{"id":11718,"date":"2012-01-20T00:15:42","date_gmt":"2012-01-20T05:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=11718"},"modified":"2012-01-20T00:17:34","modified_gmt":"2012-01-20T05:17:34","slug":"please-explain-skinhead-slade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-skinhead-slade\/","title":{"rendered":"Please Explain: The Late-1960s Skinhead Scene and Early Slade"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f7pCZNYxkoQ?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Among our regulars, I&#8217;m calling on <strong>Happiness Stan<\/strong> to help explain England&#8217;s late-1960s <strong>skinhead movement<\/strong>. If there are other Townspeople out there who have something to add that I haven&#8217;t already learned from that beacon of accurate and original reporting, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Skinhead\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a>, please chime in.<\/p>\n<p>How did a rock subculture rooted in an appreciation of Jamaican and African-American music become associated with right-wing politics? Did anyone who lived through this era note a shift in how skinheads were perceived within the rock community? I&#8217;ve read that the skinheads were an outgrowth of the mods. How did that shift take place?<!--more--><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-11720\" title=\"Slade-Play-It-Loud\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Slade-Play-It-Loud-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Slade-Play-It-Loud-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Slade-Play-It-Loud-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Slade-Play-It-Loud.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In 1969, when the hippie-styled members of <strong>Ambrose Slade<\/strong> chopped off both their shoulder-length locks and the &#8220;Ambrose&#8221; part of their band name was their timing a bit off, or was this only a good idea for a very brief period? I ask because a year or so later they were looking like the glam band American rock fans had only a faint idea about through their 1970s prime before 1980s Hair Metal bands adopted them as forefathers.<\/p>\n<p>The 1970 Slade album I just bought, <em>Play It Loud<\/em>, with them in their skinhead finest, has some solid, hard-rocking numbers and avoids overtly goofy songs and song titles with kitschy misspellings. Were there other badass, post-mod skinhead bands at that time that Americans wouldn&#8217;t know existed? I like how Slade at this brief moment in time retains the sensibilities of a high-energy, fat-free mid-1960s band while being just a little tougher and cruder than their predecessors. They come off like <strong>The Jam<\/strong> or <strong>Sham 69<\/strong>, at times.<\/p>\n<p>Just a year later Slade would embrace <strong>Little Richard<\/strong>-influenced excesses that would typify ROCK music in the early &#8217;70s.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9QGP2UecWtA?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>The records I have by this version of Slade have their moments, but they&#8217;re all so stupid and lacking in anything worthwhile or related to the human experience.\u00a0They only seemed to tap into their brief, menacing vibe of the best songs on <em>Play It Loud<\/em> in their choice of covers:<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eij_NKOLstw?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among our regulars, I&#8217;m calling on Happiness Stan to help explain England&#8217;s late-1960s skinhead movement. If there are other Townspeople out there who have something to add that I haven&#8217;t already learned from that beacon of accurate and original reporting, Wikipedia, please chime in. How did a rock subculture rooted in an appreciation of Jamaican <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/please-explain-skinhead-slade\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[429,573,127,572,571],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}