Re: Did the Jam end it at the right time?

As a teen, two things deserted me before I was ready for them to: Trouser Press and the Jam. How could they??!?

But as I look back now, I think I’m glad the Jam ended where they did. ‘The Gift’ isn’t the album I’d pick for their swan song (tho I love ‘ghosts’)...I think they had another great one left in the tank? However, in light of weller’s next project with style council, it’s obvious he was ready to dive head-first into a totally new direction. I can’t fault an artist for following his instincts (even if I disagree!).

Yes, in hindsight I’m glad we’re spared their waning mid-80s albums that my gut tells me would’ve come if they kept on going.

While I was crazy for "Sound Affects," [which was my entry point for The Jam] I felt that "The Gift" was indicative that it was petering out for the band. The singles and American EP collections between the albums showed the roots of the Style Council happening with the reliance on horns. I only bought the first Style Council single and that was it for me. I bought one Weller album ["Wildwood" because Robert Howard was on it] and quickly sold it off. Never having bothered one whit with anything else Weller did outside of The Jam.

TP going away hurt at the time, but it was the smart thing to do. Imagine how lame mid-80s and especially late 80s TP would have been. Can you honestly see TP covering house music? TP gave the tough love we were not quite ready for but can appreciate in retrospect. TP having MTV heroes on the covers the last year or so was strange looking back. And another harbinger of the end.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

As much as it hurt to see the Jam break up - I was a diehard fan - I can totally understand why. Paul Weller was clearly heading into completely different territory, and wanted the freedom to do so on his own terms. I can understand that now.

I never got much into the Style Council (I've got some of the early singles, but nothing else) but I've been tracking Weller's work closely again since the mid-1990s, and he has put out a lot of very good music, even it there are still some misses.

As for TP, I missed it badly after I moved back to Canada from the States in mid 1981 and it was no longer readily available. Little did I know then that its days were already numbered.

Yes, they did, and not a moment too soon. Their final singles really didn't anything like The Jam...not that "The Bitterest Pill" and "Beat Surrender" were bad songs, they just sounded like another band. Weller was right to move on.

I was a latecomer to The Jam. I remember seeing them on one of the late-night TV shows -- Tom Snyder, perhaps? (I remember them playing "Private Hell," so that might be a clue for someone here.) But I didn't really dig into their music till I bought Snap! By then, The Jam had run its course.

Listening to that astounding double album, I felt kind of chagrined that I hadn't heard or embraced this marvelous band in its time. But I also felt like they'd called it a day at the right time -- not because they were running out of steam (they weren't, at least not to my ears), but because, listening to the whole set, I didn't get any sense of unfinished business.

And now that I've explored their whole catalog and learned more of their history, I still don't get that sense. Like The Beatles, The Jam broke up when they'd said all they really had to say as a band. From "In the City" to "Beat Surrender," they did it all, they did it right, they did it at least a couple of steps ahead of most of their contemporaries (and that's saying a lot, considering the time and scene they existed in), and when they'd done all that, they went their separate ways.

Delvin: I think I saw the same show. The Jam played Start and Private Hell. It was some late-night not quite SNL-level comedy/music mash-up show. It ran originally in July 1980, and again on rerun a year later (I saw it both times), but damned if I can remember what the show was called.

I think I bought my first Jam lp the day after first seeing them on that show!

Yes, it was called Fridays, Michael Richards was on the show. I do remember seeing the Jam on there as my sisters boyfriend was into them. That show burned bright and faded quick, it was dang funny in a weird kind of way. Different than SNL in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I figured I'd seen The Jam either on Tom Snyder's show or on Fridays.*

That latter show also was where I first saw Graham Parker & the Rumour. The Cars did a great Shake It Up-era performance on the show.

And Fridays also hosted Kiss, for one of only two performances the band gave during their ludicrous Music from "The Elder" phase. The other was a lip-sync performance at Studio 54. Ace Frehley couldn't even be bothered to show up for that one, so Kiss went onstage as a trio. Talk about a band that lost the plot of its own career.

*According to Wikipedia, The Jam did appear on Tom Snyder's show. So perhaps that was the broadcast I saw. It was so long ago (obviously), and all I remember of it is the band's performance.



Post Edited (06-07-19 10:10)

And here's that Kiss on Fridays performance:

Rawk!

Speaking as someone who works on a music TV show, Paul's camera consciousness is really fucking annoying.

And just the balance that out, here's the Jam:

Rock!

