Archives for November 2016

Certain Songs #705: The Jam – “But I’m Different Now”

November 19, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sound Affects
Year: 1981

While I’m still not certain that it’s my favorite Jam album — The Gift has always killed me — as I’ve been planning and writing these posts, I’ve come around to thinking that Sound Affects is their best album.

I certainly think it’s the album that balances all of their strengths — riff-based rock, Beatlesque psychedelia, soul basslines, acoustic introspection — into one ever-changing and ever-surprising package.

Certain Songs #704: The Jam – “Start!”

November 18, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sound Affects
Year: 1980

Switching gears after the apocalyptic fever dream of “Going Underground,” “Start” — The Jam’s second straight U.K. #1 single — is a far more introspective and, ahem, Beatlesque tune.

Or at least the bassline is: Bruce Foxton famously steals Paul McCartney’s bass part from George Harrison’s “Taxman.” Even if he adds an extra note during every bar, it’s so utterly brazen that it could only be a interpreted as a homage.

Certain Songs #703: The Jam – “Going Underground”

November 17, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Snap!
Year: 1980

Welcome to The Jam’s greatest song.

Their first U.K. #1, and an absolute pinnacle of post-punk on nearly every level, “Going Underground” remains an absolute marvel all these years later.

It’s also the song I use to illustrate my Second Song on a Mixtape Theory.

Certain Songs #702: The Jam – “The Eton Rifles”

November 16, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Setting Sons
Year: 1979

Sure, The Jam were pretty big in the U.K. for the first two or so years of their existence, but “The Eton Rifles” was the beginning of the run that turned them into massive superstars.

To us Yanks, that probably sounds like an overstatement, but facts are facts: for the next three years, until they winked out of existence following “Beat Surrender,” they charted 9 consecutive songs in the U.K. Top Ten.

Certain Songs #701: The Jam – “Strange Town”

November 15, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Setting Sons (U.S.)
Year: 1979

I don’t know if it happens as much these days, but the difference between the U.S. version of an album and the U.K. version of an album was one of those things that has always made me kind of crazy.

The difference between the U.S. & U.K. early Beatles & Stones albums has been well-documented over the years, and of course the U.K. version of The Clash sold so well as an import that Epic had to basically make a brand-new record out of the original and the various singles they subsequently released.

Certain Songs #700: The Jam – “In The Crowd”

November 14, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: All Mod Cons
Year: 1978

I bought the first five Jam albums all out of order: This is The Modern World, In The City, Setting Sons, Sound Affects, All Mod Cons.

I’m still not sure why that is: though I can say that the first three albums had already been released in the U.K by the time I discovered them, and there were always delays between when they were available here in the Colonies.

Certain Songs #699: The Jam – “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”

November 13, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: All Mod Cons
Year: 1978

As he passed the ripe old age of 20, Paul Weller’s ambitions came to the forefront, and one of those ambitions was to make music that was more complicated that the noisy-guitar riff-and-feedback songs that dominated the first two Jam albums.

And so, after a Kinks cover that came from the period when Ray Davies started realizing the same thing about his band, The Jam launched their most ambitious single yet, the epic “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight.”

Certain Songs #698: The Jam – “News of The World”

November 12, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: Snap!
Year: 1978

So the absolute coolest thing about being at KFSR was the constant influx of new records we would get from the record companies. It was like every day was Christmas!

Of course, we (and when I say “we,” I really mean “Kirk,” who as Music Director was in charge of the actual opening) were always more excited to open any package from, say, I.R.S. or Slash than we where if it was from Elektra or even WB.

Certain Songs #697: The Jam – “Life From a Window”

November 11, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: This is The Modern World (U.S.)
Year: 1977

It it, of course, impossible to write — or even think — about those early Jam records without referencing the music that The Who made in the back half of the 1960s.

Maybe it was the Mod iconography. Maybe it was the Rickenbacker guitars. Maybe it was the drumming. Maybe it was the heartfelt lyrics about youth by someone who was still pretty young himself.

Certain Songs #696: The Jam – “All Around The World”

November 10, 2016 by Jim Connelly

Album: This Is The Modern World (U.S.)
Year: 1977

The Jam’s second single, “All Around The World”, was the first of their utterly undeniable anthems — it was their first U.K. top 20 single — and such an important song to their ethos that they used its lyrics as the title of their box set.

So, naturally, it was just slap-dashed by Polydor onto the U.S. version of This is The Modern World as the second song, and of course unsuspecting kids like me had no idea that it didn’t truly belong there.