THE JAM – "Going Underground"/"Dreams Of Children"

Straight in at number one: the public gets what the public wants. “Going Underground”’s arrival at the top is an example of the charts acting justly for once – steady and remarkable improvement from the scrappy punk hand-me-downs of “The Modern World” rewarded. The Jam’s first number one was their best record to date, a distillation of wrath and excitement so potent that it single-handedly justifies the attention paid to Weller ever since. If someone could – even once – produce a record so thrill-powered, it would be irresponsible to take your eye off him, even when his gifts seemed to have calcified forever.

That lifelong attention is probably no more than Paul Weller felt he deserved – the purposefully anthemic “Going Underground” is built on an iron self-confidence. The rest of Weller’s punk-era peers had diversified, looking towards America or Jamaica or further afield still: the Jam had simply put down roots, found the dotted lines joining what happened in 1977 to what had happened in 1965, developing an English rock classicism which helped win them an adoring audience. Their backward-looking tendency is on show in the fine AA-side, “Dreams Of Children”, a well-observed psychedelic pastiche with Weller waking horrified by “this modern nightmare”.

“Going Underground” doesn’t succeed through classicism, though: its triumph is a pop one, all about the surging moment. It’s the way that almost every element of the track is a hook – a slogan, a moment, a chant, a bit of melody. What’s the most memorable thing about it? You could ask five people and get five different replies. The thrilling double acceleration as the first verse finds its feet. The declamatory “the public wants what the public gets”. The harmonies on the chorus. “MAKE THIS BOY SHOUT MAKE THIS BOY SCREAM!”. The way it comes over like a three minute manifesto. “Going Underground” sounds like a record intended to be an event: the market made sure it felt like one.

Score: 9

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mark sinker

29 October 2008 10:13

one curious thing is that “underground” is exactly where they WEREN’T going — this is by far my favourite jam song (except maybe for cover of “David Watts”); at the time i was enormously disdainful of them as “not getting it” (disquisiton on what “it” was to follow one day soon i promise); i try and replay them now and then to see if i can catch myself out and hear what it is everyone else loved; to challenge my own snobbery — but it is too deepset i think

weller actually has a lot of gifts that could have coalesced into stuff i would have been dementedly loyal to — somehow, except for this (and the video to “ong hot summer”!), they always twist off into something that leaves me unmoved

peter goodlaws

29 October 2008 10:26

Now you’re talking. What a ripper this one was and directly in at the top. This is real geezer music and the Jam just quality. Everything about Going Underground is great and at last we have a number one to savour after cheese and old beardy country blokes. This gets ten out of ten without doubt. The eighties start here!!!!

Vinylscot

29 October 2008 10:30

This was always going to be a number one after the success of “Eton Rifles” raised The Jam from the ranks of also-rans to being a force to be reckoned with.

Happily, it was also their best single to date, by a long way, and thoroughly deserved to be there.

The only question is “Would it have been a new entry at #1 if it wasn’t for the extra single given away with the first x number of copies?” I’m not sure the extra single was meant to be free, as I can remember being asked whether I wanted it or not, but as a marketing ploy it certainly may have helped encrease the song’s impact on the chart.

I’m not a fan of Weller; I find him rather pretentious and precious, but the run of Jam singles from “Eton Rifles” to the end of their career is, to my mind a major achievement. Not many acts keep the quality that high consistently, and I find that even some of their less successful (i.e. not #1) singles leading up to the end sound much better now, with the weight of expectation removed from them.

This captured the mood of the times excellently. Subversive, but mainstream, understandably everyman subversive. I’m surprised this wasn’t a 10.

Tom

29 October 2008 10:42

#1 – I think the second para of this is spot on. And this – one curious thing is that “underground” is exactly where they WEREN’T going – is important I reckon, that kind of anti-entryism, the idea that the top of the charts could somehow still be apart from the charts and the rest of pop.

That attitude – “we’re pop but we’re still not pop” – is the opposite of the “let’s make not-pop INTO pop” idea that we’ll run into in the next few years, and I think it’s had a longer and more pernicious run on the whole. Even though this record is fantastic it’s hard not to blame Weller for some of the things I dislike about British music since the Jam. (Maybe that’s why I held off the 10, though this is a high 9 certainly).

