The Jam

Ok so The Jam wern’t really punk but then again who really was? What The Jam had in quantity was an energy and attitude and that’s what made them so popular with punks. Booted and immaculately suited they were a breed apart from other groups and that was a strength rather than a negative.
Compact three-piece led by Paul Weller with a mod / Who fixation but famous for the sheer energy of their stage performances.
Great early singles (and lots of them) and they delivered the classic All The Mod Cons LP in 1978. You can’t really fault what they went on to do…well you can if you count the Style Council!
Adrian Fox aka Arcane Vendetta was one of the earliest punks and who has very kindly let Punk77 use his diaries and photos. For me, Adrian is a star and sums up everything about being young and loving music and Punk from the time. Fanzine writer of These Things and the first drummer in the Nipple Erectors, his writing is rushed, naive, excited, hormonal, and exaggerated but always from the heart and I can feel the same pit in his stomach of excitement you get when you see a band you love when you first get into music.

Yer’ Jordan’s and Bromley Contingent, Pirroni’s offer one lens on punk but Arcane’s is another one not often featured and just as valid.
I found this feature by Adrian on the Jam’s gig at the Roxy Club in January 1977 while going through my old punk archive and I’m proud to be able to feature it here.
Picture this. The Kid, young, loud, snotty and all of 16, makes his approach to the Roxy Club, Covent Garden, London WC2 on a cold and frosty night in the third week of January, 1977.

The club has only been open for three weeks and The Kid, garbed in a white, multi-sloganned button-down-collared shirt, black trousers and school blazer, plimsoles and a thin black tie (knotted carefully and exactly at the breastbone, just like the others), shivers a little, but will soon feel the heat. He knows who he wants to see and he’s here, ‘home’, the place where a shop assistant like himself can spend often up to four nights a week, filling his head with the kind of rebel noise that ‘the rest’ don’t yet quite know, or even begin to understand…


The heavy dub played by DJ Don Letts from inside drifts outwards, the alien Rasta rhythms new and exciting to The Kid. A fat girl with multi-shaded hair is being sick over a car bonnet outside the club, and The Kid stands in line with the three girls he arrived with, signing himself into the visitors’ book as ‘Mary Queen Of Scots’, tonight (no guest list kid, this evening).
Noise exudes as he descends the stairs to the God Basement, the eyes of his three female companions gleaming in anticipation of unrestricted wildness, just like his own, the black, self-painted badge with the clumsy white lettering on his jacket declaring his allegiance…

The crowd is thick, noisesome and crammed together, The Kid snaking artfully to the small bar for a half-pint can of Colt 45 lager (overpriced, but he doesn’t have to worry, for inside his black blazer is the half-bottle of brandy he’s sneaked in, as usual, to slug in some dark corner to ‘get him there’). The Kid looks with disdain at some cruddy ‘weekend’ Punk, whose clothes and attitude are suburban and totally wrong. He can, being ‘2nd Generation’, a veteran already of Autumn and Winter 1976. The heavy dub was replaced a while ago for a support band who still play, and although he likes this support band, The Kid can hear the latest imported American record he’s recently bought, in his head; ‘X Offender’ by Blondie. Fast. Mean. Violent pop.

The Adverts from Devon are onstage and finishing their set, ‘Drowning Men’ the cryptic tune they exit with, seven months later to appear on their debut LP. Gaye, the female bassist, stares at The Kid in recognition, wan, sexually brunette with doomed and sunken dark eyes, an ethereal spectre in the night…
Then They are here. The ones he really came to see, the ones he latched onto many times in late ’76 at The Hope And Anchor, Islington, and ‘The Rochester Castle’, Stoke Newington, seen for prices like seventy pence. Tonight it cost one pound. Them.
Tuning up their guitars in a normally unforgivable opening gesture, They stand on the postage-stamp of a stage, black mohair suits under harsh white light, a flurry of immediate action sending the condensed crowd wild, The Kid joining his mates (Shane and Claudio) right by the amps at the front, ‘The Pogo Kings’ launching into their dance as the three men in black rip out the chords of ‘Changed My Address’, smart, hard and collected…
The Kid laughs as Shane and Claudio pogo so wildly they collide with the modestly-sized amps, threatening to go over them onto the stage, The Kid trying to crack the exposed pipes above him and destroy the floor beneath him, energised by the beat. Paul Weller, like a ferret on Speed, snarls the lyrics with short-cropped hair already dripping with sweat, Rick Buckler on drums behind him flashing white light on his cool, rectangular shades, Bruce Foxton smiling benignly, all three striking enough poses to burn into memory. Weller’s blood-red Rickenbacker is the central and focal point…


