The 20th of February 1973
Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 18th to Saturday the 24th of February 1973
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 17th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 18th,
and published on Wednesday the 21st of February 1973.
Slade
Slade Alive!
At No.43, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 1st Birthday, is Slade with Slade Alive!.
The Wolverhampton lads…
…were only 5 weeks short of completing a whole consecutive year in the chart this week with, what’s considered by many, as one of the greatest rock live albums to ever be recorded.
The band, along with their manager Chas Chandler, who had also famously managed the late Jimi Hendrix, decided to book the purpose built London’s Command Theatre, which also incorporated a recording studio, to capture the best sound they could over a 3 night residency at the venue, back in the October of 1971, with the bulk of the album taken from the middle of those 3 nights, a Wednesday.
On that evening, they’d just finished filming their performance on that weeks “Top of the Pops”, before hot-footing it to that night’s performance at the concert venue, still in the clobber that they would be seen wearing when the music show televises on the BBC the next evening.
The resulting album…
…had first entered the U.K. Chart on the 2nd of April the previous year of 1972, just missing the Top 10 straight away, by landing at No.11.
From there though, it would spend several weeks bouncing in and around the Top 10, until achieving it’s highest position at No.2 on the 2nd of July that year.
Healthy sales would keep the album in the Top 10 for a further 16 weeks after this peak, not falling out of it until the nights had fallen dark again on the 5th of November.
It would be another month before it left the Top 20 on the 3rd of December.
This week, in this year of 1973, would be the first time it would live outside the Top 40, before popping back inside it again. The next time it would do that will be in it’s 57th consecutive week, when it will drop to No.48 before leaving after the 5th of May 1973.
The album will make one further appearance next year when, for one week only, it will re-enter at No.42 on the 13th of January 1974 before going for good.
I’ve created my own separate playlists, for Sides 1 and 2 of this album with (I hope) the correct versions and the original track sequencing order for the U.K. release.
Side 1
Side 2
Many thanks goes to the Slade Official YouTube channel, for providing the chance to hear the tracks so that together we can experience both sides of this album release, as it was intended, once again.
Please show your support by visiting their channel.
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