Review: '501 Essential Albums of the '80s'

Late last year we got a swollen tome determined to canonize 501 albums from the 1990s. Alas, such a project was doomed to frustrate because by the 1990s pop music had wandered off into such disparate directions that simply enjoying nineties music in general signals a lack of personal taste instead of broadmindedness. In other words, anyone who'd go straight for the entry on Exile in Guyville could only suppress their barf reflex when seeing that Baby One More Time followed several pages later. In other other words, in attempting to please everyone the book seemed aimed at no one.

Review: Eddie Piller's 'Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: A Life in Mod'

Eddie Piller is a big name in certain nattily attired, musically minded circles. He is the founder of Acid Jazz Records, a musical tastemaker who lends his name to mod and power pop compilations, and a renowned second-generation mod. So when I saw that he had a book coming along that cribbed its title from Mod-founder Pete Meaden's most famous description of his cult--clean living under difficult circumstances--I assumed it would be a general history of modernism. 

Review: 'The Jam 1982'

Just five years after releasing their decidedly punk debut, The Jam did what all the best punk survivors did: they experimented, diversified, and found a sound of their own. For the restless Paul Weller, this meant his band had reached a plateau he didn't want to rest on. Shortly after completing what would be The Jam's sixth and final album, The Gift, Weller told bandmates Bruce Foxton and Rick Butler that he was breaking up the act at the height of their popularity. There would be one more tour, and that would be that. Weller would emotionally detach throughout the last of The Jam's obligations, Foxton would quietly seethe, and Rick Buckler would accept his fate gracefully despite its uncertainty.

Review: 'The Jam: About the Young Idea'

There aren’t a lot of artists who can claim they inspired an entire musical movement, at least not after the sixties when The Beatles, Beach Boys, Dylan, James Brown, Hendrix, The Who, and quite a few others each marched through the decade followed by a parade of pretenders. The Jam are one of the few late-seventies bands that can claim they got a movement going when their power-pop spin on punk and Mod style inspired a ton of British groups to pick up Rickenbackers and look sharp. Those who weren’t as musically inclined just became the kinds of life-long, pop-as-lifestyle fans usually reserved for boring traveling acts like The Grateful Dead. So it’s fitting that fans get a good deal of screen time in the recent Sky TV documentary The Jam: About the Young Idea. This emphasis on the people who love Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton, and Rick Buckler is what distinguishes Bob Smeaton’s film from the usual by-numbers rock doc. The presence of fans such as fellow famous-guy Martin Freeman; Derek D’Souza, who ended up photographing the band professionally; Keiko Egawa, a fan who essentially moved from Japan to London so she could see The Jam live; and Dave Pottinger, a kid barely in his twenties whose blog continues the Jam-worship for a new generation—and somehow maintains his cool when he gets to interview Weller— is the heart and soul of About the Young Idea.

Weller, Foxton, and Buckler are also in attendance to walk us through their band’s history in more typical fashion, though there are also some nicely distinctive moments when the film’s stars are on screen, like when Weller and founding member Steve Brookes pull out their acoustic guitars to jam on some Everly Brothers and Larry Williams tunes. Long time fans probably won’t learn anything new, and any post break-up frictions are ignored (Foxton and Weller supposedly didn’t speak for twenty years after Weller quit the band at the height of their success), but they will certainly appreciate spending 90 minutes with their favorite band now-and-then (via classic archival stage and video footage). Most of all they should appreciate seeing themselves reflected on screen by a diverse lot of Jam fanatics.

Eagle Rock Entertainment’s new blu-ray of The Jam: About the Young Idea supplements the main feature with additional interview footage that finds Weller, Foxton, and Buckler visiting their boyhood homes; full performances by Weller and Brookes; and Pottinger’s complete interview with Weller. More essentially there are full-length performance clips from London’s Rainbow and NYC’s Ritz only seen in brief clips in the movie. The video is pretty blurry, but the audio is full-blooded. The big bonus on this set is an extra DVD featuring The Jam’s full performance on Germany’s Rockpalast in support of Sound Affects. The video is fairly rough but better than the bonus clips on the blu-ray and the audio is similarly excellent. So is the main attraction, who give a vital, intense performance. You may find yourself putting this extra feature into heavier rotation than the documentary it supports.

Review: 'Millions Like Us: The Story of the Mod Revival 1977-1989'

Paul Weller’s discovery of My Generation was a decisive event for a lot of late-seventies British kids. It was what sparked his obsession with long-dead Mod culture and inspired him to bring its style and sounds back from the dead with his own band, The Jam. That great group that fused the mid-sixties sounds of The Who and Small Faces with the contemporary speed and aggression of punk inspired a whole lot of other kids to kick their own bands into gear. By 1979, the U.K. scene was flooded with bands that fobbed off punk’s tattered fashions and nihilistic attitude for sharp clobber and messages of youthful unity.

Review: The Jam's 'The Gift' Super Deluxe Edition

The Jam’s final record is the one that most delivers on their mod image. It is rhythmically tight, with Rick Buckler slapping out the kinds of Benny Benjamin beats dapper modernists shimmied to in 1963. Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton’s songs are pure pop in the mode of the English groups that worshipped American soul in the salad days of the Vespa and the ventilated flack jacket. At times The Jam betray their fealty to their favorite era, as when Weller skids out Superfly wah-wah licks on “Precious”, but “Trans-Global Express”, “Running on the Spot”, and the glorious “Town Called Malice” find these mods at their most modish.