The Jam at the Roxy Club – Adrian Fox
There is a space made for the three Pogo Kings, elbow room miraculously aplenty as they show their pleasure, the three men in black giving them exactly what they came for. ‘Batman’, the present tune, chords fractured but perfect, slices into the night like Sweeney Todd’s industrious razor…
Their act is tailored as neatly as their suits, as pristine as their overall stance, which is why They are always so popular, here or anywhere. They play fast and hard in keeping with the present time, but the aggression is expert, calculated and clean. The Kid and others somehow know they will be big, but the thing about them most striking to the appreciative observer, is that whenever they play they are never lazy, or skip through their set like they want to be gone before they even arrive, like some. This is noted…
It goes on. ‘In The City’, ‘Art School’, ‘Away From The Numbers’, ‘Slow Down’, ‘Ride Your Pony’ and so on. Claudio is the one who, as legend has it, possesses over 100 pairs of shades.
The Kid is the Fanzine Editor of London’s ‘These Things’. The men in black will be in the next one, for sure. Shane wears a Union Jack jacket, the much-photographed 1st Generation Punk Face screaming into the faces of his friends, Claudio and The Kid screaming back at him. The trio finally fly over the amps, Weller grinning as they pile in a tangle of bodies at his feet. ‘Time For Truth’ is snapped out in machine gun bursts from Weller’s mouth, perhaps just for them alone.

They engineer the rest of their set in a like-manner, the tunes not yet out on plastic. The self-painted badge on The Kid’s jacket reads: ‘A Poor Man’s Jam’, in homage to his heroes.
The Kid was me; Arcane Vendetta, as I was known, then. The Jam still exist in a multitude of long-ago nights, abrasive chords, contorted faces and venomous voices echoing like shards of broken glass with sharp vitality, through the weaving mists of years.
Away from the numbers, all well and maybe. But. Some ex-Punks ride scooters, nowadays…

(A True Account Of One Such Night)
The Jam were prolific writers releasing nearly 10 singles over a 3-year period and 3 albums. Like The Stranglers pretty much all charted but The |Jam were on the ascendant and they would break records with future singles going in at number one.
The initial singles are punky and spicy but tail off before the epic Eton Rifles comes around.

In The City / Takin’ My Love
(Polydor 1977)
Full of speed, power and venom this single roars out of the tracks. Doesn’t have the bluster of the Sex Pistols or the political posturing of The Clash, but then again it doesn’t need to.
Were The Jam punk? Of course they fucking were!

All Around The World / Carnaby Street
(Polydor July 1977)

For me the perfect Jam single. Attitude, lyrics and great songs combine with a fantastic picture cover. Not only that it’s got an equally great B side with the acerbic Carnaby Street all full of bluster and feedback
From the Marc Bolan show – Granada TV 1977

The Modern World E.P
(Polydor October 1977)
From the album of the same name. Look I think it’s fabulous. Perfect angsty punk! Weller spits out the spoken intro “This is the modern world!” and the band crash in.


News Of The World / Aunties And Uncles / Innocent Man
(Polydor March 1978)

While the band seemed to be losing their way somewhat after arguably a lacklustre second album, this Foxton sang track seems to huff and puff without getting anywhere. That said it’s an acceptable piece of high octane punk.
David Watts / A Bomb In Wardour Street
(Polydor August 1978)
And The Jam were back and on top form with a fantastic LP All The Mod Cons and this cover of The Kinks song with a lead vocal from Bruce Foxton. On the other side the brilliant A Bomb In Wardour Street which was about violence at the Vortex Club.


Down In The Tube Station At Midnight / So Sad About Us / The Night (Polydor October 1978)

With a superlative bass line to rival anything of The Stranglers, this tale of a guy going from work looking forward to dinner with his wife encountering right-wing thugs and being beaten up was a big hit.
The dimwit DJ Tony Blackburn actually thought it was an encouragement to violence and refused to play it.
Strange Town / Butterfly Collector
(Polydor March 1979)
For me a bit Jam by numbers. Not bad; just not great. The pick would be the B-side Butterfly Collector which supposedly is about Soo Catwoman who had attached herself to the band.
Garbage did an excellent cover of the song by the way.

When You’re Young / Smithers Jones
(Polydor August 1979)

Again they were knocking out the singles and they were doing better and better in the charts. I think I always liked the hanclaps at the start that never appeared again in the song.
The Eton Rifles / See Saw
(Polydor November 1979)
And then this arrives…. feedback and an absolute corker of a song but rugby types and old school ties. Foxton’s muscular bass power the song along but WEllers shards of guitar and spat lyrics equal that. I can’t be the only one to think at times he says “eating trifles” can I?