Erithian

29 October 2008 10:50

Of course we’d got unused to records coming straight in at number one – it’s hard for chart-watchers now to appreciate how seismic this was, but it hadn’t happened for just over six years since Slade followed Gary Glitter back at the height of glam. The equivalent dates a decade earlier would cover the period from the first Christmas of Beatlemania to “Let It Be”.

So we were all astounded as the new number one burst out of the speakers. That opening attack: the three punches with the bass, two bass-drum blows to the gut and the slash of the guitar riff, such a dramatic opening. The sound of a band reaching a peak and delivering quality goods at the same time.

In fact this was something the Jam had been building towards for some time. In the previous 18 months we’d had the fantastic “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight” followed by “Strange Town” and “When You’re Young” – reaching 15, 15 and 17 respectively and re-establishing the band in mid-table after a string of smaller hits – then the step up to the big league with “The Eton Rifles” dramatically breaking through to the top three. Those four singles are as fine a sequence as any band has ever produced – for my money, better than the four number ones they had when they got to the top.

If you add the previous “A-Bomb in Wardour Street” you have a mini-suite of London (or at least M4 corridor) songs. If the Bomb did fall, in Wardour Street or wherever, and all you had left was this batch of Jam singles, you could recreate the life of Weller’s contemporaries DNA-like from this alone. I leave “Going Underground” out of the London suite because, despite the location shots of the video, it referred not to the Tube but the idea of going metaphorically underground in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Another nod to the nuclear threat after Blondie, another depiction of turn-of-decade alienation, and a feast of sound.

And on the flip side, a hint that what got them there was already not enough for Weller. The sonic exploration, apparently inspired by repeated listening to “Revolver” (and that was to be demonstrated amply by their next record!) suggested new interests that might be pursued outside the Jam framework. So at the very point the Jam reach their commercial peak, the seeds of their dissolution are sown.

mark sinker

29 October 2008 11:30

the straight-in-at-#1 issue is intriguing, because i thin it reflects the ebullience of block-vote subcultures and the self-conscious fragmentation of the youth end of pop counterculture

i’m a lot less hostile to the cheese-and-beards element of popular than others, partly because i’m v.old myself now, and thus more intrigued by and sympathetic to the apparent tastes of those my age back in the day (all year-zero whippersnappers come to this pass), but partly because it tells a lost tale of a time when subculture manifested more or less generationally (even mods vs rockers was a semi-generational conflict); the 80s is the point it became an intra-generation scuffle (where 18-yr-old ska-heads were battling it out for the top slot with 18-yr-old synth-nerds, for the top slot w/a bullet)

i was in a band at the time – the not-terribly-legendary JAZZ INSECTS, a cross between pere ubu and the ohio players (haha disclaImer: NEVER LIVED UP TO CLAIM) — and so who *i* wanted to top the charts was biased; i had very strong loyalties and antipathies within the 18-yr-old vs 18-yr-old field; now that i know who won and who lost, i find i mind a lot less, and am fonder in a sense of the story of the battle as a whole, which was EXCITING and IMPORTANT, than i am of cheerleading one side or another

this song gets across the feel of “A BATTLE BOTH EXCITING and IMPORTANT”, even tho made by those i regarded as REACTIONARY FOES at the time, heh

admin

29 October 2008 11:45

wot no “Nemesis”?

Tom

29 October 2008 11:56

I have to leave something for the comments box!

Yeah, Nemesis. An example of how something awesome can inspire something else awesome but the bridging mechanism between the two awesomenesses is…. a bit rub.

(For those not in the know: 2000AD, home of the future shock, came up with an idea called “Comic Rock”, sci-fi short stories based on rock songs. The first example of this was Pat Mills’ take on “Going Underground”, which was immensely popular and inspired his Nemesis The Warlock strip. I have completely forgotten what the second “Comic Rock” was though.)

