Genre: English pop/rock
Places I remember: HMV (Oxford Street, London)
Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Everyday (piano based ballad showed another side of Noddy and Jim)
Gear costume: My Friend Stan
Active compensatory factors: Dave Hill's autobiography, So Here It Is, has been a fascinating read of late. Honest and unpretentious - just like the band in fact!
Somehow, this album emerged after Don Powell's car crash (which put him in hospital and killed his girlfriend) and it continued the success of 1973 into another year.
With all the drama and the touring during Slademania it's a wonder it came out at all.
For me, it became the beginning of the slide into obscurity for Slade. I bought it on release back in 1974 because of the previous singles and Slade Alive (forever their best moment in my opinion), but I sold my vinyl copy in one of my periodic purges.
It still sounds piecemeal to me - unlike Slade Alive and Slayed?, the highs are still highs though and I can now listen to it with greater context.
Thanks to the pleasure I got from H's book, I bought it last week, along with their first two albums (Beginnings and Play It Loud - more on them to come) and nearly got all their eighties product as well. Nearly.
The problem is that Slade Alive is such an iconic part of my youth and I'd stopped listening to Slade by the eighties. Everything else is in that album's shadow but who knows. If I can track down, Noddy's book could make me come back to them as well.
Where do they all belong? After 74 it was Slade In Flame and some obscure lean pickings years.
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