You Boyz Make Big Noize

You Boyz Make Big Noize was Slade’s final album and although it is not their best, it has never sounded better than in USM’s re-issue perfectly remastered by Tim Turan. The album has some highlights such as Still The Same, Ooh La La In L.A. and Me And The Boys, but the album comes across as a bit disparate with no common denominator.
Union Square Music’s re-release is accompanied by a 12 pages booklet where Chris Ingham captures the nearing end of Slade, dwells on the affair between Don and the daughter of Bob Dylan and explains the story behind the album title, which was a phrase uttered by Betty, the tea-lady at Wessex recording studio. Not surprisingly the booklet photos are all of Slade and Betty.
The album comes with nine bonustracks: the 12” version of Still the same and the three B-sides Gotta Go Home, Don’t Talk To Me About Love and Wild Wild Party. The brilliant Don’t Talk To Me About Love with Jim on lead vocal was replaced on the album by The Roaring Silence. The track You Boyz Make Big Noize wasn’t included, either, which is a shame as it is one of Slade’s best 1980es tracks. That one along with Don’t Talk To Me About Love would in my opinion have made the album much better and a lot more “Slade”. Anyway, the bonus tracks include all 4 versions of You Boyz Make Big Noize, not just the original track, but also the noize remix with the “Mama Weer All Crazee Now”-ending, the instrumental version and the USA mix with the altered and cleaner lyrics.
The last of the bonustracks is the Let’s Dance 1988 mix. As usual it seems to escape attention that Let’s Dance is NOT written by Jim Lea but by Jim Lee. It was a big hit for Chris Montez in 1962, but that’s quite a different story!
Like on Rouges Gallery the bonus tracks are in the wrong order, but it should only affect the first batch of the CDs.
Once again a nice product from USM where especially the bonus tracks are interesting.