Alan

29 October 2008 12:25

the internets sae there were only two Comic Rock strips, and they were both Nemesis – the second called ‘Killer Watt’.

lonepilgrim

29 October 2008 12:45

there’s an aspect of the jam that seems to lead inexorably to oasis and all the other example of laddish music that seems so leaden and dull.
It’s to Weller’s credit that for a while he seemed to resist that tendency – even to the point of ending the jam to form the style council.
It may that his love of soul music and the mod ideal of style over substance (‘ keeping it real’) that helped give the music a greater sense of syncopation and energy – as embodied in this song

Martin Skidmore

29 October 2008 12:55

I was kind of anti-Jam, possibly for reasons related to Mark’s. I’d seen them live a couple of times, on their first tours, and the only things I’d really liked were the soul covers – a particularly good Move On Up, as I recall. Mostly I thought they sounded too much like they wanted to be the new Who and were too inclined to reproduce what made the Who great then rather than to achieve the same kinds of things afresh now – which is what the Pistols did, for instance. Later, I was intrigued by the idea of the Style Council, but it was mostly the same again, but this time with repeated attempts to write a new ‘Harvest for the World’. This sense of music as a heritage worth reproducing seems to fit pretty well with his subsequent career.

Nonetheless, I really like the singles, and this is one of their very best, and I wouldn’t argue with a 9 at all – Tom as ever nailing what makes it so exciting.

LondonLee

29 October 2008 13:26

This is the first Popular entry I’ve actually thought about in advance because The Jam meant so much to me at time, but as a result I found it hard to write anything coherent about it. I don’t actually think this was their best single to date (‘Tube Station’ is still light years ahead of it) but it was certainly their most crowd-pleasing and the pinnacle of the classic Jam “sound” with producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, that thick heavy bass, martial drums and Weller’s slashing guitar which gave them an almost Wall of Sound rush. No wonder Weller chose to move away from that sound after this, they could have turned into Status Quo (or Oasis!) knocking out variations on it forever.

I sometimes think of this as a more streamlined ‘Strange Town’ which is all over the map structurally but I preferred because of it’s more Pop Art imagery of aliens and Mr. Sheen. Much as I adored him, Weller’s lyrics could be a bit hit and miss, for every great “those braying sheep on my tv screen make this boy shout make this boy scream” you get bad Sixth Form polemics like “kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns”, but I guess no working class hero is perfect.

Probably a 10 from me but it’s like grading ‘Sex Machine’ or something, been too much a part of my life’s furniture for so long. If this is a 10 what do I give ‘Tube Station’ or ‘Strange Town’?

As usual the flip side was brilliant too, up there with ‘Butterfly Collector’ and ‘Liza Radley’

The free live EP probably helped it go in at #1 but they probably would have got there with this anyway, as has been said they were building toward it with previous singles and as someone who worked in a record shop at the time the rush to just get the new Jam single in a picture sleeve when it came out was always the same, free record or not.

Will

29 October 2008 13:40

This is where the 80s really starts, in that it seemed like the first Number One to be directly influenced by the encroaching darkness of the Thatcher era.

No doubt about it, Going Underground was a big deal. As many have pointed out before, records just did not go straight in at Number One and certainly not records by people like The Jam, whose singles usually ground to a halt somewhere around No 15.

Kat but logged out innit

29 October 2008 13:53

Tom’s spot on about it being ALL hook – each bit links wonderfully into the next, and even the links themselves are catchy (“tomorroh-oh, la-la-la-la”). And Weller’s barking vocal seems really appropriate for the apocalypse-call-to-arms he does here and on Eton Rifles. (He still comes across like a w4nker though.)

mike

29 October 2008 13:57

As Erithian says at #5, The Jam peaked for me with the “Tube Station” / “Strange Town” / “When You’re Young” / “Eton Rifles” run. Yes, in a sense this was a quite brilliant pop record – the ultimate refinement of the trademark Jam sound, as LondonLee says at #12 – but in another sense, it left me fractionally less than red-hot in the same way that “Atomic” left me fractionally less than red-hot. Perhaps it was too perfectly polished, and perhaps (again like “Atomic”) it was also a shade too abstract. Those previous four singles: they were rougher, they were imperfect, but each of them was firmly about something, whereas “GO” feels like a collection of slogans in search of a unifying theme.

God, but I’m nit-picking! It’s still a fantastic record from a massively important (*) band at the top of their game, and it’s a high 9 from me.

