I was living in Melbourne in the summer of 1999 and it was there that I first saw the now well known video clip that accompanied 1971's breakthrough hit 'Get Down With It'
In the clip, Noddy, Don, Jim and Dave were seen to be being driven in a rather large garish American gas guzzler car, probably a Cadillac around motorway slip roads eventually leading to a Power station where those zany Slade boys played up to the cameras and did some boot dancing atop a huge gasometer.
The film cameras that they were playing up to belonged to a company that the band had by then quite a long association with, Caravel, who had been shooting promo films of various bands, usually for in house record company promotional use.
Caravel had filmed Slade at the then new Euston station in London, again, being zany Slade boys running around the concourse and travelling the escalators.
I managed to tape the Slade clip from an all night rolling video pop show called 'Night Shift' (still image from the SIE colourised version) that was broadcast in Victoria after midnight at weekends. The footage wasn't great, as can be seen, and was severely glitched, in addition, it was titled as 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now', this has over the years, along with blatant misinformation clouded the veracity around the clip and I aim to put this right here and now!
At SIE we try always to never publish anything unless we can prove the dates, and in this instance we cannot.
We can however with a great degree of certainty say where it was filmed.
The power station was the then pre nuclear power plant at Berkley station, a place that Duncan had visited many times in his professional life.
It was bandied around online that the footage was filmed on the 19th of May 1972, which was apreposterous notion to make, but once it gets printed online, as they say, misinformation can travel around the planet before the truth gets its trousers on!
On the 17th of May 1972 Slade played in Barry, Wales, and had a day off on the 18th of May where in my view they travelles to Scotland to begin the Scottish leg of their 1972 tour, they played Glasgow on the night of the 19th and I have therefore discounted the ridiculos notion that it was filmed that day, or indeed any day in 1972.
Let us try to get the filming date out of the way!
The footage despite it's poor quality clearly shows the band in their clothing that they were wearing for most of 1971 up to and including their first #1 hit 'Coz I Luv You' they were photographed wearing these clothes on many many occasions as their star began to burn brightly.
Get Down with It was released as 'Get Down & Get With It' on the 12th May 1971 and the band could have filmed the promo during May or June of that year as it began to pick up sales following it's reissue with the correct title and credits, an appearance on Roger Whittakers World Of Music helped push the band further into the psyche of the nation and although it was a slow burner and didn't make the top 30 until 26th July 1971, I am sure that the filming had already taken place.
The start of the video clip has Holder cupping his hands and hollering, a perfect start for GDWI and playing the track at the correct speed there is the aforementioned 'boot dancing' at the right place in the song, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a 1971 spring filmed clip.
So where does the 1972 erroneous information come from? Australia of course!
The Australians live a loooong waaay away, and before the internet they never had much to work with and so the original filmed GDWI promo that had found its way to Aussie TV was dug out and redubbed with Mama and captioned as such.
The Australians have often played fast and loose with footage on their TV stations and so there were two versions of the same footage doing the rounds...one captioned MWACN that featured the GDWI audio, and the other captioned MWACN with the audio that fitted accordingly.
It seems that someone was determined to have this 1971 footage classed as 1972, it isn't.
A few years ago a cleaner clip was found and broadcast on the late night Aussie 'Rage' slot, it had the correct audio, and was better quality footage but was broadcast so dark that there are places in the film that the band cannot be seen because of the exposure being out of whack.
I hope this clears up the origin of the clip and hope that one day a nice clear digitally remastered version can be seen.
David Graham
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