Life From a Window

So that's August, and September is about to start, and I'm going to pace myself a bit with The Style Council. My favourite unexpected moment so far has been "Life From a Window" from This is the Modern World. As much as I love the later singles, this one catches my attention every time now. I love the sentiment that the world doesn't have to look any particular way... if you can raise yourself above it, that's the important thing, to see the whole picture, and turn the grey skies blue with teenage optimism.

For me, The Jam never quite fell into the trap of cynicism and satire the way TSC did, becoming more overtly political, which took away from the purity of their music. Their lyrics are often caustic, but stop short of becoming judgmental. In my head, I like to attribute this to the other two band members calling out Paul when he starts going off: "Oi! Oi!"

There are a few songs I feel like I've missed, too.

Speaking of songs called "Start" with a high saturation of "Oi! Oi!", I love the band Mega City Four so much. They put out a string of top albums before their lead vocalist Wiz left to join the Doughboys for a while and then form Ipanema. He later died from a brain clot in 2006, way too young. Great band.

"Liza Radley" was a b-side that tells a sad story of mental health, lost love, and not fitting into small town life. It's one of their most bittersweet songs, but it also reimagines the "Taxman" bassline - it was the "Start!" b-side.

It's quite perfect.

The Gift (1982)

To their credit, Bruce Foxton's basslines are as smooth and melodic as they've ever been on The Gift, and Rick Buckler's drumming is ferocious throughout this album, and on the non-album tracks like "Beat Surrender" and "Bitterest Pill I Had To Swallow". Listening to all six of these albums together, I expected to come away with Sound Affects as my clear favourite, but as it turns out, I have two takeaways (curries, perhaps). I love the ambition of both Setting Sons and The Gift, and I found Sound Affects less cohesive; and, my favourite Jam album is their greatest hits collection, especially if it includes b-sides.

Also, I have a strange obsession with songs which appear to be rooted in the Dr. Who theme, and "Just Who Is The 5 O'clock Hero" fits that bill. "Trans-Global Express" is just too weird, and again, Buckler beats the hell out of it. "Town Called Malice" is just a subtle reminder that this album is, unfortunately, just named after the songs, rather than a play on words, and I'm disappointed that the album wasn't called "A Town Called Malice". Oh well. Overall, though, this one just leaves me wondering why I don't listen to it more. Absolute belter.
It is possible though, that when this album loses me, it's because it is such a belter. A song like "That's Entertainment" hits you hard where it hurts because it feels desperate, in a way "Town Called Malice" doesn't, because it sounds so good. I miss the ballads of the earlier albums. Paul's lyrics work well with sparse instrumentation. This is great though:

A whole street's belief in Sunday's roast beef
Gets dashed against the Co-op
To either cut down on beer or the kids new gear
It's a big decision in a town called Malice

Professionally, I am working with TEI Publisher, and, well, it's quite impressive. In the past, I have worked with DITA and DocBook, which are less useful since the extra semantic tags in HTML5. TEI has a layer of precision that I find quite exciting. Hopefully this will be useful on my current project.

But that's it. These songs definitely are a gift, and I will be going back and adding more about the singles I missed, like "Going Underground". If Paul Weller had stopped after The Jam, that would be an impressive legacy. Obviously, that was not the case. Much of the overt politicization which I tend to attribute to The Jam is possibly better attributed to Setting Sons and a number of singles like "Going Underground", and many early songs that I have enjoyed are much more personal in nature, although songs like "In The City" or "This is Modern World" definitely contributed to the "youth explosion" vibe.

Sounds Affects (1980)

Just learned of the passing of Charlie Watts. I never really listened to the Stones, but wow, what a great drummer. Miss You

Okay, I was completely wrong about "That's Entertainment". The lyrics definitely demonstrate what Paul Weller is capable, but the glue here is the bass, which sits so up front. In a way, this song reminds me of R.E.M.'s "What's The Frequency Kenneth?" - a guitar song with cool lyrics in which the bass carries a ton of emotional weight, and a possibly backwards solo at the end.