(*) Much as I usually distrust the concept of “important”, as I’ve said before with regard to the reverence surrounding U2/Springsteen/Dylan/Coldplay.

Finally, what is this “cheese-and-beards element” to which Mark alludes?! And am I a part of it? I have no beard, but I do like a nice piece of cheese…

Erithian

29 October 2008 14:04

Mike – see post #2 for cheese and beards. Gives you an image of Kenny Rogers having lunch and saving some cheese in his beard for later.

mark sinker

29 October 2008 14:13

THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE FOR

rosie

29 October 2008 14:16

As somebody said, it’s ‘geezer’ music; testosterone-fuelled and angry. It’s good, very well-crafted geezer music and enjoyable to listen to, but as I’m not a ‘geezer’ it’s not my music, so I haven’t really anything much more to say. I’d probably give it a 7, maybe an 8.

I did come to like some of the stuff Paul Weller did later, with the Style Council even if others felt him to be a sell-out.

mike

29 October 2008 14:24

I interviewed that Bruce Foxton last week, I’ll have you know. Unfortunately, he started spouting off about the Style Council (not entirely favourably) before I had the chance to ask him my carefully rehearsed Killer Question:

“Alan Partridge once said that Wings were the band that the Beatles could have been. Were the Style Council the band that the Jam could have been?”

intothefireuk

29 October 2008 14:50

A band I would number among my influences even though they were somewhat contemporary to me. I jumped on board at ‘All Around The World’ but it was the mighty ‘Down In the Tube Stn’ followed by the even mightier ‘Strange Town/Butterfly Collector’ that brought them into sharper focus. With ‘Eton Rifles’ & ‘Going Underground’ they were catapulted fully into the limelight but these weren’t quite as momentous for me. There is a great satisfaction though when a band you’ve championed finally breaks through (does ‘GU’ represent the first true punk No1 ?). Over familiarity makes it impossible to be objective so I won’t bother – still a 9 (cos the others are 10s).

mark sinker

29 October 2008 14:59

i think londonlee cryptically hinted that it was a punk number one (also the specials) back when we were discussing this re boomtown rats and numan — for me it’s absolutely NOT a punk number one but i am VERY ideological (not to say perverse) about what punk is and isn’t; in some ways i think defined punk against the clash and the jam (who at the time i always classed as punk for ppl who didn’t like or understand punk) (not a battle i will bother reenacting with any vigour these days — it’s what i thought then with a vengeance)

LondonLee

29 October 2008 15:08

I have a Jam story from this time which all you pop writers will appreciate. I used to share a flat with (Record Mirror scribe and novelist) Tim Lott’s brother Jack who, like me, was a big Jam fan when he was younger. He told me that one day back then he saw Bruce Foxton in Ladbroke Grove and asked him for his autograph. Bruce told him the band were recording in a nearby studio an would he like to go and meet them all which of course he did. Apparently Bruce and Rick were very nice blokes but when Weller found out who Jack’s brother was he asked him “Do you like your brother then?” and when Jack said yes, Weller replied (bear in mind Jack was only about 14 then) “Well I think he’s a wanker”

Pete Baran

29 October 2008 15:08

Yes let’s be fair Mark it is hard to chastize people who did not understand punk when the people who apparently do understand punk refuse to ever explain it to them.

MY VERY FIRST SINGLE PURCHASE. Do we have a pror-stork for that?

(My next one would not be for anoth four years or so).

Tom

29 October 2008 15:12

My first single purchase was too punk for the number one slot, so no storks allows. In fact The Man NEVER allowed Howard Jones to reach the top slot, regularly fixing the charts so that more than twenty other records blocked his way.

(The first single I OWNED was Captain Beaky obv.)

LondonLee

29 October 2008 15:14

In my case The Jam were punk for people who didn’t like punk, in early 1978 I still thought The Pistols and The Clash made a horrible noise (I used to annoy my Clash-loving sister by singing ‘White Riot’ in a moronic, DP Gumby voice). It took Weller’s more classical sense of melody to open my ears and appreciate what was going on, they were like a gateway drug to the other stuff and, without wanting to make too grand a statement, they changed my life as a result.

mark sinker

29 October 2008 15:19

“if you have to ask, lady, you’ll never understand”

on my list of things to do today it does say “post explanation of punk on FT”, but it’s not going to happen (today)

mike

29 October 2008 15:29

By my calculations of the time, “GU” was the THIRTEENTH Punk Number One! My take was an all-inclusive one, shall we say… but it was all based on the same year-zero thinking.

