Tag Archives: 1970s

music, musings

The Jam: Packed with Mod Flavor

With the death of drummer Rick Buckler, chances of the mod revival powerhouse that was The Jam ever getting back together have gone from unlikely to never.  Front man, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Paul Weller — along with Buckler and bassist / singer, songwriter Bruce Foxton — crafted some of the catchiest pop songs of the punk / post-punk / new wave era. But Weller consciously chose to disband The Jam in 1982. Sadly, Buckler and Foxton seemed to want a reunion, but as Buckler would put it in a 2017 interview, “I think Paul came up with all sorts of funny ideas about how it would make the band mean something if we split it up.”

Formed in Surrey, England in 1972, The Jam released their first single, “In the City,” in 1977. It reached #40 on the UK Singles chart and was the start of an incredible streak. Their next 17 singles would chart in the UK. Among them, 1980’s “Going Underground,” would be their first number one. They would have three more: “Start!” “Town Called Malice,” and “Beat Surrender.” When The Jam disbanded, their first fifteen singles were re-released. All placed within the top 100.

While not as shocking like contemporaries The Sex Pistols, angry as The Clash, or gloomy like Joy Division (with whom they shared a stage on a 1979 airing of “Something Else”), The Jam were just as culturally relevant as those bands; they were at the forefront of a mod revival, and among the only artists of that period with a punk pedigree that still possesed pure power pop sensibilities.

Beneath “Start!” there’s a Paul McCartney-esque bass-line. In the rhythmic beat and trilling organ of “Town Called Malice,” one can clearly hear Mowtown. And on covers of The Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing,” The Who’s “So Sad About Us,” and The Kinks’ “David Watts,” there’s tribute to the mods that inspired them.

Tailored suits. Two-toned brogues. A Rickenbacker guitar covered in comic art. The Jam were at the center of a mod revival. Beat music with the energy of punk. Melody. Harmony. Politics. Fashion. Rock and roll. Rhythm and blues. Undeniably catchy and undeniably cool. The Jam’s influence on indie music has been cited by artists like Oasis, Blur, and The Strokes. Any discussion of mod culture of the twentieth century must include them. The mod style did not stop with the end of the 1960s. It merely evolved.

Weller would go on to form the less influential and all but forgotten Style Council upon The Jam’s breakup in 1982. He vowed that The Jam would never reunite. It’s “against everything we stand for,” said Weller in a 2015 interview with The Daily Mirror.

With Buckler’s death, it looks ike he was right.

music

On Television: Under a Marquee Moon

Of all the bands that made CBGB the legend that it is today, Television just doesn’t fit the proverbial bill. Unlike other genre-defining CBGB alums of the mid to late seventies — the punk rock that was the Ramones, the pop rock that was Blondie, or art pop that was Talking Heads — Television was, and still is, a tough band to categorize. With chromatic rock guitars, a tinge of jazz, avant-garde approach to arrangements, a bit of late sixties pop, and sometimes surreal lyrics, Television never approached the level of success of many of their peers. Still, their influence is undeniable.

THE BAND
Tom Verlaine with Patti Smith, 1975 by Anton Perich
Tom Verlaine with Patti Smith at CBGB in 1975 (photo by Anton Perich)

Founded in late 1973 by Tom Verlaine (vocalist and guitarist) and Richard Hell (vocalist and bassist), with Richard Lloyd (as second guitarist), and Billy Ficca (on drums), they performed their first gig in March, 1974. Soon thereafter, they became regulars at CBGB. Arguably, they were the club’s first “rock” band. By 1975, they had developed a cult following. Richard Hell (he of punk anthem “Blank Generation” fame) left, and Fred Smith, briefly of Blondie, joined.

THE ALBUM

In early 1977, they released their first album, Marquee Moon. The critics loved it. Bands that came after them (most notably, R.E.M) were heavily influenced by it. And many a list compiled by magazines includes it among the best albums of all time.

In a review in April 1977’s Rolling Stone, critic Ken Tucker — comparing Marquee Moon to the Ramones’ second album and Blondie’s self-titled debut — called it the “most interesting and audacious of [the three], and the most unsettling.” Indeed a bit unsettling, Verlaine’s voice is distinctly angular. The lyrics are oblique. And the interlocking guitar stylings are at once captivating and jarring. But it all works to serve a sound that is unlike any other.

Standout tracks include the opening “See No Evil,” “Friction,” and the titular “Marquee Moon.”

Anyone unaware or not convinced of Tom Verlaine’s gift for lyricism need only look at these scant few lines from “Friction” to appreciate his knack for catchy, cryptic, and sometimes outright crazy lyrics:

My eyes are like telescopes
I see it all backwards: but who wants hope?
If I ever catch that ventriloquist
I’ll squeeze his head right into my fist.

And then there are lines so poetic — like the end of the titular track — that they stick with you long after they’re sung.

I remember
How the darkness doubled
I recall
Lightning struck itself
I was listening
Listening to the rain
I was hearing
Hearing something else

“They are one in a million,” wrote British music journalist Nick Kent in NME (New Musical Express) [excerpted from the 2003 Rhino re-release of the album]. “The songs are some of the greatest ever. The album is Marquee Moon.”

Television would break up in 1978 after only producing one more album. Although they would reform in 1992 and release an eponymous LP, the band never again attained the level of innovation that is Marquee Moon.