Slade in Flame (1975)

"It's a rock 'n' roll thing. You wouldn't understand it."

In the 80s, my oldest brother won a copy of "Rouge's Gallery" from the local radio station in a call-in contest, but I had forgotten all about them. I couldn't even remember what they sounded like, really. A couple of years ago while in Arkansas visiting my grandmother I bought an AC/DC biography and in it they they listed Slade as one of their biggest influences. In fact, the absence of bands like Slade was the inspiration to form AC/DC. If you've seen the clip of "Can I Sit Next to You" with Dave Evans on vocals, the glam rock influence is strong. 


 
So I read this thinking "that can't be the same Slade, can it?". I downloaded their "Slayed?" album, loved it and eventually picked up a few of their CDs as they were recently reissued.

In an interview that accompanies this DVD, singer Noddy Holder claims their manager followed The Beatles very closely and tried to use their history as a blueprint for Slade's success. After a string of hit songs and best selling albums, it was time for them to make a movie, but the band didn't want to make a slapstick comedy. They knew that's what people were expecting from them, so instead they made a gritty film about the cut-throat music industry and the rise and fall of a band.

The good: I don't remember where I got this notion (probably from my friend, Scab), but I heard somewhere that this movie was terrible. Because of this, I assumed the music Slade provided for the soundtrack was terrible, too. Slade's songs on here are pretty good and there are a few "performances" (all lip-synched, of course) that were pretty enjoyable. Early on in the movie Noddy is performing in a band called The Undertakers singing from a coffin. He was supposed to pop out mid-song to dramatic effect, but a member in a rival band locked him in preventing this from happening. No doubt, this was inspiration for the pod scene on "This is Spinal Tap". Instead of roadies with hammers, The Undertakers' drummer frees him with a fireman's axe. That's where the similarities with Spinal Tap end, though. The rest of this, I assume, is supposed to be taken seriously.

The bad: Where in the fuck are the subtitles? The poor audio track paired with British accents and lack of subtitles made for a horrible viewing experience. Literally, I watched the entire movie figuring out what was going on by context. At least half of the audio was indistinguishable to my ears and it killed the experience for me. More than once I wanted to give up on it, but I stuck it out to the end so that I could write about it. Even without being able to make out most of the dialogue I could tell that as far as "gritty tales" go, this was pretty tame.

2/5