Slade

Slade may have never truly caught on with American audiences (often narrow-mindedly deemed "too British-sounding"), but the group became a sensation in their homeland with their anthemic brand of glam rock in the early '70s, as they scored a staggering 11 Top Five hits in a four-year span from 1971 to 1974 (five of which topped the charts)…

Slade Alive, Vol. 2, like all live Slade, is searing. Unfortunately, it was released into a void in 1978. Now well past having a U.S. record deal, and with no one in England really interested, Vol. 2 came out on Barn, not exactly a major player in the record business. The album is excellent, both in terms of performance and sound quality. They also did a great job of selecting material for this disc. A nice balance of classics (all Top Three singles in their day) and newer material that hadn't really been heard before. The album kicks off with a devastating version of "Get on Up" from Nobody's Fools. This version not only smokes its predecessor, it is the epitome of the Serious Heaviness. Slade has by this point developed into a full-fledged heavy metal band while retaining everything that made them great in the first place.

While there has been an enormous number of Slade collections over the years, Shout Factory's 2004 release Get Yer Boots On: The Best of Slade is the first comprehensive U.S. compilation, containing both their '70s peak and their early-'80s comeback. If the track listing looks vaguely familiar to Slade-heads, that's because it does share numerous similarities to the 1994 British collection Wall of Hits, which also covered the band's entire career, extending it to their brief return to the U.K. charts in the early '90s.

Slade are an English rock band from Wolverhampton. They rose to prominence during the glam rock era in the early 1970s, achieving 17 consecutive top 20 hits and six number ones on the UK Singles Chart. The British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles. They were the first act to have three singles enter the charts at number one; all six of the band's chart-toppers were penned by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea. As of 2006, total UK sales stand at 6,520,171, and their best-selling single, "Merry Xmas Everybody", has sold in excess of one million copies. According to the 1999 BBC documentary It's Slade, the band have sold over 50 million records worldwide…