The guitar solo in "Start!" may just be the guitar solo from "Taxman", but it's still so good, and I love the way Weller clips his 't' in "What you give is what you GET". Also, "knowing that someone in this life loves with a passion called hate" is very dark, but what a great line. I have always thought that "Start!" starts with "It's not important for you to know my name, but I do know yours", and it's actually "nor I to know yours", so there's that.
This should probably be my favourite Jam album, but I still love Setting Sons so much. Probably my biggest takeaway here is that the elements that I respond to so strongly in "That's Entertainment" - slice of life, working class consciousness, irony without satire - were all present in Setting Sons and songs like "Eton Rifles" and "Smithers-Jones", and there is so much more here than just Paul Weller's songs. He may say he wrote "That's Entertainment"

Maybe he just wanted to wish Keith Moon, who would have been 75 yesterday, happy birthday.

on his way home from the pub, but without the bass track, it would not be the song that it is.

Around this same time, Paul Weller played the main guitar riff on Peter Gabriel's "And Through The Wire" (alternate version), another great song, with an incredible chunky riff. Paul doesn't have the same vocal range Peter does, but they both draw on a lower register that packs a solid punch.

Setting Sons (1979)

Going Underground. What a great single. Overtly political, full of fey fighting posture and clever lyrics, not missing a single punch.
Almost the b-side. Hmm.

Perfect album. All I can say about Setting Sons is it's a more obscure play on words than All Mod Cons or Sound Affects. "Smithers Jones", "Wasteland", "Thick As Thieves", "Eton Rifles", "Saturday's Kids", "Burning Sky"... the musicianship is matched by the songwriting and the production, without losing any of the toothiness of the earlier recordings.

Wikipedia tells me that The Cure's Three Imaginary Boys was recorded using Rick Buckler's drumkit, because they were sneaking into the studio The Jam were using for Setting Sons. And there are some parallels. Three Imaginary Boys would have been a fitting title for the original concept of Settings Sons, about three friends from school diverging in thought politically as they make their way in the world. And both albums get kind of pulled apart for release domestically in Canada and the U.S.

All Mod Cons (1978)

 Two punk albums in, The Jam leave a lot of those trappings and accept the fact that the "Taxman" bassline has no place in punk, bringing us songs like the one-two punch of the 82 second "All Mod Cons" followed by "To Be Someone". Because the "Taxman" bass line is just that good. Listening to this album after the previous two, though... Rick Buckler's drums just sound so much better. In every song, the drums stand out. My favourite track is still probably "David Watts", with Bruce Foxton taking lead vocals, but again, because of the frenetic drumming. The paired vocals of the two guitar players is also very good. Their voices complement each other well.

"You're the same as him, you're like tinned sardines, get out of the pack before they peel you back..." Foxton could write a song lyric.

The stark honesty of "English Rose" stands out for me as well. It's not the strongest track on the album, but it highlights Paul Weller as a solo performer, and foreshadows "That's Entertainment". It also introduces a recurring Weller theme of the bonds that connect us and bring us back together. Following this with "In The Crowd" is pure genius, and so is "Fly", along with "David Watts", a personal favourite.

Also pure genius - this is when The Jam start using more dad jokes in their album titles and the classic font.

I often feel like the emotional centre of a great rock song is the bassline. When it goes up, we feel up. When it goes down, we feel down. Like those arrows on Paul's sweater on the cover of This is the Modern World, The Jam is a fine balance between the destructive emotional force of punk and the optimism of youth, and the tipping point more often than not is nostalgia - it may not get better until we tear it all down, but don't you remember how we used to meet down the shops, or whatever.

"Down In A Tube Station At Midnight" is just such a good song. Hard to imagine picking this up at a record shop and listening to it for the first time. It was very nearly an album track, but got pulled because Paul didn't think it was quite ready when All Mod Cons was released.

And I feel like Bruce Foxton brings this same balance between rich heavy bass riffs that descend more than they ascend and more melodic basslines that end in the neighbourhood of an octave up... not quite disco, not quite Entwhistle or McCartney, but extremely close. By the end of this album, I'm less likely to want to tear the system down, more likely to go meet people down the shops, and honestly, it's mostly because of Foxton's background vocals and foreground bass.