(In which case, the first “Like Punk Never Happened” Number One was still another three years away…)

Erithian

29 October 2008 15:49

The dynamic between the Jam band members was interesting – Weller is two years younger than the other two but was the main writer, his dad was the manager, he made the decision to split the band (a few bunny hops into the future of Popular) and what were described once as “the two drone Jam members” didn’t have much of a post-Jam career. But their contribution to the band was muscular and skilful and should not be overlooked.

On the other hand, as Weller revealed recently in Q, it was the girlfriend of the “Fourth Jammie”, Steve Brookes, who got them an audition for Opportunity Knocks! How different musical history might have (continued on p.94)

Mark G

29 October 2008 15:52

I do remember buying this (double single ahoy), and getting it home to play it and hear it for the first time!

Thesedays, the pre-play of records/tracks/whatever in advance of availability comes with the territory.

It also possibly means why singles don’t sell as well as they used to.

pjb

29 October 2008 16:33

Oh dear, I didn’t/don’t really like this. And I’m clearly in the minority. But much of The Jam sounded and still sounds to me more like shouty student union diatribes rather than thrilling pop music. They had a fan base and marketing team that restored the straight-in-at-no-1 chart moment, but I never felt the remotest connection to most of the records – although there were a couple of very late in day near exceptions as The Style Council era approached.

Even then I never really thought The Style Council were even half as good as they thought they were, and please don’t start me on the seemingly interminable tedium of the Weller solo career (possibly duller and more self regarding than Sting, which is saying something).

I still feel I ought to like/respect their run of singles, even if only in retrospect. But I don’t. I think at the time the complete lack of any sex appeal to either band or music may have has something to do with it, that and the fact that my head was being turned by the New Romantic/synthesised pop branch of post punk.

The Jam were always what other people at school listened to….

Conrad

29 October 2008 16:39

Two quick observations (my eye isn’t on the ball at the moment, my PAYE dept at work casually informed this morning that I’ve been underpaying tax since January, so I am currently crying into a large glass of merlot. Don’t they have to ask me for my P45 when I start??)

Sorry, I digress.

1. This thread, from Tom’s review down, is absolutely top-notch. It just shows how inspiring a great record can be.

2. The day this entered the chart at Number 1 indeed felt like a momentous occasion. I vividly recall the buzz among my friends at Tuesday afternoon’s ED double period (Engineering Drawing or Technical Drawing if you prefer) as news filtered around that the Jam had gone straight in at Number One. Number 1!

I don’t remember anything from the lesson itself sadly. Perhaps I would have been better off with a double period of HR (Human Resources or Personnel as I believe it was once called, before the world became a different, more confusing place). Sorry, I’m not at my best today.

johnny

29 October 2008 20:35

i have to agree with some who’ve stated their preference for earlier or later jam singles over this one. this song is the awkward adolescence of the jam (themselves awkward adolescents), falling squarely between their boyhood shouting and their art-soul posturing. i could make a convincing case for why “eton rifles” and “start!” are both better than the tune that came between them, but it’s fairly obvious that the fondness for this one is built upon a solid foundation of nostalgia mixed with, admittedly, an incredibly catchy production.

bonus points for the iconic promotional film, which no doubt caused many 13-year old boys to invest in a rickenbacker and a scarf.

Magic Fly

29 October 2008 20:37

So what was the reasoning behind the apron that Weller was rocking on the Top of the Pops appearance? I was 12 at the time and it distinctly felt like a show of solidarity, given that we were routinely forced to wear aprons in ‘home economics’ class (my banana cake was a triumph).

fivelongdays

29 October 2008 21:51

Tom @ 4 – I see where your coming from, but for me this really is a case, like ‘…Rhythm Stick’ of being too low.

Another cast-iron 10, one of the greatest, if not THE greatest number one ever.