In The City
(Polydor May 1977)

I’ve always struggled with these first 2 Jam albums and I don’t know why. Love the look, love the record sleeve with its graffitied logo but I just can’t get into the album. Picks for me are Artschool, Batman Theme and of course In The City.

Reece Bithrey In The City shows The Jam at full pelt, rocking out of the gate with a brilliant attitude and raw sound that a band hasn’t been able to match since.
Opening two songs Art School and I’ve Changed My Address sum up what the band are about immediately. Both are fast-paced romps on completely different subject matters, with the latter especially capturing the band’s sound perfectly. At three-and-a-half minutes in length, it’s one of the record’s longest offerings, but features Paul Weller’s properly snarling vocal teamed with Bruce Foxton’s banging bassline and Rick Buckler’s thumping drums. There’s a small break in the song’s middle that is a reminder of key influences The Who and in particular, Buckler’s drumming sounds almost as crazy as Keith Moon’s with some over-the-top cymbal usage and absolutely crashing backbeat.
The album isn’t all Weller’s own work and also makes use of a couple of clever covers to beef out a set that wouldn’t have been a million miles away from their gigs in the London clubs in the late seventies. First comes the Larry Williams-penned Slow Down, also covered by The Beatles in the early sixties, but this version’s been punked up a bit, with Weller’s swaggering vocal and Foxton’s bouncing bassline making this version a standout, not least on the instrumental break and solo that winds the clock back at least fifteen years. The second of these two covers is the Batman Theme which at first glance would appear to be an odd inclusion, but it’s worth noting that the definitive mod band The Who, as well as the likes of The Kinks too covered this. To be honest, it wouldn’t have been uncommon to hear such popular themes on the setlists of bands playing the London clubs, so, in all due seriousness, it’s a pretty timely addition to the record’s listing, and is also a nice little rendition too.
As much as the reckless punk is this album’s bread and butter, where Weller’s songwriting and the whole band’s sound seems the tightest and at its best is on some of the slower numbers. The likes of Away From The Numbers portray that underneath a brutal laddish exterior on the cover, Paul Weller and co. are a lot more grown-up than they would appear with the graffiti on the bathroom tiles. As a song, sure it’s got that signature Jam backing, but it’s at a slower pace and sounds a tad mellower, which aids in portraying The Jam as not just a bunch of one-trick ponies. A little bit further down the track list comes Sounds From The Street which continues in a similar vein to its predecessor with a mellowed punk sound, showcasing a different side to the band – the mod side to them as opposed to the rock. As much as its got this ‘angry young man’ undertone to it with a gritty guitar note and harsh cymbals on the kit, Sounds From The Street has this great rhythmic quality to it, paving the way for the more R&B-oriented sound of their later work and Weller’s later career with The Style Council and on his own.
The back-end of In The City returns to the beat-oriented and angry lad sound of the record’s start with tracks such as Takin’ My Love and the closing Bricks And Mortar. To any Beatles fans, these are particularly appealing tracks as they echo the band’s Hamburg era in the early sixties with that simple and blunt rock ‘n’ roll sound of the late fifties pioneered by the likes of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. The best of the two is undoubtedly Bricks And Mortar with its fantastic groove and a slightly different sound to its predecessor featuring a clever message about the problems with senseless demolition of clubs and pubs that are prominent in the lives of young people in the late seventies to make way for office blocks or new-build housing that have been commissioned by the rich without regard for their rich past. This marked the beginning of Weller’s swipes at governments in his songs and his place as one of this country’s finest ever songwriters.
In The City really is an album that spawned one of this country’s finest bands with one of the most admired sounds out there. To some it might just be a noise, but to others, it’s the noise of a generation – a record that soundtracked people’s lives and became a key part of their identity. That reckless sound threaded throughout the record is what makes it so great in the first place, and when combined with Weller’s clever songwriting and brilliant messages, it’s certainly hard to find a better album of this genre. Untitled Website
This Is The Modern World
(Polydor November 1977)

Punk77 says: Just 6 months after In The City this came out. Again I like the singles and London Traffic but find it hard to get into it. Again I love the cover, look and attitude. There were rumbles of too much too quick and their third album had to be scrapped and done again which resulted in the superlative All The Mod Cons.

