreamers can
And if he can work with a miracle
Like a bloody-minded man
Like a bloody-minded man

It was in the autumn of '84
Going live through '85
When he made the greatest show on earth
To help a country to survive

Can you hear me now, hear me now
Oh do you believe in miracles
Just as only dreamers can
And if he can work with a miracle
Like a bloody-minded man
Like a bloody-minded man

So yer man determined he found a cause
When the powers just couldn't cope
Or did you ever think that old rock'n'roll
Could give the world some kind of hope?

Can you hear me now, hear me now
Oh do you believe in miracles
Just as only dreamers can
And if he can work with a miracle
Like a bloody-minded man
Like a bloody-minded man

Oh do you believe in miracles
When the dream has just begun
And if we can work with a miracle
Just like Ireland's favourite son
And the dream has just begun

Do you believe in miracles
Oh do you believe in miracles

[westen44]

I noticed "Do You Believe in Miracles" is on the Crackers album.  I ordered that one a few days ago.  I realize that isn't a highly rated Slade album, but it looked like it might start becoming a hard-to-find album.  So I got it while I could.  Also, with all those Christmas songs on there I thought it should be ideal to listen to during the holidays because I get pretty tired of what they play on the radio at that time. 

[uwe]

The British Heart Foundation discovers Slade as a synonym of 70ies baby boomers and their cardiological collective guilt ...



And here is some click bait for Dave W,


DAVE EDMUNDS


and Noddy Holder! Plus assorted other celebrities, even one from Liverpool. Even a Led Zep member in a fringed jacket playing guitar AND NOT named Jimmy. Plus members of ELO, The Move and The Moody Blues too.

[westen44]

Lock up your daughters.  This might be sensible advice.

[TBird1958]

I'm always happy that I did get to see Slade live, they were very, very loud! They were the first band that really struck something in me, and (obviously) I wanted to be in a band like them someday.

This guy's exuberance onstage was in no small way responsible for how I turned out, and even to this day I can relate to the liner notes on the back "Slayed", how they tried to impress people by having a good time, not being static musicians hunched over their instruments attempting to wow the crowd with virtuosity.       

   


  No boots, no glam!

   

[uwe]

Lock up your daughters.  This might be sensible advice.

Uhum, a song that bears - cough! - hardly any correlation to these two tracks here which had been in the UK Charts 18 and 6 months before, respectively, giving Whitesnake its first two major UK hits (Fool For Your Loving #13, Don't Break My Heart Again #17):





Slade had not only played with Whitesnake in Reading in 1980, but also been their opening act (I remember a 1980 or 81 gig where Ozzy with Randy Rhoads was the opener, Slade the middle act and Whitesnake headlined), so Jim Lea must have thought I can write something like that too. And he did, the parallels are obvious, it went to #29 of the UK Charts in the fall of 1981. It's basically the bastard child of Fool For Your Loving's riff structure and breaks combined with Don't Break Ny Heart Again's stompiness. 'Whiteslade' even added some Jon Lord-style Hammond to their studio version, an otherwise rare occurence with their music.



Needless to say I really like it though it was a bit of an intentional effort by Slade to leave their pop foundations behind and appeal to a hard rock audience with a blues-rockier sound, sort of "If the metal kids now like us, we'll give them what they want!"

Re Dave Hill: His sartorial elegance and timeless high bangs cut hid what a tasteful lead guitarist he was. His solos were always just perfect for Slade, often picking up a previous vocal melody but then turning it around. He was a master of holding back and actually very controlled playing, much in contrast to his outrageous stage demeanor.

Are the Nasty Habits back in action, Fräulein Rommel?

[westen44]

This may seem misleading.  The name of the show Noddy is on is called "Loose Women."  It doesn't mean that's what he is talking about, although he does mention Slade and arguments about women in the interview.