So, am I the only one who thinks that Kiss song is pretty cool? Sure, Paul Stanley butchers the vocals, and all the hamming and tongue wagging is annoying...but the riff is pretty killer and Eric Carr is flat out awesome on the drums. [I'm not a Kiss fan, BTW, but I can appreciate certain songs.]

All of that said, The Jam's performance blows them out of the water. I pity any band that ever had to follow them on the stage.

Thanks for posting those links, Mr Toland. Jeez, the differences between those two bands, at that point in time, is startling. And it only underscores the point of this thread. Say what you might about The Jam's breakup, but no one can say they lost the plot of their own career.

I agree they ended it at the right time as I'm not mad on The Gift (my entry point is the same as the Monk) but I would have liked them to stick around long enough to tour here which they did not. There was actually an announcement of a tour just before they announced they were calling it a day. I only ever liked one Style Council song - Money Go Round.

TP mag had a lot of life left in it. Too soon to die. Could have covered the rise of college rock: SST, Smiths, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Nick Cave...would have been the first mag to put Nirvana on the cover I betcha.

Since I never saw TP until 1981, I missed the Brit-centric pre-punk roots of the mag. Which is to say, I don't think I missed much. I imagine that it mutated quite dramatically around '77-'78 as the writing ended up on the wall after The Changing Of The Guard. I guess it would have mutated further mid-decade in the 80s. It was already moving to somewhere else with the watered down New Wave finally selling. I probably would have bailed years before grunge bands would have made the cover. I would really enjoy getting copies of '78-'81 I don't have but I'm satisfied with how it all turned out. I barely look at volumes 3 + 4 of The Guide and never bought vol. 5.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Are we allowed to discuss Kiss on this board? As delvin stated that song they perform is from their ‘music from the elder’ album... which had some involvement from Lou reed, believe it or not. Lou being one of the 37 ‘godfathers of punk’ might make this allowable here.

Hard to imagine a universe that would contain two bands as diametrically opposed as kiss and the Jam. Kiss was all about creating success, ruling the world, being bigger than anything. Weller got nervous when he thought there was a chance of the Jam becoming too popular (as if) and pulled the plug based on principle.

And that’s not a criticism of either. Just acknowledgement that there are CRAZILY different mindsets that make up this world.



Post Edited (06-08-19 10:56)

Of course we're allowed to discuss Kiss on this board! We can discuss anything we want here. I've seen discussions of NFL teams on this board; if pro football isn't about "creating success, ruling the world, being bigger than anything," then I don't know what is. (Well, apart from Kiss, of course.)

And yeah, I agree with Zoo: "The Oath" is a really good song in its own right. It's definitely the best track on The Elder. Other decent cuts include the instrumental "Escape from the Island," Ace Frehley's "Dark Light" and Gene's ballad "A World Without Heroes." (Those last two songs, along with "Mr. Blackwell," include input from "Lewis Reed," as he's listed in the credits.)

Most of the album, though, is given over to orchestral/choral fanfares, ludicrously over-baked dramatic flourishes, and lyrics like "There's a song in the silence, weaving in and out of time/We are notes in the music searching for remembered rhyme" and "Though you may be pure of heart and free of sin/And though you have been chosen to begin/Yet you must be worthy of the prophecy/But seek and you shall find your destiny," sung completely straight-faced.

As much as they've disowned this misbegotten album in the ensuing years, both Gene and Paul admit that they fully believed in what they were doing at the time. They honestly believed The Elder would be Kiss' big serious statement -- a concept album that would join Tommy and The Wall in the rock pantheon. (Bob Ezrin was the producer, and he'd done great work with Kiss on Destroyer -- not to mention producing The Wall. So Gene and Paul put a lot of trust in him.)

As for the other two, Eric Carr -- a great drummer, just as Zoo said -- was mostly thrown for a loop. He'd been super-stoked to join Kiss, but he was flummoxed that his first album with the band would turn out to be something like this. Ace all but abandoned the project, refusing even to join his bandmates at Ezrin's studio in Toronto. He recorded "Dark Light" at his home studio in Connecticut with some of the musicians from his 1978 solo album, including drummer Anton Fig. He also added his guitar solos to the tapes and mailed them to Ezrin.

For all its notoriety as the abandoned child in Kiss' catalog, the album does seem to have its own cult within the Kiss Army. Some of those fans still hold out hope for a full stage production. And there's a moment in the DVD of Kiss' performance with the Melbourne Symphony where Paul tells the audience, "This next song is --" but then gets distracted by a shout from the crowd. "No, not 'The Oath,'" Paul tells the punter. Even with his makeup on, Paul can't stop the look of admonishment from coming through.



