'The shy and retiring Dave Hill' my arse!

I couldn't help but exclaim aloud those words when I saw a photo in my new SLADE book with that caption. It made me chuckle.

Yes, I've read the glorious book from cover to cover, including inspecting the detailed and very full discography. How happy am I? Some wonderful photos, some familiar and some never seen before; lovely memories evoked by text and piccies of the Lords of Noize and chums, especially Suzi Q. The format is 'annual sized' so we're treated to big glossy photos to drool over and the dust jacket is a bit fun with the title in shiny silver letters.

The book focuses on the glory glam years (as you'd expect) and then trips over the late '70s and '80s speedily by short commentaries on the albums and the few hit singles following the Reading reincarnation in 1980. This is fully understandable and it's what every fan wants, but it would be nice to record what happened to the band in a bit more detail after the glory years, if only for posterity and to get a full picture of their contribution to modern culture. Even Noddy's autobiog skips lightly over the '80s.

There's not really any new information or insights in the book but that doesn't really matter. It seems like the book's been rushed out to coincide with re-issuing the albums and it would have benefited from another proof read (the middle of the book in particular is littered with typos and duplicate words in badly constructed sentences) but again, that doesn't really matter.

All that matters is that the Lords of Noize are once again big, bold, brash and very colourful.

Go out and buy this book and live the dream again.

Now to wait for announcements of the Christmas tour and see if SLADE plan to play anywhere near London in December ...

Incidentally, I saw a poster for sale on eBay for the SLADE/Sensational Alex Harvey Band tour of 1973 - that's when I first saw them live and I can now pin-point my baptism of noize to 2 June 1973. What a long time ago that was.