So what did the critics think at the time? Mixed. Chas De Whalley in Sounds loved it, gave it 5 stars, and said contender for album of the year though said their best was to come.
And people were trying to tell me this was a lousy album and the Jam were all washed up…! Some people don’t recognise the real thing when they hear it. ‘This Is The Modern World’ is really tremendous. It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in a long time. It’s flawed of course, but nonetheless, the Jam have come up with a winner…the Jam are young and brave they’re still real and ingenious as it is possible to be in the rock business and as a live band they are quite one of the best.
Mick Farren (hippie and let’s face it his generation achieved and changed fuck all and was roundly disparaged by punks as counting for nothing) in the NME of 5/11/1977 has a hissy fit about being past it and the ground zero approach of punk bands especially the Jam with their obvious sixties influences. The feature barely mentions the album just drones on endlessly about the past.
That’s probably my worst quarrel with the whole movement. There’s a streak of elitist, exclusive, enclosed ignorance that’s just plain unhealthy. “Every generation screwed up so nobody can tell us nothing okay?” has become too much of a favored cry. Okay, fine, work it out for yourselves if that’s the way you want to play it, only don’t make it so bleeding obvious that you’re ducking back into the closet for an earful of The Who (or The Yardbirds, The Doors, The MC5 or whoever)
A culture that denies its roots must finally sicken. The roots are, after all, the main providers of nourishment. Pretending they don’t exist only stunts growth….
And on it goes.
All Mod Cons
(Polydor October 1978)

IIMHO THE best Jam album. While I’d liked the singles I was left unmoved by the albums. This though from packaging to content is sheer perfection.
I’ve reproduced Charles Sharr Murray’s review from the NME 28/10/1978 because quite simply again IMHO its one of the best reviews I’ve ever read because it manages to go beyond the album and sketch in some background and commentary and make prescient forecasts as well. It’s not a short one either so if you’re a fan of Facebook and an image or 3 word posts you’ better fuck off back there!

Charles Shaar Murray Third albums generally mean that it’s shut-up-or-get-cut-up time: when an act’s original momentum has drained away and they’ve got to cover the distance from a standing start, when you’ve got to cross “naive charm” off your list of assets.
For The Jam, it seemed as if the Third Album Syndrome hit with their second album.“This ls The Modern World” was dull and confused, lacking both the raging, one-dimensional attack of their first album and any kind of newly-won maturity. A couple of vaguely duff singles followed and, in the wake of a general disillusionment with the Brave New Wave World, it seemed as if Paul Weller and his team were about to be swept under the carpet.
Well, it just goes to show you never can tell. “All Mod Cons” is the third Jam album to be released (it’s actually the fourth Jam album to be recorded; the actual third Jam album was judged, found wanting and scrapped) and it’s not only several light years ahead of anything they’ve done before but also the album that’s going to catapult The Jam eight into the front rank of international rock and roll; one of the handful of truly essential rock albums of the fast few years.