Post Edited (06-08-19 15:55)

And I just watched a short clip of The Jam on the Tomorrow show. It's mostly focused on his interview, with only the last minute of the clip devoted to a truncated rendition of "Funeral Pyre." (It was truncated in the original broadcast, with the credits rolling on screen while The Jam still we're playing.)

What stood out to me is when Tom Snyder asked the band members whether they felt it was unfair to come to America just to face the expectations that they might be the Next Big Thing, as if they were the second coming of The Beatles. He said that the week before, Adam & the Ants were on Tomorrow and he'd asked them the same question.

I'm still surprised Paul Weller didn't tell Snyder to piss off.

Delvin wrote:


> What stood out to me is when Tom Snyder asked the band members
> whether they felt it was unfair to come to America just to face
> the expectations that they might be the Next Big Thing, as if
> they were the second coming of The Beatles.

Because they had just broken a couple long-standing (so it seemed then!) Beatles records on the British charts and there were expectations from several quarters of an American sacking.

jothorna - perfect descrip

I got into Sound Affects first but immediately picked up Setting Sons (IIRC paying double for an import) and it remains my favorite (and later getting All the Mod Cons, Gift and the Absolute Beginners EP that was in all the US stores at the time). But when you go back before Affects, the concurrent As and Bs are as crucial as the LP tracks. Made my own chrono discs about 15 yrs back but still like the '79 disc best. The single version of Start is unexpectedly the lesser track. Also, the USA version of Affects didn't start with Pretty Green. Jolt!

np:: Swervedriver - Future Ruins



Post Edited (06-16-19 07:08)

I think they peaked at Sound Affects where the sound and the songs seem to be of a piece - the just seemed like a bigger, less niche band to me all of a sudden before I liked them a lot - in 1980 I absolutely loved them (and Going Underground and Funeral Pyre).

I really think The Gift seems less of a lot of thing less inspired, less energetic, less clear headed - still a good record and a good time after it to pack it in.

I don't see where the Jam could have gone after The Gift, especially given where Weller re-emerged with The Style Council. Following Weller's muse, Buckler and Foxton weren't really musically where he was at anymore. Looking at Weller's career in total though, his arc makes stylistic sense. His inspirations went from The Who to the Bealtes to the Small Faces to Motown to Curtis Mayfield to (in his solo albums) Traffic era Steve Winwood and Nick Drake. His solo stuff is always interesting, if wildly uneven, and I have caught each of his mini-US tours since the 90's. He still performs his guts out on stage. You don't see many Vespa scooters outside his shows any more sadly.

I second that. Weller had more to say as an artist, and The Jam just was no longer the ideal vehicle for him. I finally caught him on the Saturns Patterns Tour, and he was in superb voice, whether playing The Jam, The Style Council or his solo songs. And he looked great.

Back then it was hard in the US to even know about the great singles until SNAP came out. In '97 the singles comp was finally released [so-called Very Best].

OK, I quite easily found my vinyl of GIFT and it's in the order. It's been years for this one. BTW - the Jam movie from a couple years ago was great.

I had only heard Setting Sons, Sound Affects and their related singles for many years, but still found The Gift in the same ballpark. However the production was very compressed and there is much reliance on the horn section. The writing is still great (even if Weller's next step is written), and with different production it may have had more, erm, snap.

I made two discoveries:
*Cover artwork is a traffic signal
*Trans-global Express has actual lyrics - that are half prescient, half spark notes for Ayn Rand

Also:
Hello darling I'm home again, covered in shit

Wow! Where the hell do you work??

NP:: Bad Religion - The Age of Unreason



Post Edited (06-21-19 02:54)

"Hello darling I'm home again, covered in shit"

It's based on Paul Weller's father, John, who was a construction worker (before finding better work as his son's manager). Shit is a britishism for dirt/crud, whatever.

I got this from a little promotional magazine I bought around the time of the record's release, in which Weller explains the meaning behind all the songs. I know I still have it somewhere.

Trans-Global Express: the lyrics are on the inner sleeve in the original vinyl edition. I remember the song was much better in concert, as you could actually make out those lyrics !

Cool!


[my US copy does have the lyric insert - I had put a discwasher insert in and never looked at the original until now!]

NP:: Sebadoh - Act Surprised



Post Edited (06-27-19 01:34)