Gig 067 The Jam

Gig 067
The Jam
Swindon Brunel Rooms
4 August 1978

 

Around this time The Jam had appeared to be struggling a little. They had released two albums, the first of which was well received but the second had received a lukewarm response in the sneary, fickle music press. I thought it was dead good, Paul Weller’s developing songwriting was more expansive than most of his contemporaries, referencing for instance Liverpool poet Adrian Henri along with the obvious Who, Beatles and soul influences. Even Bruce Foxton’s two rather clunky contributions had a certain charm. But that was almost a year ago and since then Weller seemed to have experienced writer’s block; the single News of the World was another Foxton composition and frankly not all that (although it enjoys a second life as the theme tune for Mock the Week) and the follow-up was a cover of the Kinks’ David Watts, though the b-side A-Bomb in Wardour Street was encouragingly snotty and in-your-face. Difficult third album syndrome and all that. Weller had just turned 20.

 

A bit younger than the other punk acts, his age was significant, as was the fact that The Jam were Woking lads who didn’t feel the need to adopt daft names or strike provocative postures. A whole generation of provincial youth would come to identify with them. While punk style had already become parodic, Weller’s mod fixation was clearly a personal thing rather than an attempt to be part of a movement, also looked pretty cool and was already being adopted by numerous ‘new wave’ acts, Blondie being a prime example. (Forty-plus years later the mod/new wave look is more or less mainstream, while middle-aged punks and skinheads look like they’ve been at the dressing-up box.) Plus there was no contrivance with Weller, no performative anger, it was from the heart. Now personally I have no problem with contrivance, I loved Bowie and Roxy Music, and as I may have mentioned any fool can wear their heart on their sleeve, but there was something irresistible about Weller’s fire, skill and passion – Robert Wyatt later compared it to the ‘thunder and lightning’ he’d witnessed with the Jimi Hendrix experience.

 

In a sense Swindon was the ideal Jam town: southern, provincial and working-class, somewhat anonymous, grudgeful at a perceived disdain from more cultured milieux. The venue itself was up a flight of stairs in the middle of a J.G. Ballard-esque concrete shopping complex which to this day passes for the centre of Swindon. If your schtick is suburban alienation, striving for some sort of transcendence in an unpromising environment, this was the place. I’d seen The Jam about 9 months earlier (Gig 046) and thought they were tremendous, and if anything they were better at this gig. The furious intensity was still there but they played a longer, more varied set, including more contemplative songs like Away From The Numbers with its Beach Boys harmonies. Being a bass geek I appreciated Foxton’s switch from Rickenbacker to the warmer tones of a Fender Precision, though it was still all down strokes with the pumping plectrum; it’s true that despite Weller’s passion for soul music there wasn’t much resembling a groove – maybe a chug, at best – but with The Jam at that time we didn’t worry too much about that, carried away as we were with clanging chords, harmonies and amphetamine fizz. The new songs sounded great, and if the group had ever mislaid their mojo by now they had clearly rediscovered it and were riding something of a wave. Even Foxton splitting his trousers seemed to cause them great amusement rather than the tetchiness one might have expected. Having played 100s of gigs before attracting media attention, they could pace a set much better than for example The Clash, building to a climax rather than spaffing the whole thing in the first few numbers. In this intimate setting it went down a storm – the gumby punks were still onside, not having yet been told that mods were their enemies, and a much wider audience was gathering and identifying. The sky would be the limit, though as it turns out not for a while yet.