TAMPA - How much can a person say about nothing? or almost nothing?

Last Friday night Curtis Hixon Hall was host to R.E.O. Speedwagon, Joe Walsh and Slade - that's almost nothing (except for Walsh).

R.E.O. started off the night with usual rock that started the middle aged teenage crowd. they were a rock band with drive that played only 45 minutes or so. At 8.16 the lights came on to ready the stage for the next act.

It was a good act, in the sense that actors usually portray something they are not. Slade was portraying musicians.

I mean, how much 3/4 time can a person take? Slade was basic. basic, basic. Backstage I was told the group has been together six years. It should be commended for being together that long and not learning anything. The group has been compared, most favourably, to the Beatles and The Rolling Stones by across the ocean music lovers. One wonders what kind of taste Europeans have gotten into lately.

When one of the band members was asked how he felt about being compared to those superstars the reply was almost indignant. He insisted that the group was not the second anything but the first and only Slade.

I have friends who play better music in their living rooms and don't get paid for it.

The group is basic and appeals to the basic nature in audiences. that is to say if you do the same thing over and over it'll become contageous to the point where the crowds will start to dig it. Slade had people dancing in the aisles probably because they had nothing better to do and after all they had paid to see and hear.

"Keep on rockin' " yelled the singer over and over and over again until the audience was compelled to do so. The encore plea was short but Slade was quick to answer (before it died out, I suppose).

It seems to me that rock audiences have grown less selective and instead like to exert its power just to see if they can really bring someone back (whether it honestly wants a band back or not).

 

Phil Rogers, St Petersburg Independent, Monday October 15 1973

From the archive of Chris Selby

Transposed by David Graham

Slade in England © 2015