Chris Brown

29 October 2008 22:59

I’m fairly pleasantly surprised to see how little bashing the record has attracted so far because I’m well aware that Weller and the Jam tend to rub some people up the wrong ay for various reasons (many of which are his fault).
I’m not really old enough for this record to have changed my life or anything, and I don’t consider myself a real Weller acolyte as such: but there’s a lot of music in his catalogue that I love, and this is some of it. If I don’t consider it a favourite, that’s probably more a matter of over-familiarity (at least with the A-side) than judgement.

So, what can I add to this discussion? Well, I’ll agree that the contributions of Foxton and Buckler here are very important: In fact one of the memorable moments I’d like to add is that little percussion solo in the middle. If further proof were needed, one need only listen to Buffalo Tom’s dull version. The one point I’d quibble with is the suggestion that there’s no branching out – I can certainly hear a bit of reggae in there, even if it’s not leaping up and down with a big “Look I’m embracing reggae” sign.

AndyPandy

30 October 2008 07:12

Quite an interesting point in No21 above about “The Jam=punk for people who didnt like punk”. My memories of growing up in a working class area and attending a particularly rough school was that despite all punk’s rather pathetic protestations to be some kind of “voice of the proletarian youth” the average working class kid thoughts on it ranged from complete uninterest to outright loathing…in my memory it was always liked by a few kids in the top streams often from the nicer part of town who often ended up getting chased around town by the local soul patrol/jazz funketeers. The only “rock/punk” band who i remember a significant amount of working-class kids liking were the Jam (they could overlook the politics which after all only wanky students were into)and this obviously is connected to the mod revival which I remember as being an almost universally working-class movement.I think it had something to do with the working class idea of looking smart and having fun.
Wouldn’t British working class youth en masses’s interests since the early 60s have gone something like this, dates obviously approximate: Mod (1961-65)>Hard Mod(1966-67)Skinhead (reggae) (1968-71)>Modern Soul/Funk/Disco if you were in London and South East (1972-82) or Northern Soul in rest of the country (1968-82)>HipHop (1983-86)>Acid House/Hardcore/Trance/Happy Hardcore/Garage/Bassline etc 1987 to present.
Punk to a lot of working class youth had too many connotations of scruffy students talking about rock festivals while reading the NME…

lonepilgrim

30 October 2008 13:36

re #36 to my mind punk was at it’s best when it leaned towards glam futurism (pistols/banshees/x-ray spex) rather than claiming to represent the ‘authentic’ voice of yoof. Those voices in the latter camp often seemed to equate ‘working class’ with inarticulate cries of anger or appetite. It continues to irritate me that Joe Strummer has been elevated to sainthood despite his patronising and hypocritical role playing. At least Weller could claim more genuine working class roots and in his ambition and versatility give the lie to the limited vision supplied by the likes of Sham 69 eec.

Erithian

30 October 2008 14:08

AndyPandy #36 – where would metal fit into this scheme of things? – another working class genre I wold have thought.

David Belbin

30 October 2008 14:09

I recall seeing The Jam when this was number one. It was possible to get tickets to their gig at Blackburn St George’s Hall late on because there was a music papers strike so news of the mini-tour wasn’t widely spread. And critical acclaim for this, their best single to date imho, was therefore somewhat muted, which must have given Weller another chip to put on his wide shoulders.

LondonLee

30 October 2008 14:23

He was a miserable git wasn’t he? One gig I saw them at he fell over when his leg got caught in his guitar lead and rather than laugh it off (we all laughed) he got pissed off and started smashing up his guitar in surly Pete Townsend fashion.

Like Andy said the real “working class” music round our way was soul, jazz-funk and reggae but The Jam attracted a lot of those kids because there was an element of sharp clothes and dancing in Mod (and, most importantly, girls!) All the Mod mates I had at the time ended up being Soul Boys in the 80s.

mike

30 October 2008 15:06

As a relatively posh boy in a relatively working-class village in North Notts, I noticed a few significant musical swells over the years: Motown in the early 1970s (those Chartbusters comps were everywhere), Metal (e.g. UFO, Kiss) and C&W (e.g. Don Williams) in the late 70s (depending on age), and Rave in the early 1990s (e.g. Bizarre Inc, and Speedy J for some weird reason). I’ve no idea what people were listening to in the 1980s!

