Feelin’ The Noize

I was never a huge fan of loud Brit rockers Slade — I didn’t mind the loud, but it was really simple music, while I was getting into Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer and Genesis (to name but some).

Still, in those pre-metal days, there were times when you just needed to kick out and jump around, and few were better at kicking-out-and-jumping-around music than the Boys From The Black Country.

“What’s that, honky?  How could they be White boys in Black Country?”

Shuddup and watch this (very) sympathetic treatment of Slade in their heyday, back when they were huge.

And yes, in retrospect, their songs were excellent.

Sadly, it seems as though Noddy has throat cancer, and hasn’t that long to go.  Raw suckage, that is.

Army Songs

Not songs about the army… songs that came out when I was in the army, doing my bit for my country by playing bass guitar:


(right-click to embiggen)

I think I played about a dozen of those songs over the years with various bands, and most of them… ugh, disco disco disco (as well as my un-favoritest Stones song, which says something about how dreadful it is, and which thankfully I never had to play).

Thank goodness for Baker Street, then and now one of the greatest ballads ever.

Afterthought:  I never liked the syrupy Light Up My Life, and listening to it now, it has to be the worst production ever, with absolutely no redeeming features.  The piano, for starters, sounds like someone’s hammering on the keyboard with a mallet, and the cheesy string arrangement would have made Mozart commit suicide.  To cap it off, the desperately-unsexy Debbie Boone sounds like she’d taken a large dose of Xanax in the studio on the day it was recorded.