Tag: The Jam

That’s Entertainment

February 11th, 2023
For reasons I don’t need to go into, I happened to play “Wasteland” by The Jam to a class the other day. I’ve never really been able to make my mind up about this particular song: on the one hand, indelible earworm; on the other, lyrics awkwardly sploodged in order to fit the melody. The system works because it does not work.

A few days went by, and I’m driving to the supermarket and I ask Siri to play “The Jam on Apple Music”. She leapt into action, and about two minutes later started to play the country band Midland and their album On the Rocks. An easy mistake to make. I tried again. And again. And a third time, with variations of “Paul Weller” and “The Jam”. Eventually, at a traffic light, I dabbed at the infotainment screen and managed to find what I’m sure is every Accidental Partridge’s favourite Jam album: The Very Best of the Jam.

So I finally got to listen to some of my favourite singles in the few minutes before I reached the car park. I’ve got a mixed history with The Jam. Looking back, it’s absolutely clear to me that they belonged to my generation (late Boomers, early Gen-Xers) in a way that, say, The Beatles never really did. Which is not me saying that The Jam were better or greater than The Beatles. But The Fabs belong to everyone, whereas The Jam were timed perfectly to coincide with the second half of my teens.

Their first album was released in May 1977, when I was 14, and All Mod Cons arrived 18 months later, when I was about to turn 16. Setting Sons came out when I was in my first year of Sixth Form, and Sound Affects coincided with my 18th Birthday, coming out about a month before I left home (and school) and started 18 months of unemployment. Finally, The Gift, their only UK number one, came out towards the end of that 18 months, when I was (unbeknownst to me) on the cusp of getting a proper job.

Of course, the story of The Jam wasn’t so much about the albums as the singles. They were a proper singles band. I’ve already written about “Strange Town”, which might be the perfect single. But there were others. I still remember the frisson of excitement in the Sixth Form common room when we played “Going Underground” for the first time.
To give you a sense of how in synch I was (or ought to have been), their song “Just Who is the 5 O’ Clock Hero?” came out on 3 July 1982, about five days after I started that “nine to five” job in the Luton Tax Office.
```
From this window I've seen the whole world pass
From dawn to dusk I've heard the last laugh laughed
I've seen enough tears to wash away this street
I've heard wedding bells chime and a funeral march
When as one life finishes another one starts

Alright then love so I'll be off now
It's back to the lunchbox and worker-management rows
There's gotta be more to this old life then this
Scrimping and saving and crossing off lists
```
So I was thinking several things in the car this morning. First of all, there was that sense that I did feel an affinity with The Jam, they did belong to my generation. But for some reason (my tendency towards perverse contrarianism, probably), I drifted off. I remember feeling a sense of detachment, of not being involved, when I caught them on Top of the Pops doing “Town Called Malice”, and by the time of “Beat Surrender” (November 1982), I’d spiralled out of their orbit altogether. I remember feeling somewhat snarky about the presence of a horn section and backing singers. What is this? Kid Creole and the Coconuts?

And the other thing I was thinking was that the great thing about The Jam was that feeling that they were on our side. Right from the beginning, but especially with lines like “Too many right-wing meetings”, you knew that Weller was correctly aligned. And it struck me that the students to whom I played “Wasteland” the other day don’t have anything like The Jam, Weller, or the chance of seeing them perform something angry and righteous on Top of the Pops. There really needs to be another Punk Moment, I think. I was no punker rocker, but there are so many institutions in need of a good kicking at the moment. We need to burn down the talent shows and shuck off the bling, bin the John Lewis advert soundtracks and play some power chords.

Probably Weller’s finest set of lyrics is “That’s Entertainment” – an uncontroversial opinion, I’m sure. But, as an English teacher, I look at that and think, yep, so many teachable moments in that song. Juxtaposition, onomatopoeia, irony, pathetic fallacy, pathos, bathos, oxymoron, personification, and (my personal favourite) a transferred epithet.

La la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la
Strange Town – the perfect single

March 25th, 2018

Introducing my 17 yo to The Jam a while ago, I suggested that they were a singles band, and that their Greatest Hits was the thing to have. Knowing my daughter’s love for classic soul music, too, I revealed unto her the secret of The Style Council, which for her was like discovering that what you thought was a mere Hob Nob was in fact a Chocolate Hob Nob. The purchase of two Greatest Hits collections of Paul Weller solo swiftly followed.

I must admit I’d barely paid attention to his later career, so it’s mostly new to me. And I only ever lent half an ear to The Style Council because it was the 80s and there are all kinds of terrible crimes against production values on those records.

Deep breath.

Anyway, it’s been a blast hearing all that stuff again. I was in the 6th Form at school when “Going Underground” was a monster hit (three weeks at number one). That was when The Jam went mainstream, and everyone knew who they were. I only ever owned one album by the group (All Mod Cons), and I heard the follow up because someone at school had it, which was enough to confirm to me that while they were a proper singles band, in the same way the Beatles and The Who had been (meaning that they released singles that weren’t on albums), their albums weren’t much cop (like The Who, but unlike The Beatles).

“Strange Town” was about a year before that. It got to number 15 in the UK singles chart, though that was when you had to sell a lot of copies to even break the top 20. Weller has said it’s one of the best three songs he’s written. As a single, it’s perfect. There’s something viscerally thrilling about the instrumental breakdown in the middle, which is not so much a guitar solo as a riff that gets repeated and then layered, which when combined with the driving rhythm section (always the best bit of The Jam) lifts the song to another level.

There are a couple of good lines in the lyric, too, delivered with a broad English accent, which totally nail both the national character (“They worry themselves about the dreadful snow”) and being a teenager in the 70s (“RUSH my money to the record shops”). That last defines my teenage self perfectly. I would get paid at my supermarket job, then walk around the corner and spend it immediately on records.

Weird isn’t it, what a national institution Paul Weller is, how popular the Jam were, and how little impact his various incarnations have had across the pond. I know there’s no rhyme or reason to that kind of breakthrough. The Cure, for example, have broken the US top 10 on a couple of occasions, but the best Weller has managed is with The Style Council – in the lower (three figure) reaches. And as far as his great run of singles with The Jam goes, well. “Start” managed a number 31, and that’s it.

He does have a US audience, but when he plays gigs over there it’s at venues like The House of Blues (somewhere around 2000 seats), but he probably likes it that way.

Saw them play from the back of a lorry at a CND rally once.

Tag: The Jam

That’s Entertainment

Strange Town – the perfect single