Taylor Hawkins & the Coattail Riders – Red Light Fever (RCA/Sony)

Taylor Hawkins is the drummer from the Foo Fighters and the Coattail Riders is a side project that actually has a history that goes back to 2006 when they released a self titled debut album. I never heard that album, but I doubt it could be any more entertaining that this throwback collection.

Let’s face it – this is one of the most deliciously retro albums I’ve heard in years. The influences…no the “inspirations” … are pure classic rock gold. The greats are all there in the record collections that inform this album – Slade, Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, Bad Company and T Rex just to name a few.

There’s double tracked guitar solos, stomping rhythm tracks, synthesised washes of strings, echo and reverb by the boatload handclaps and even a couple of killer ballads. It’s just great fun and whether the collective tongues are in the collective cheeks or not, it hardly even matters.

Hawkins sings really well, sounding very English at times, even reminding me of Ian Hunter on a few songs. He and the band (Chris Chaney, Gannin Arnold, Nate Wood and Drew Hester) deliver these songs with an almost wide –eyed innocence that indicates they either a) don’t get or b) completely get just how referential and reverential this album is. As a listener it just doesn’t matter. Just enjoy the ride. Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor wander in and play on a couple of songs and The Cars Elliot Easton even makes an appearance.

The album art also gets in on the act by graphically adding the ring on the cardboard sleeve that a vinyl record used to make.

Red Light Fever takes me back to a time when rock n’ roll was new, different and a great source of escapism. This is an album that says (to a 40 something year old) summer holidays, my imaginary big brothers panel van, Big M girls (in my dreams), Chiko Rolls, EON-FM and sneaking in to see The Angels and Divinyls playing at the Sandy Commodore.

Good times.

Slade – Gudbuy T’ Jane

Apparently Jane was the host of a San Francisco talk show that Slade appeared on. We have a lot to thank Jane for.

Gudbuy T’Jane was one of a string of hits for Slade most of which featured mis-spelt titles, but to me this was the best of those songs.

Apparently young Jane was a bit uppity and the line “Got a kick from her ’40s trip boots” is a reference to her kicking Noddy Holder up the arse when the band were taking the piss. It seems Jane was very proud of her boots, saying they were antiques from the 40’s. I don’t think Slade were all that impressed.

It really doesn’t matter who Jane was. The song is a gem anyway. It opens with a tribal drum beat from Don Powell before Noddy delivers a typically gruff vocal that epitomises the band working class roots. The chanted vocal chorus and the incessantly looping guitar riff are all typical Slade but this song is one of their best because it manages to shimmer and shake as well as stomp.
This has a lot to do with the use of percussive shakers right through the song that is reminiscent of the Rolling Stones’ song Jumping Jack Flash. Producer Chas Chandler allows the song to built into a big booming echo laden finale that makes it one of the “bigger” Slade songs by its end.

This could have been about any Jane – any feisty young lady that working class lads would alternatively describe as “a queen” but at the same time would kick them in the arse. Good stuff!

Slade – Old New Borrowed and Blue

The first reason that this album is being featured in the re-reviews section is that is was the first album I ever bought. The second reason is that is still stands up as a really (and surprisingly) good album.

I’d become a Slade fan at the time of Slade Alive but it wasn’t until I’d spent a couple of years gazing at that album, Sladest (a somewhat premature “Best Of’)  and Slayed? In the record racks at Brashs that I was able to collect enough coins to purchase their new 1973 album.

I must have played this album about a thousand times in the first year I owned it. It hasn’t been on such high rotation since but miraculously it has somehow survived two countries, many moves of house and any number of record collection cullings to make it to the turntable this afternoon.

For reasons best lost in history the album opens with the only song on the album not written by Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea, a blues based growler called Just Want A Little Bit. Strangely this first song is probably the albums least memorable.

From there things start looking up immediately. When The Lights Are Out is a glorious melodic pop song which surely should have been a single even though it was sung by Jimmy Lea rather than the more distinctive voice of Noddy Holder. It’s the sort of song that Cheap Trick must have surely find influential.

From there the album is just a series of great rock songs – consisting of sawing guitars, huge catchy choruses and earthy working class lyrics – punctuated by surprising moments when the band offer something outside this formula.

Of the rockers songs like My Town, Miles Out To Sea, Do We Still Do It, We’re Really Gonna Raise The Roof and Good Time Girls are all cracking good songs while How It Can Be probably has the most perfect pop rock chorus ever committed to vinyl.

For some strange reason they offer a honky tonk piano based song Find Yourself A Rainbow in the middle of Side One – which is a welcome little oddity.

But the hidden classic on here is Everyday – a beautiful ballad that was surely the template used for the Kiss anthem Beth. It’s a song that will still get played at British midlands weddings for another 30 years.

While Old New Borrowed And Blue doesn’t contain any of the best known (and worst spelt) Slade hits like Mama Weer All Crazee Now, Coz I Love You, Gudbuy T’Jane or Come On Feel The Noize, I think it is an album that showed that Slade had a whole lot more to offer than what they are generally remembered for.

I’ll probably still be playing this album in another thirty-six years.