Especially as it was fairly limited in numbers.

The Jam never really fit in with punk either; witness Weller proclaiming his support for the Tories in the NME to wind up/piss off Strummer. But I loved the suits, the ties, the quicksnap attitude; you only have to delve through contemporaneous TOTP performances by the bearded, seated likes of ELO and Supertramp to judge the never-starker contrast with the Jam’s 900 mph whiplash dervish of a Mod derivé; here was energy, here was life, here was a total fuck-you realism which didn’t make you groan under the scythe of worthy. When “All Around The World” burst into the Top 20 in the summer of ’77 it bore a ferocity and singleminded punch which outdid most other punk hitmakers of the time, though also demonstrated the group’s very palpable musical chops. “A new direction?” Backwards to go into the future? I could, and did, buy into that.

The second album The Modern World was a too-rushed job with too many duff Bruce Foxton songs, and it already seemed as if they’d burned themselves out. But then they came back in the autumn of ’78 with All Mod Cons, and everyone was forced to sit up and pay attention; delicate ballads (but this was punk!) like “English Rose,” so embarrassing to its author that it was an unlisted extra track at the end of side one, but so needlessly so; and the descent from that tenderness to the brutalist rationalism of “’A’ Bomb In Wardour Street” and “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight,” two stark slaps in the post-New Wave face; unforgiving and condemnatory – unlike the Who, who celebrated London with an uncritical cynicism, Weller never failed to stare the capital straight in its cold face, as much as he worshipped it, taking day trips from Woking as a teenager to tape the sounds of the city and revel in them back in his bedroom at home.

By 1979 they were established as a solid, if not spectacularly commercially successful, act, though their singles typically peaked at around the #15-16 mark; a secure cult following, but not yet the breakthrough into the mainstream. That latter occurred with “The Eton Rifles” which happened to coincide with the Mod Revival – Page’s Glory Boys at the spearhead, the film of Quadrophenia just released – and which went top three that autumn, a blast of sardonic class rage which arguably cut more deeply in the British youth of ‘79 than “Another Brick In The Wall” because the Jam were so clearly of our time, our generation – Weller only had four-and-a-half years on me, for heaven’s sake! – and we felt they were speaking solely to us, and for us.

Certainly it is hard here (without getting too personal) how vindicated and triumphant we felt (and there was by now a “we”) when “Going Underground” became the first single by anybody since “Merry Xmas Everybody” to enter the charts at number one. And never mind how we felt; Weller, on tour at the time, burst into tears when he heard the news – seven years of hard work and utter self-belief finally paying off, his group now officially the biggest band in Britain.

Both Slade and the Jam were on the Polydor label, who clearly knew something about astute marketing; true, there were special gatefold sleeves printed for “Going Underground” and the single was released on a Tuesday rather than the then customary Friday, but the undertow and swelling of support would have guaranteed its victory regardless – “Going Underground” had advance orders of nearly a quarter of a million copies. They had built up their following in the slow-burning, old-fashioned way; and here was their reward.

It is a nearly frill-free storm of righteous protest, right from the opening staccato tattoo of drums and bass which rapidly ruptures into a fearsome storm of slashing guitar as Weller fulminates actively against the grey standardisation of his world, combining steamroller sarcasm (“People say that I should strive for more/But I’m so happy I can’t see the point”) with harsh declarations of principles (“The public gets what the public wants/But I want nothing this society’s got”) before turning his aesthetic stun guns on the society which doesn’t want him: “You choose your leaders and place your trust/As their lies wash you down and their promises rust/You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns.” And throughout, always the return to the defiant anthemic chorus of “I’m going underground.”

It’s already intense, but then in the mid-break Weller slowly turns the heat and pressure up even further: “The braying sheep on my TV screen/Make this boy SHOUT, MAKE THIS BOY SCREAM!” as the band roars up into another key; after a short dub-like break, with melodica-like synths and clattering rimshots, the key ascends yet again and the passion becomes bloodied: “Let the boys all sing and let the boys all shout for tomorrow!” before a reverb of feedback shuts the song down. It was a rallying cry, and Weller knew it; everything this Thatcher world is isn’t the truth – stand up and drown them out. And, despite Weller’s subsequent, problematic relationship with New Pop, this is New Pop in excelsis; attract with a catchy tune, undermine, subvert and rebolster with the message.