This is the Modern World (1977)

Long story short, This is the Modern World is the Jam's sophomore record, and it's tighter and more polished than In The City, but continues to overlay a punk sound with a very professional modern rickenbacker sound. In the time that it took the Sex Pistols to record Never Mind The Bollocks, The Jam recorded two albums, and honestly... taken together, they would be a great double album.

Again, the standout for me here is Bruce Foxton's bass playing, which brings a mature and aggressive edge to all of these songs. Weller's lyrics are really staggering at times in both their simplicity and complexity, for a lad of 18:

I've learnt to live by hate and pain
It's my inspiration drive I've learnt more than you'll ever know
Even at school I felt quite sure
That one day I would be on top

I love the way this lyric picks up the notion of the arrows on his sweater on the album cover. Every force is opposed by an equal and opposite force, whether it's youth vs. the older generation, right vs. wrong, the urban cityscape and the underground. The things that fill us with hate and pain in our youths will one day fuel our rise to the top.

Life From a Window, one of the slower songs, is one of my favourites here. It also sounds a hell of a lot like the Lemonheads "It's A Shame About Ray", and I think Evan Dando owes Paul Weller a debt of gratitude. The bass playing in the breakdown is extremely tasty, and the guitar playing provides another evolution of Paul's rhythm + lead style. Seriously though, I keep going back and replaying that bass guitar in the middle eight. It's softens the entire feel of the song, actually painting the grey skies into blue, a moment of optimism in a song that goes from lighthouses and post office towers to the depths of pessimism.

Some people that you see around you
Tell you how devoted they are
They tell you something new on Sunday, but come Monday
They've changed their minds

I Need You (For Someone) also shows off what a great drummer Rick Buckler is, but nobody is slacking off in any of these songs.

In The City (1977)

 

Okay, right off the bat, it's been a while since I've used blogger, and this may take some getting used to...

The Jam starts off with a banger. Songs like "I Changed My Address" and the title track really highlight what a smart move it was when Bruce Foxton and Paul Weller switched their bass and guitar responsibilities. I mean, it was 1977, so the drums sound kind of crashy... but the bass sound here is just perfect. At 18, Weller already sounds very intentional. The sound here is punk, but intentionally cleaned up and rethought. The lyrics are smart, about being young, but this belies a maturity that will continue throughout his career, a sense of nostalgia full of "fellows I used to know" and "women I used to see".

"Away From The Numbers" and "Sounds of the Street" are epic Who-pieces, slowing things down to consider heftier subject matter like... well, youth, freedom and nostalgia. "The Batman Theme" is a throwaway perhaps, but it's also a staple, a rite of passage, and a pure bass number. The centrepiece of the album has to be the title track, a social commentary piece about police violence that holds up well, and you can again hear the same intentionality in the way Weller enunciates the word "right-uh" - he has always had a great theatrical sense. My favourite part of this song, and this album, has to be this bit, following a scorching breakdown:

And I know what you're thinking
You still think I am crap
But you'd better listen man
Because the kids know where it's at

I love the way this encapsulates the false modesty and bravado of youth, followed up by a warning that it's dangerous out there, but keep listening, because the band will help you through it. There's a thousand things they have to say to you.

And if it don't work, at least we'll say we tried

Days of Speed and Slow-time Mondays

 When I first started this blog, for at least a couple weeks, it bore the name "Downing a Tubesteak at Midnight", which I thought was quite amusing... this is a mishearing of a lyric from The Jam tune "Down in a Tube Station at Midnight", a harrowing tale of getting roughed up in the London Underground. Anyway, it's been a while, and I'm trying to get back to my roots, so I'm going back to listening to Paul Weller. The way I see it, The Jam had six studio albums, The Style Council had five plus an ep, and Paul has 16 solo albums, so if I listened to and blogged on about one a day, that's about a month. I can find most of them as streams on YouTube, and I have several of the CDs. I mean, that's a lot of music. It's an impressive back catalog. And it's a plan I may give up on, but it's worth a go.

A few fun facts about Paul Weller to get started:

• Played guitar on a song on Peter Gabriel's third album.
• Played Come Together with Sir Paul on the Help! War Child compilation.
• Referred to Sting as a "F'ing twat".
• Originally played bass guitar in an early incarnation of The Jam.