Pop
Gone with the last chord
Duncan Fallowell
Thought I should write about Slade, the country's most popular group at the moment. Not so much about smashed-up Bentleys outside Wolverhampton or rioting adolescents in Swiss Cottage but actually about the band. This is a courageous move since there is not a great deal here to which one might attach thoughts. Suddenly it occurs to me that Slade are not a band at all but the triggers for an audience response conditioned by the fans themselves and supported by the exaggerated commentaries of the media.
They have been overtaken by their cult to a degree which makes them almost irrelevant. The audience does not respond to Slade but uses the group as a device for responding to itself. At a Slade concert no one rushes the stage, no one breaks down in tears, no OpetnakOr July 28, 1973
one minds if they have to use 8 stand-in drummer, because'tIP
there ' is not where the action Is The members of the group cannot even be considered rock stars, ex'
cept in the technical sense, he' cause they do not engage the emotions, they do not turn people, on but like Billy Butlin's redcoats they tell them what to do " C'mon now, we all wave out hands in the air to this one spotlights on those not waving their hands."
Undoubtedly they are tops in the Knees-up-Mother-Brown sta kes, drink up, and don't forget the
football rattles, kid's stuff, octogenarian's stuff, a compensation for those who cannot penetrate that part of the brain where the true energy lies. It moves from the outside in, which is the wrong waY round. If you activate the centre then all the rest flows out spontaneously without square-bashing orders from a sergeant in stacked, heels. The remarkable feature 01 Shade's recent massive concert at Earl's Court was that although everyone clapped, shouted and stamped with huge enthusiasm they remained fundamentally unaffected when it was, over. A lot of noise, no 'buzz This was in contrast to Davie Bowie's concert at the same place some weeks before. Bowie has rightly been criticised for his mistakes in presentation on this occasion: bad sound, difficulty in seeing the stage, expensive tickets. Nonetheless he did have the 'buzz,' exactly how much one only realised after seeing Slade. The audience left Bowie's concert with something extra behind their faces, the impression of having experienced an event which car. ried with it an exhilarating hangover, the electricity still crackling round them as they diffused through the city. Slade's impact finished with their last chord.
Well, don't get me wrong, I really like raw rock music, I have tiq rockets under my heels which need very little ignition, I am not frightened of heating my cool. I like rock spunky, wild, flash.Y,, weird, lobotomising. Stones, AO mals, Pretty Things, Stooges, Blue Oyster Cult, early Velvet Underground. Blue Cheer, MC5, Glitter, Can, Bowie come to that, these are the people whose records nearly always hold on to, not the whole story' but a good part of it., But Slade do not figure in this at all . .. They could be brutal. In fact they are very brittle, all static, musically so, so, so boring, end less repetitions of square metronomic time patterns without the
faintest feel for rhythm or pro pulsion. Their audience were all embryonic Limey hardhats to a droog, awash in the thin tonnage of beer, the kind of stodgy British yobbery as much in evidence at the Cavalry Club as throwing oat time at the Pickled Pig. If I am over-reacting it could be because it is the one thing Slade are ca pable of making people do. And the audience did save themselves,
by knowing that it is just a lat.' and by looking so fabulous. Oliv'e.r Twists regardless of sex, alurni
nium shoes, breeches, hoop' socks, stovepipe hats, silver 01 their hair, flamboyant additions to their natural facial colouring, the Toy Town freaks, yet another unique stylistic syndrome from British kids. Why is it that the Youngsters of no other nation manifest anything like this originality?
For my part, I am not really being morose about Slade, just expressing a little disappointment over the fact that the country's most popular group should be so terribly bad.
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