Though nominally a double A-side, “The Dreams Of Children” was rarely played on radio; nevertheless it’s a fascinating variant on a dispossessed urban scenario which isn’t that far removed from Gary Numan’s vision (a comparison I know will make Weller wince) – nonetheless it’s there; “I got a feeling of optimism/But woke up to a grey and lonely picture…/I was alone, no one was there,” though with ominous synths replaced by Foxton’s triplets of dub bass. The track is more restrained than “Going Underground,” and the woozy backwards fadein and fadeout set the picture for Weller’s more extensive adventures in psychedelia later that year, but the rage remains present: “Something’s gonna crack on your dreams tonight,” he repeatedly warns us. There is admittedly a stern and somewhat puritan surface to the Jam’s general approach, which has on occasion tended to turn people off. But as far as we were concerned, they were speaking on our behalf, they inhabited our culture, and “Going Underground” going to number one was rather like “us” going to number one. I still recognise its unalloyed and unapologetic passion; this was life as once I lived it.

The Family! (that’s the original 1974 one) and Masterchef! All is forgiven

Perhaps it’s time I got round to seeing it!

I saw them supporting The Jam at The Rainbow, in the row behind us were a bunch of skinheads chanting “we hate Mods, we hate Mods” and outside after the gig it “kicked off” as they say.

with hindsight, i think the follow about this er screed:
i) blimey i was harsh! i am really VERY RARELY this hostile, and feel very uncomfy reading it now
ii) at the time, this aggression seemed to me entirely urgent and necessary (yet note my claim that simon reynolds had been “sidelined” — today, i would tend to argue HE is the establishment! affectionately and exasperatedly of course, he is an old friend and sparring partner) (and some of this feelng on my part is straght-up envy; simon has far superior hustling skeez)
iii) i think this piece is VERY unfair to weller himself, who is plainly a much more complex beast (as witness the decision to break up the jam) than his mid-90s media-following allowed — it is mainly a fight against a particularly awful era in mainstream pop media
iv) i have myself (a function of getting older — it will happen to you all) become much more interested in the ambiguities of stuff that gets dismissed for being “trad”; when you’re young, history seems to loom over you sneering at your own experience as it unfolds, and you do spiky unthinking battle to make space for your own perspective; in time, you find aspects of that perspective sedimented into recent-history-as-it’s-been-decided, and begin to grasp what the oldsters who long ago battled against YOU were so fussed about; what they saw getting lost; what you see getting lost…

the key thing is, given my obvious sense of embattlement in this 12-year-old piece, i think the “we” it argues for actually won: except i now also think this “we” has itself fragmented, and this fragmentation feels more complex and awful and bitter, actually… haha unfaced memories of my SECOND (or is it third) divorce

I don’t think anyone’s mentioned another reason for the significant upturn in Jam singles’ chart placings with Eton Rifles and Going Underground (although undoubtedly the main factor is that they were both terrific hook-laden songs with memorable lyrics). But I think the Who “Kids Are Alright” and the “Quadrophenia” films were both released in late 1979 and contributed to an upsurge in interest in all things Mod, which chimed in with the parallel interest in ska/rock steady brought about by the Specials and 2-Tone.

That groundswell of interest did lead to a further broadening of The Jam’s fanbase beyond their original punk
/new wave following.

Also in the studio on March 27th 1980 were; Liquid Gold, Genesis, Dr Hook, Judas Priest, Secret Affair, John Foxx and The Dooleys – something for everyone. The host was Peter Powell.

Get her!

To me, the new romantic movement took up the baton from the class of 76 and took it somewhere different musically – I still see both subcultures/movements as kindred spirits, not one anti the other.

I was so into that scene as a kid that I considered The Police and the Jam in particular as “the establishment” at the time, due in no small part to their huge commercial success, but also for reasons that I probably couldn’t have articulated at the time. Although one obvious one would be fey/effeminate Strange, Sylvian etc held far more appeal and seemed far more glamorous to 14 year old me than blokish Weller and his mates. That’s another reason why I saw them as “establishment” – they were conventional in dress sense as well as choice of instruments. Now, If Weller had made his Long Hot Summer video 3 years earlier it would have been a different story!

I appreciate both acts far more now and while I’ve never loved The Police, I came close to loving The Jam – Sound Affects and All Mod Cons are terrific albums. And me for that great run of singles starts wih “Tube Station” and runs up to “That’s Entertainment”. They were a consistently excellent singles band.