Slade - Feel the noise

OK. Slade. Forget the tragic 1991 outing "Radio Wall Of Sound". Ignore the brilliant yet overpowering "Merry Xmas Everybody. " Try, if you can, to overlook the Reeves and Mortimer pisstake (At Home With Slade). What you are left with is unarguably the best band of the early seventies. With seventeen consecutive Top 20 records, including six number ones, Slade were indeed absolutely massive. What a lot of people don’t realise is that they were actually very good with it.

All the Brummie jokes in the world won’t take away from the fact that the high profile Noddy Holder was blessed with one of the finest rock voices Britain has ever heard, or that between him and Jim Lea they wrote post-Beatle rock anthems that may never be surpassed in terms of shoutalongability. Slade could also be startlingly soulful at times (see the 1975 hit "In For A Penny"), and it is refreshing to see that that New Man ethos was readily apparent in songs like "Bangin’ Man" and "My Friend Stan", both of which were almost banned after numerous complaints of sexual innuendo.

Although towards the end of their career they lost a bit of the fun that made them so popular and went a lot more "rawk". Oasis’ 1996 note for note cover of "Cum On Feel The Noize" is a great example of how their music has persevered for three decades (they started in ‘66). I admit that it’s cheese, but it is cheese of the very highest quality. No record collection should be without this record. Shlock rarely gleams this brightly. (7).

Mr Trout