The Over/Under: The Jam

Upon first hearing the Jam, it’s easy to imagine the songs coming right out of one of those beachside brawls in Brighton from the movie Quadrophenia. You forget the Jam wasn’t actually a mod band; it was a mod revival band. These guys didn’t even get started until the Who was pretty much done and the Kinks were up to their necks in bloated concept albums. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Jam picked up the torch where the original mod bands’ vibrant, early records left off and used it to set turntables on fire. They had multiple number-one hits in the U.K., but for some reason, they were never able to properly break in the U.S. In Britain, Paul Weller is a legend, a man so revered that it’s a news story when he goes to his girlfriend’s son’s soccer match. Here though, almost no one knows the man. Since the Jam broke up in 1982, Weller has staunchly refused any notion of a full-on reunion, stating he would have to be destitute to even consider the option. Instead, he has continued to doggedly release decent-but-not-great solo albums and avoid playing Jam songs in his live performances. Bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler formed an offensive, half-tribute/half-reunion band called From The Jam, playing the trio’s classics with a different singer. Last month, Buckler announced he was leaving From The Jam, further dampening hopes of a full Jam reunion. Light a candle to Weller hitting the poorhouse. Here are the Jam’s five most overrated and five most underrated songs.

The Five Most Overrated Jam Songs
1. “That’s Entertainment” (1980)
Possibly the most boring song the band ever recorded (and somehow its most popular), “That’s Entertainment” stays at one nap-inducing intensity for its entirety, the same four chords are repeated ad nauseum, and Weller is laying down his most depressingly banal lyrics: “A police car and a screaming siren/Pneumatic drill and ripped-up concrete/A baby wailing, a stray dog howling/The screech of brakes and lamp lights blinking/That’s entertainment.” A snapshot of modern Britain, I suppose: a song about boredom. “Feeding ducks in the park and wishing you were far away.” Certainly not as entertaining as a someone getting jumped in the tube station at midnight or the 1,000 faces in the city that are gonna tell ya. For some reason, Rolling Stone picked this song to represent the Jam in its “500 greatest songs of all time” list a few years back, ranking it number 306. It has also recently appeared on the soundtracks for the films Stranger Than Fiction and American Dreamz. I guess that’s “entertainment.”

2. “The Modern World” (1977)
The first track on sophomore album This Is The Modern World, this song sounds like a 16-year-old arguing with his parents about his curfew or taking out the car. It’s full of angst and sneering and a charming naiveté to the actual modern world. Weller wrote it as a teenager. “I’ve learned more than you’ll ever know/Even at school, I felt quite sure/That one day I would be on top.” Almost the opposite of the jaded boredom found in “That’s Entertainment,” this song is the Jam’s version of “My Generation,” a youthful indiscretion that is probably too embarrassing to play without a wink and a smile today.

3. “All Around The World” (1977)
The first word of this song is an angry “oi”—Weller is just trying too hard to be punk and tough here. The vocals are so angry, he’s snarling, and it would have been a much better number if there was a tone of joyful defiance instead of a kind of hateful one. He even yells “youth explosion” like he doesn’t want the kids to ignite so much as blow up. It’s so catchy though: “All around the world I been looking for new.” It never appeared on a proper album, but as a single, “All Around The World” reached number 13 on the U.K. singles chart. Hard to hate, but the Jam has much better songs.

4. “Ghosts” (1982)
A fan favorite from final studio album The Gift, this ballad is full of cheesy handclaps, syrupy horns and a now-cliché early-’80s compression and reverb on the drums. The over-production and horns signaled the Northern Soul direction Weller was heading in and the end of the Jam as we knew it. This song does not rock. It also lacks the more-defined catchy hooks of the trio’s earlier work.

5. “Beat Surrender” (1982)
The Jam’s final single and death knoll, “Beat Surrender” is a dance number with classic-soul backup vocals and funky horn lines over a galloping piano. The Jam had lost its balls and was now a funked-up R&B/dance-party group. And it was breaking up. Maybe that was a good thing. What if the Jam had turned into a white, British version of Parliament-Funkadelic?

The Five Most Underrated Jam Songs
1. “I Got By In Time” (1977)
From debut album In The City, this is a terrific, infectious and inspired song about seeing people again after a long time and the fleetingness of relationships. “I Got By In Time” sounds like it could have been a revved-up Stax or Motown single. It’s a mature song, with Weller articulating the same youthful innocence he expresses on “The Modern World,” only this time feigning a perspective of age: “We were young/We were full of ideals/We were gonna rule this world/But something happened.”

2. “Liza Radley” (1980)
A love song for a dark and strange girl who’s “not quite right,” “Liza Radley” was the b-side to the “Start!” single, but it should have received proper a-side status. The arrangement of this song is part of what makes it so effective. Foxton’s bouncing bass takes it beyond just a simple folk ballad, and the tender-yet-dusty accordion and parlor piano sprinkled throughout are timeless when compared to the clumsy, dated production of “Ghosts.”

3. “English Rose” (1978)
The Stone Roses were originally named English Rose, inspired by this song from All Mod Cons. This is Weller showing he’s not only full of angst, he’s a man of the world and a man with a heart. “English Rose” is one of the few Jam tracks Weller still plays, probably because he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to reclaim his youth by performing it.

4. “The Butterfly Collector” (1979)
The b-side to the “Strange Town” single, this song never appeared on a proper LP, but it probably should have also received a-side status. “The Butterfly Collector” is supposedly about groupies and rock-star sex, and lesser bands would have pumped this into a big hit. Both Noel Gallagher and Garbage have covered the song.

5. “The Eton Rifles” (1979)
Hard to argue a band’s first top-10 hit as underrated, but hey, it only went to number three. And from an American perspective, almost every Jam song could be considered underrated. “The Eton Rifles” is about privileged rich kids from an elite public school thinking it would be fun to take out a beating on protesters from a right-to-work march. Weller played this as the final song before the encore when I saw him last year, and it was the most energetic the crowd had been all night: fists pumping. It should have gone to number one.

—Edward Fairchild