50 years ago today........

[TBird1958]

Slade "Slayed" is released..........An album that was a huge influence on me then, and still today. I played the record endlessly, my poor Mom - her proper German sensibilties were horrified by Dave Hill's hair! I think this to be their very best 'album" even though it doesn't have C'mon feel the Noize" on it, Jim Lea is utterly brilliant on "Move Over" and the big, woofy tone coming out of his EB-3 is clearly not the bass tone from the other side of the Atlantic. My proggie friends didn't much care for them, too caught up in the usual LZ, PF FM fare I guess. I was starting to learn the bass about this time, Lea's work was well past my abilities but it did inspire me to keep playing and Hill was everything I thought a rock star should be.
Thanks for the great music Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don!   


   

[westen44]

I just got the album a few weeks ago, but better late than never.  Many of the people I've been around have barely heard of Slade or haven't heard of them at all. 

[uwe]

Wot? 50 years? WWI (one, not two!) wasn't over that long when I was born ...



(the vid shows a renowned, albeit largely one-armed wood worker from the era)

[TBird1958]

Wot? 50 years? WWI (one, not two!) wasn't over that long when I was born ...

13 years after for me, it's hard to wrap my head around it. When I visited Germany in '70 there was plenty of evidence of the war, I recall parts of Karlsruhe that were still bombed out a,d plenty of dragon's teeth near the French border.

[Alanko]

We still have tank traps on the east coast of Scotland. Some anti glider poles can still be found on our beaches!

[morrow]

We had a carrier strike group in town last weekend . The USS Gerald Ford with some mixed NATO accompaniment.

Lots of sailors about.

[Pilgrim]

I was born in 1950, and the war was still very much in the thread of society.  WWII movies were coming out on a regular basis.  I (and many of you) remember going to those movies including Sink the Bismarck, Guns of Navarone, The Enemy Below, Run Silent Run Deep, the Bridge on the River Kwai, and The Great Escape. All my scouting gear was WWII surplus stuff, and there were surplus stores all over the place.

[Rob]

I was born in 1950, and the war was still very much in the thread of society.  WWII movies were coming out on a regular basis.  I (and many of you) remember going to those movies including Sink the Bismarck, Guns of Navarone, The Enemy Below, Run Silent Run Deep, the Bridge on the River Kwai, and The Great Escape. All my scouting gear was WWII surplus stuff, and there were surplus stores all over the place.

Same year same comments.

[uwe]

Born 1960, the (by the time I could have a first grasp of what war could be) 20 years or so that had passed since the capitulation seemed like an eternity to me, but memories of WWII (not WWI, that was pretty much forgotten, blocked out by the even greater horror of WWII) lingered everywhere. But the common sentiment was: How lucky we are that it is over and what a terrible time it was. Revanchism existed of course too in post-war Germany, but not with my parents and relatives. To them 1939-45 was a political and ethical aberration that very nearly destroyed the country.

Dieburg,



where I grew up, was in the former American Occupation Zone, several villages and cities close by had large US military facilities, GIs in uniform were a regular sight (as were dark-complexioned children) - having been able to surrender to Americans was generally perceived as divine grace, even if undeserved. My mom felt forever guilty for having refused sweets from a black US Army tank commander shortly after Dieburg's surrender

(there wasn't much fighting, a French POW officer - Dieburg had a military hospital for POWs - negotiated a swift surrender together with some German town representatives by meeting an American advance party and talking a handful of German soldiers and their motley crew of either geriatric or underage Volkssturm members out of shooting at US tanks with a lone anti-tank gun they had - the Americans had understandably indicated they would view this as an unfriendly act and react accordingly)

because she - age 14 at the time - had been fed with Nazi propaganda according to which US troops distributed poisoned food. The (rightfully) exasperated GI called her a "f***ing Nazi" from his tank turret (if truth be told, he wasn't that far off either, she had been a glowing member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, the girls arm of the Hitler Youth, a thing she would later regret) when she froze and refused to pick up the sweets. My mom - who got to love American sweets later on, Hershey's bars, Lifesavers ... what have you, Coca-Cola was her favorite drink throughout her life - always mused how she would have liked to apologize to him. (She also already regretted not having picked up the sweets by the time she was home - wartime sugar-starved as she was! Plus her more practical minded sweet tooth little sister scolded her for being "such a moron" and not taking the sweets. )

[morrow]

Born in 52 , but by growing up in Canada we didn't have to deal with bombed out cities and towns. My father never spoke of the war until he returned to Holland for the 50th Liberation Anniversary.
I went with him to Normandy for the 75th , and at one ceremony noted an officer in Wehrmacht grey with a group in standard NATO camo, managed to get a photo of him with some German infantry. In Normandy.
He said , we were simply soldiers.

[godofthunder]

 A benchmark album and still in heavy rotation here at the Ponderosa. Just the opening power chords of Jim's mighty EB3  in the opening of Mama Were All Crazee now was enough to get me hooked. Jimmy Lea!