Slade – ‘All The World Is A Stage’ (BMG)

By Jim Rowland

Xmas has come early for Slade fans this year, as BMG gifts us ‘All The World Is A Stage’, a new five CD box set of live recordings from the ÜK glam rock legends spanning the band’s early success in 1972 through to their metal resurrection at the start of the 1980’s, half of which has never been released before.

Slade are probably still best known for their a run of 17 consecutive Top 20 singles at the height of the glam rock era of the 1970s, including, of course, the greatest Christmas song ever released. But there was always a whole lot more to Slade than just the chart topping singles act. They released a whole string of top notch albums throughout the seventies and into the 1980’s, and for me rank up there with your Purples and your Sabbaths as one of the greatest hard rock bands this country ever produced. One other thing that’s a stone cold fact is that Slade were a truly outstanding live act, and that’s just what this new box set confirms.

Discs one and two cover familiar territory for Slade fans with 1972’s ‘Alive!’ being the classic live album that really kicked things off for Slade, and 1982’s ‘Slade On Stage’ confirming Slade were back with a bang. Both of course have been previously released, and both are classic Slade live albums.

Of real interest for keen fans, and the reason this box set is an essential purchase, is that most of what covers the following three discs is previously unreleased.

The third disc covers Slade’s triumphant appearance at the 1980 Reading Festival, when they were drafted in as last minute replacements for Ozzy Osbourne, and basically blew the place apart. An EP was released at the time from this recording, but here for the first time you get the whole set with blistering versions of ‘Take Me Bak ‘Ome’, ‘Wheels Aint Comin’ Down’, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ and ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ added to the original EP material. It’s the performance that really brought Slade back from the wilderness and enabled them to be embraced by a metal audience right in the middle of the NWoBHM boom. It would set them in good stead for many years after.

From a huge crowd at the Reading Festival to a smaller crowd at the less glamorous sounding ‘Hucknall Miners Welfare Club’ is what you get with disc four. Recorded in December of the same year, this whole recording boasts a whopping 18 song set and is entirely previously unreleased. The band were about to release the ‘We’ll Bring The House Down’ album the following year, so the set features several of those new, more metal-leaning tracks like ‘Dizzy Mama’, ‘Night Starvation’, ‘Lemme Love Into Ya’, ‘I’m A Rocker’ and ‘When I’m Dancin’ I Ain’t Fightin’ alongside all the old classics like ‘Everyday’, ‘Gudbuy T’Jane’ and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, plus a handful of good time covers like ‘Something Else’ and ‘Born To Be Wild’. The sound quality is great, and the band on top form.

The final disc possibly leaves the best ‘til last, certainly of the previously unreleased stuff here, as we go back in time to 1975 at the New Victoria Theatre when the band were promoting the ‘Slade In Flame’ album and film.

This is Slade in their prime for me, with ‘In Flame’ being their best studio album as far as I’m concerned. The set is heavy on the material of that era, with the magnificently raucous ‘Them Kinda Monkeys Can’t Swing’, ‘The Banging Man’, ‘Thanks For The Memory’, ‘OK Yesterday Was Yesterday’ and ‘Raining In My Champagne’ sitting alongside two of their finest ever singles in the shape of ‘Far Far Away’ and the sublime ‘How Does It Feel’. There’s still time for a handful of the old classics too. Once again, the sound quality is great and the band in blistering form, although it wasn’t long after this that Slade’s decline for the rest of the 1970’s would begin until they got to that Reading Show five years later.

The five discs are housed in individual sleeves, wrapped up in a clamshell box, with a booklet full of some good pictures from the eras covered here, although there’s hardly any commentary, context or detail of the recordings themselves which is a bit of a shame. You also wonder why they didn’t make this a completely definitive live package by including 1978’s lesser known ‘Alive Volume 2’ in there too, which is a pretty blistering live album in its own right.

Still, having said that, this still is an extensive, definitive live package of Slade the live act, proving they were one of the best in the business. Get down, get with it, and get it.

‘All The World Is A Stage’ is released on Friday (9 September). You can get your copy HERE.

www.facebook.com/OfficialSladeBand