Billy Smart

30 October 2008 15:29

God, much as I love this, if anything is going to put me off, it’s the idea of “real geezer music”…

This really impressed my seven year old-self, who had probably inherited (from my father) a rather inflated idea of the importance of the notion of politics in most peoples’ lives. I can well remember the thrill of seeing the video on Top of the Pops and Swap Shop, when Weller deals the b & w photos of Thatcher, Callaghan and Steele “The public gets what the public wants” – I can remember trying to remember how it went and sing it afterwards, much to the disapproval and bewilderment of my mother.

Weller’s scowling face probably gave my childhood self a sense of his importance, wheras to me now such a demeanour usually suggests self-importance.

I think that the other Popular song that I think of this alongside is ‘Help’ – in that both are clipped, ragingly honest and are about feeling a need to retreat or accept vulnerability, but manage to sound defiant through this communication of weary, ragged, emotion.

Billy Smart

30 October 2008 15:30

Surely it should be “bleating sheep”, not “braying” ones?

mark sinker

30 October 2008 15:46

perhaps they are bleating out of their asses?

mike

30 October 2008 17:58

I always heard as “spraying shit from my TV screen”.

Billy at #42 – I think the “Help” comparison applies more the Jam’s next Number One, for the reasons you’ve stated. But more of than anon, of course.

Lord Sukrat – I’ve been slowly working my way through that punk essay of yours, as linked upthread. If I’ve understood your definitions correctly (doubtful!), then elements of “Going Underground” do seem quite on-message:

“The public gets what the public wants, but I want nothing this society’s got, I’m going underground.”

That’s properly punk, yes? Or not?

Brian

30 October 2008 19:40

the clash and the jam / as punk for ppl who didn’t like or understand punk

Yup , that was me and add The Police. I was too old to get the punk thing. It wasn’t until the 90’s that I got into The Jam – just kinda missed them – until acquaitnace of mine was going to see Weller and suggested that I listen to everything every done by him. I haven’t .

It was mentioned somewhere …but is Weller seen in similar kind of light as Sting for becoming who he is ? Is this an ideological fall out from “selling out” the punk movement, even tho he was Mod ? Like those who , to this day , if still alive, depise Dylan for playing an electric guitar ?

mark sinker

30 October 2008 21:36

mike@45: i think my overall definition (in that essay) boils down to “make the contradiction the hook”, so while there’s a contradiction between PW’s claim to be going underground and where he was actually going (=top of the charts), it’s not one he really foregrounds or works (or seems to have noticed); but there’s enough interesting ideas in this thread (esp. from his fans) to make me want to think about it a lot more (this is after all a song i like a lot, so i don’t mind thinking about it)

but it’s totally true that a single song could (by my cranky defn) “be punk” even if an artist generally wasn’t; or even sometimes a single line

brian@46: the guy who shouted “judas!” was tracked down a few years back; he was understandably sheepish, having in fact changed his mind about dylan’s “betrayal” only a few months later

Tommy Mack

30 October 2008 21:41

If punk was about anything, it seems it was about individuality and hence, lots of different things! No wonder everyone whether revivalist or revisionist, geezer or femenist wants a slice of it.
The only real universal rules seem to be:
1. Play hard and fast.
2. Bait/Express discontent with authority figures.
3. Look a bit cross at all times.

One of the best things about The Jam (also The Specials and a certain north London ska septet) is that geezer music doesn’t have to be moron music. An ethos we could do with a bit more of today – you can’t imagine Kaiser Chiefs singing about two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude, can you?

mark sinker

30 October 2008 21:59

tommy@48 — obviously your so-called “universal” rules are all entirely wrong, but the individuality bit pans out: the best way to know if ppl are truly punk is that they are still arguing fiercely with each other about every aspect of it 30-odd years later

mike

30 October 2008 22:45

“geezer music doesn’t have to be moron music”

One of my guiding aesthetics of the 1990s in a nutshell!

wpDiscuz

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THE JAM – "Going Underground"/"Dreams Of Children"

FERN KINNEY – "Together We Are Beautiful"

THE DETROIT SPINNERS – "Working My Way Back To You"

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