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NOIZE Books And Recordings is the brainchild of Ian Edmundson and Chris Selby. Ian and Chris are just two Slade fans who never threw anything away. Chris had hoarded Slade stuff from his youth.
At one point a few years ago, Ian bought a brand-new discography book about his favourite band, Cheap Trick - called STILL COMPETITION by Robert Lawson - and while he loved the book, he thought it was a shame that there wasn't a book like that about Slade. In recovery from a serious life-saving operation, he set about working out a basic format and style for the Slade book.
Before long, he was asking well-known Slade historian Chris about something for the book and while discussing the book idea, he decided to ask Chris if he wanted to come in on the book. Both had helped Salvo Records out during thir Slade CD, vinyl and DVD reissue campaigns.
It was decided that the book would not be a biography as Daryl Easlea was writing one for Omnibus and anyway, the band known to not be at all keen on people writing about their thoughts and feelings without their co-operation or permission. So Ian and Chris would stick firmly to the discography format with historical notes included, so that the basic Slade story was there, illustrated by their releases and by various memorabilia.
THE NOIZE - THE SLADE DISCOGRAPHY. There is a lot of solid hard work in there. We are both serious Slade historians and archivists. The book has a quick pre-music preamble on each of the band members, then we get into the pre-Slade bands - The Vendors, The N'Betweens, Steve Brett & The Mavericks and tell their stories and illustrate their relaeses chronologically. The band eventually found the line-up that became known as Slade.
The format of the book after the pre-Slade period is: Year by year - Summary of the band's year. Releases in date order illustrated and discussed, track by track, and whatever information we could get in there, with band quotes and reviews attached to each release. There are similar details for all of the releases after the band ended and the solo works.
Is it from a fan's perspective? Yes and no. The main thing was to be as informative about each release as possible. Nobody wants to read us going on about how horrendous 'Okey cokey' was, or even worse, 'Ready to explode'. Personal opinions were kept out of it as much as possible. Being 'fans' helped us to get the book together, but we certainly don't say that everything they released is wonderful.
We have bust a couple of myths in the book. We have tried to take a lively and comprehensive textbook approach. Over the years we have met band members and have made friends with people who know all sorts of things. The knowledge is there and we had to be selective with some things we put in the book.
It's not 'The Slade Annual'. We have tried to do *the book that we would have wanted* and one which we believed fans would not be disappointed with. Some are kindly calling it The Slade Bible, which pleases us no end, as it means we have got it right (I hope).
A Convention Edition of THE NOIZE was created for the 2019 Slade Fan Convention in Wolverhampton and all of the 100 copies were signed and sold on the day. We put out a special edition for Christmas 2023 with a festive cover. The content was the same, but we wanted to pick up a few casual buyers. The book was available with this cover during December 2023.
A final two-volume edition of THE NOIZE THE SLADE DISCOGRAPHY was released in 2026. See the official page for THE NOIZE here. The book was written on an unfofficial basis, as the authors did not want to encounter any editorial interference from the band or their management.
Amazon sell it at a reduced price most of the time - near to the price we wanted to put it out at, except that their system actually forced us into the price we ended up with. We decided to smake hardbacks a limited edition, as Amazon print-on-demand pricing for a premium quality full colour 200+ page book is just prohibitive.
Ian and Chris had conducted a long series of video interviews with Don Powell, Noddy Holder and Jim Lea for the www.slayed.co.uk site and forum and for the Jim Lea Music Facebook page.
This content informed the second volume of THE NOIZE and the contact with Jim Lea was so fruitful that Chris was asked by Jim to do the admin work on the Facebook page.
THE COLLECTED SLADE NEWSLETTERS was a four-volume set of books officially issued for a limited period to raise money for www.kidneyresearchuk.org in memory of the late Dave Kemp, who published the first fan club newsletters since the demise of the original Slade Fan Club.
The publishers got the relevant permissions from the fan club editors to issue the books. Dave's wife Barbara kindly provided a foreword for the first book. The books cover up to the end of the classic Slade line-up. Absolutely all royalties from the books went to www.kidneyresearchuk.org.
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Chris was having a discussion about fandom with Jim Lea and the idea for the SLADE: DID YOU SEE US book quickly came together. Chris spoke to Malcolm Wyatt, author of the excellent Wild Wild Wild, to make sure the book wouldn't conflict with his project and a low-priced book of fan memories about how they had first encountered Slade was the result. When the book has sold a MAGIC 500 copies (nearly there!) it will be deleted from print.