The title is more than Grade B punning or a clever-clever linkup with the nostalgibuzz packaging (like the target design on the label, the Swinging London trinketry, the Lambretta diagram or the Immediate-style lettering); it’s a direct reference to both the broadening of musical idiom and Weller’s reaffirmation of a specific Mod consciousness.
Remember the Mod ideal: it was 2 lower-middie and working class consciousness that stressed independence, fun and fashion without loss of integrity or descent into elitism or consumerism; unself-conscious solidarity and a dollop of non-sectarian concern for others. Weller has transcended his original naivety without becoming cynical about anything other than the music business.
Mod became hippies and we know that didn’t work; the more exploratory end of Mod rock became psychedelia.Just as Weller’s Mod ideal has abandoned the modern equivalent of beach-fighting and competitive posing, his Mod musical values have moved from ‘65 to ‘66: the intoxicating period between pilled-up guitar-strangling and “Sergeant Pepper.” Reference points: “Rubber Soul” and “A Quick One“ rather than “Small Faces” and “My Generation”.
Still, though Weller’s blends of acoustic and electric 6 and 12-string guitars, sound effects, overdubs and more careful structuring and arranging of songs (not to mention a quantum leap in standard of composition) may cause frissons of delight over at the likes of Bomp, Trouser Press and other covens of ageing Yankee Anglophiles, “All Mod Cons” is an album based firmly in 1978 and looking forward.
This is the modern world: “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’ is a fair indication of what Weller’s up to on this album, as was “A-Bomb In Wardour Street” (I can’t help thinking that he’s given more hard clear-eyed consideration to the implications of the Sham Army than Jimmy Pursey has but they don’t remotely tell the whole story. For one thing, Weller has the almost unique ability to write love songs that convince the listener that the singer is really in love. Whether he is describing an affair going well or badly, he writes with a penetrating committed insight that rings perfectly utterly true.
Weller writes lovingly and (choke on it) sensitively without ever descending to the patented sentimentality that is the stock in trade of the emotionally bankrupt. That sentimentality is but the reverse side of the macho coin, and both sides spell lovelessness. The inclusion of “English Rose” (a one man pick’n’croon number backed only by a tape of the sea) is both a musical and emotional finger in the eye for anyone who still clings to the old punk tough-guy stereotype and is prepared to call out The Jam for not doing likewise.
Weller is — like Bruce Springsteen — tough enough not to feel he needs to prove it any more, strong enough to break down his own defences, secure enough to make himself vulnerable. The consciousness of “All Mod Cons” is the most admirable in all of British rock and roll, and one that most of his one-time peers could do well to study.
Through the album, then: the brief, brusque title track and its immediate successor (“To Be Someone”) examine the rock business; first in a tart V-sign to some entrepreneurial type who wishes to squeeze the singer I dry and then throw him away, I and second in a cuttingly ironic track about a superstar who lost touch with the kids-and blew his career. Weller is, by implication, assuring his listeners that no way is that going to happen to him: but the song is so well thought out and so convincing that it chokes back the instinctive “Oh yeah?”that a less honest lacing in the same vein would tillitrom a less honest band.
From there we’re into “Mr Clean”, an attack on the complacent middle-aged “professional classes.” The extreme violence of its language (the nearest this album comes to an orthodox punk stance, in fact) is matched with music that combines delicacy and aggression with an astonishing command of dynamics. This is as good a place as any to point out that bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler are more than equal to the new demands that Weller Is making on them: the vitality, empathy and resourcefulness that they display throughout the album makes “All Mod Cons” a collective triumph for The Jam as well as a personal triumph for Weller.
THE JAM – “BBC Studios” (Old Grey Whistle Test) 23rd May 1978 (Punk New Wave)
“David Watts” follows (written by Ray Davies, sung by Foxton and a re-recorded improvement on the 45) with “English Rose” in hot pursuit. The side ends with “In The
Crowd”, which places Weller dazed and confused in the supermarket. It bears a superficial thematic resemblance to “The Combine” (from the previous album) in that it places its protagonist in a crowd and examines his reactions to the situation, but its musical and lyrical sophistication smashes “The Combine” straight back to the stone age. It ends with a lengthy, hallucinatory backward guitar solo which sounds as fresh and new as anything George Harrison or Pete Townshend did a dozen years ago, and a reference back to “Away From The Numbers.”
“Billy Hunt”, whom we meet at the beginning of the second side, is not a visible envy-focus like Davies’ “David Watts”, but the protagonist’s faintly ludicrous all-powerful fantasy self: what he projects in the daydreams that see him through his crappy job. The deliberate naivety of this fantasy is caught and projected by Weller with a skill that is nothing short of marvellous.
A brace of love songs follow: “It’s Too Bad” is a song of regret for a couple’s mutual inability to save a relationship which they both knew is infinitely worth sating. Musically, it’s deliriously, wonderfully ’66 Beat Groupish in a way that represents exactly what all those tinpot powerpop bands were aiming for but couldn’t manage. Lyrically, even if this sort of song was Weller’s only lick, he’d still be giving Pete Shelley and all his New Romance fandangos a real run for his money.
“Fly” is an exquisite electric/acoustic construction, a real lovers’ song, but from there on in the mood changes for the “Doctor Marten’s ‘ Apocalypse” of “A-Bomb In Wardour Street” and “Tube Station”. In both these songs, Weller depicts himself as the victim who doesn’t know why he’s getting trashed at the hands of people who don’t know why they feel they have to hand out the aggro.
We’ve heard a lot of stupid, destructive songs about the alleged joys of violence lately and they all stink: if these songs are listened to in the spirit in which they were written then maybe we’ll see a few less pictures of kids getting carried off the terraces with darts in their skulls. And if these songs mean that one less meaningless street fight gets started then we’ll all owe Paul Weller a favour.
The Jam brought us The Sound Of ’65 in 1976, and now in 1978 they bring us the sound of ’66. Again, they’ve done it such a way that even though you can still hear The Who here and there and a few distinct Beatleisms in those ornate decending 12-string chord sequences, it all sounds fresher and newer than anything else this year. “All Mod Cons” is the album that’ll make Bob Harris’ ears bleed the next time he asks what has Britain produced lately: more important, it’ll be the album that makes The Jam real contenders for the crown.
Look out, all you rock and rollers: as of now The Jam are the ones you have to beat. Charles Shaer Murray
TalkPunk
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