That looks like it will happen in the very near future.
Two further books, SLADE ON 45 VOLUME ONE and SLADE ON 45 VOLUME TWO were companion volumes to THE NOIZE THE SLADE DISCOGRAPHY.
The books concentrated on showing all the Slade and Slade-related singles sleeves that we could find from around the world. We had help from some very notable collectors who are thanked in the books.
The first volume weighed in at a massive 300 pages and covered the band's world-wide releases on 45 up to the end of their Polydor period.
A book of Chris Selby's candid photographs from the THE TRAIN KEPT A-ROLLIN' track recording sessions and passed to those involved as a momento of the occasion.
A few spare copies were auctioned for a charity of Jim's choice.
It is a major Slade collectable these days.
When Jim Lea and Don Powell got together with Johnny Howells and Mick Marson to record some songs, it was decided by Jim Lea and Frank Lea that Ian and Chris could officially release a track as a CD single. THE TRAIN KEPT A-ROLLIN' reached number three on The Heritage Chart and the limited edition CD single sold out and is now much sought after. There are no plans to reissue the disc, so if you've got one, well done.
The original hope for the single was to reissue it on a vinyl 7" single in a picture sleeve.
Sadly, due to the waiting time in the queue to get singles pressed up, we ended up abandoning the vinyl 45 idea, as the single would have been out of the Heritage Chart and forgotten about by the time copies arrived. A limited run of 10 promo 45's were produced and passed to a lucky few.
Chris came up with the idea of doing three books studying the independent record labels that Slade had been involved with.
The first PRIME CUTS book covered Barn and Six Of The Best,
Each of the books contained a full label singles discography.
A very limited edition fan fiction novel WHATEVER HAPPENED TO FLAME was a sequel to the film story and was made available for just one week during in September 2024.
The book carries on the story of Flame from the moment that their depressed bass guitarist walked out of the band after their final show and imagines what may have happened to the band members over the coming years.
The story was originally intended to be included as part of the next book, but the page count was getting very high - meaning that Amazon's pricing would make the book more expensive than the authors would be comfortable with - and so some serious editing had to be done and the fictional work ended up being a casualty.
The book SLADE IN FLAME AT 50 came about because Ian had asked BMG if they were interested in including a book about Flame to put in a package to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the SLADE IN FLAME film, record and paperback book. BMG had already committed to the splatter vinyl reissues, so the anniversary needed to be commemorated separately.
The final 292 page book was the result of about a year's work. The authors gathered together as much memorabilia, press items and images as possible and secured interviews with Don Powell, Jim Lea, Steve Megson, Gered Mankowitz and actor Tom Conti. Daryl Easlea kindly provided a foreword. The book has, again, been extremely well received. The site page for this book is here.
In November 2024, Frank Lea asked us if we wanted to release a CD single of Jim Lea's new track ALL I WANT IS YOU, which was just starting to climb its way up The Heritage Chart and it didn't take much thinking about for us to say 'yes'.
The CD single was funded by ourselves and we had a limited edition of 300 copies pressed. Ian put together the sleeve and label artwork used for the disc. There was an almost two-week turnaround for delivery. 250 discs were put on Ebay, all at a set price, and they sold out in a couple of days.
We will not be doing a second run. A limited edition is a limited edition.
In February 2026 Noize Books And Recordings released the album A GLITTERING CAREER IN MUSIC by Ian Edmundson on CD and vinyl.
The album has 9 tracks on vinyl and 11 on CD. The CD bonus tracks included the Go Crazy version of Coz I Luv You from 1991.
It was made available via ElasticStage, but the album has now been deleted.
Later in 2026, Chris and Ian put out the following pre-Slade history yearbooks:
1964 and all that....
1965 and all that....
1966 and all that....
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Everything we do, we just do as fans who have the basic gumption to get on with it. We did the books because we wanted them on our bookshelves. The same goes for the discs.
One dissenting little voice grumbles about us selling things to Slade fans.
The world is laughing at him.
If people did not want what we offer, they would not buy it.
The positive reaction from absolutely everyone else is most gratifying.
Thank you.
We have more exciting news to relate regarding our projects soon.
Watch this space.
PURCHASE LINKS FOR NOIZE BOOKS:
