J
The Jam
All Mod Cons
Let’s get back to basics, shall we?
At our hearts, in our hearts, of our hearts….no,no,no. This simply won’t do at all. Start again.
We were founded way back in the mists of time, last weekend in fact or possibly even further than that, with the important brief to provide a true record of times that are now lost to us way back in the mists of time. Damn we’ve done it again, tangled up in tautological knots. Press on. Press on.
You are reading what will be a serious scientific study; an important body of work that casts a look back to the lost arts of a forgotten, better time and looks at the mess we’re in now because of all that we’ve wilfully let go like spoilt children.
You think we’re wrong?
Well, damn it, your children don’t know any important things anymore, such as:
- A record has a groove on each side that is basically an elongated spiral and the darker lines are where you put the needle or stylus on.
- You used to be able to get chewing tobacco made out of spit, sugar and coconut in packets called ‘Old Jamaica Chewee’
- At one time, ring pulls from cans had detachable metal saucers which could be flicked and used as handy but lethal eye gouging weapons during combat with your classroom opponents
- How to read or write
That’s where we come in – we’re ‘Happy to Help’.
Cultural Primer: ‘Happy to Help’ was a slogan frequently proffered by the customer care departments of certain retail outlets, garages and commercial centres in the twentieth century generally displayed on cheerfully coloured pieces of card at the customer’s eye level. It was fact later realised by many to be a misprint and should actually have read ‘Piss off you moaning bastard’.
Yes, we at Drunken Vinyls are happy to help you get alternatively warm, fuzzy and maudlin, by playing all the vinyl records known to mankind, starting at A and ending at Z, as a misty eyed soundtrack to the crappy mess we’re in today in the hope that these notes will be found by some future species of human which we lovingly christen ‘future-kind’. We may have nicked that off Doctor Who, can’t be sure. It gives us no pleasure, and, to soften the blow, we have to drink to each track as it lives one last time then dies forever in our memory.
Today we reach the letter J. In a strange Play School
Setting up Time
Setting your decks up is a painstaking process that requires several wires, twiddles and insertions, so whilst you do this, we now cast a look back to the last week (or so). And WHAT a week! (or so)(it has been).
Not. In fact we’ve been rather underwhelmed by the meltdown in Europe – just another indication of ‘A bomb, A bomb, A bomb: Apocalypse’ so we shrug with a weary sigh. George Papandopolis, Angela Marble and Nicky Sarcastic. Who? ‘Up Yours Delors’ we say, and take it with a triple snail and frog legged baguette.
This reminds us of a classic Les Dawson joke we once heard: ‘Waiter, waiter, have you got frog’s legs?’ ‘Ah, oui monsieur.’ ‘Well hop over the bar and get me a cheese sandwich.’ Disregarding the fact that this joke is perfectly hilarious on its own – we did laugh in the seventies, our laughter often compared to a rich and warm sauce-anglaise, anti European naturally, but never construed as tart, like some bitter burnt French caramelised crème brulee tossed contemptuously onto the table by the aforementioned waiter in the joke – but you could add to that joke and extend it into a damn fine cutting edge Eurosceptic routine with reasonable ease, we think, and it could earn you a pretty penny in these acerbically astringent times.
‘HAPPY TO HELP’ YOU EARN A LIVING
THE ‘BE YOUR OWN TOP COMEDIAN’ SECTION
DrunkenVinyls gives you; free of charge, a comedian routine to help you ‘be a comedian’ for use in entertaining large crowds in pubs. In order to help you ‘be a comedian’ simply read the lines marked ‘You’ and prepare as follows.
You will need:
- One microphone
- One tall wobbly stool
- One humorous comedy accoutrement from the following list: feather duster, megaphone, pointed stick, tin of ‘Dubbin’, used tube of warts remover
- Some people
- A hat for money collection
When ready, put large stool in middle of any crowded Friday night pub, climb atop and ask for quiet. When the requisite silence is achieved, affect a comedy voice – Yorkshire accents, or high pitched squeaks are reasonably effective and proceed with a ‘Wa-HAY!’
You: Feather dusters / Warts remover /Tins of Dubbin / Megaphones / Pointed sticks (delete as appropriate) what that all about, eh? Eh? (pause for laughter / wave comedy accoutrement at people). The other day I went into the shop for a………(insert chosen comedy accoutrement here) and I was told by the assistant I was in…the wrong shop! She said ‘You need the feather duster / warts remover / Dubbin / Megaphone / Pointed stick (delete as appropriate) shop down by MacFisheries on the corner.’ Eh? I said ‘Are you European? Wouldn’t have happened in my day. Eh? (Pause for applause to die down) Europeans, what’s that all about, eh? Eurozone. Eurozone? More like Poo-rozone. That’s what I think, Eh? This wouldn’t have happened in my day, I can tell you. (Pause to wait as St John’s
Collect handsome amounts of lose change in aforementioned hat and retire.
Next Week: ‘Be Your Own Bus Conductor’
The Jam
All Mod Cons
What’s The Story?
Which is why we find ourselves, instead, at Woking . Woking had recently won ‘Nicest Town at Tea-time’ in the May ‘Monthly Nice Town Woking would find themselves smilingly whistling happy tunes and carelessly tossing michaelmas daisies and snap dragons at each other without a care in the world and would sigh if a breeze would lift a tress or ribbon.
All this was to change, however, terribly and suddenly.
In Mrs Buckler’s house, Mrs Foxton and Mrs Buckler had worked terribly hard all day to produce a selection of home made fruit preserves and were sitting back, looking forward to the Woking Fruit Festival later that afternoon. As Maud Buckler lit her third Woodbine of the day and pushed the ashtray across to her close friend ‘Foxy’, she smiled happily as her son, Rick, pressed the kitchen door open, dressed in his school blazer and cap.
“Hi, Ricky, what are you up to today?” She enquired of her rosy cheeked offspring.
“Oh, hi Mum, hi Mrs Foxton, gosh you look nice,” Blushed Rick, somewhat tongue tied, “Me and Bruce are off to Woolworths to meet David Watts. We’ve just been watching Top of the Pops with Ed Stewart. He’s so groovy! We’ve saved up enough pocket money to buy Paul Nicholas’ latest smash hit 45 ‘Dancing with the Captain’ and Bruce thinks he might have enough to get a Tina Charles poster, too!”
“Goodness, boys, eh, how lovely!” exclaimed Mrs Foxton, exhaling luxuriously, “Well you two behave and don’t get into any trouble, will you?”
Like two guilty schoolboys, Rick and Bruce scurried off in the direction of town, avoiding snap dragons and daisies with practiced ease. As they approached the high street Woolworth’s, a frown crossed the face of Rick like a cloud across the sun on a summer’s day. He nudged Bruce sharply in the ribs. “Look, Bruce, it’s that Paul Weller.”
Bruce scowled. “Our mums have told us to have nothing to do with him,” he muttered, “And he’s right outside Woolworths.”
“Yes, he’s not even wearing his school blazer or cap,” added Rick, horrified, “He’s sporting a ‘Ruby Flipper Sucks’ badge, too!”
“Yes. But to be fair they do suck a bit. Legs and Co are a breath of fresh air after those recent anodyne displays of choreography, I must say.”
“Must you?” asked Rick, irritated by his friend’s new found opinionated posture and his surprisingly mature vocabulary for someone of his age. “Oh no. He’s coming over.” With a sneer upon his sullen, surly face, Weller was indeed, ‘coming over’ and Rick caught himself shivering with ill accustomed fright as the bigger boy casually sauntered up and adopted a threatening stance. He was eating chips from newspaper, chips with curry sauce and he was spooning it mouthwards with wooden forked tongue implement. Curry sauce? That was new. Dangerous, too. Rick had heard of curry sauce, bought over in the sixties by the Maharishi; beloved of those demi-devils The Beatles and he also knew and feared the hallucinations such foreign foodstuffs could bring.
“Want a chip?” sneered Weller, evilly.
“We don’t eat chips, Paul,” mumbled Bruce, equally horrified. “My mum calls them the spawn of the devil. And they’ve got polyunsaturated cholesterol, too.”
“Polyfuckingwhat? Eat the chips!” leered Weller, stabbing Rick’s eye with a hot fried potato and adopting an uncouth cockney patois reminiscent of yet to be born hip hop artist and guru to a generation named Reveal. “Cause if you don’t, I will do to you what I done unto David Watts.”
“What?” trembled Buckler, longing for the jammy aroma and warmth of his mother’s bosoms.
“Nah, Watts !” screamed Weller, his mouth full of hot potato. He smelled horribly of exotic spices. “I done him up like a kipper, him with his untamed wit and his hairs on his chest.”
Foxton’s eyes widened in terror. “But he is the head boy of our school. He is so gay and fancy free. He took his exams and passed the lot!”
“I’m the Daddy now! Fuck him!” screamed Weller. “Eat the chips. Eat them! They taste of pubs and wormwood scrubs and too many right wing political meetings, these do.” Hesitantly and with hot tears running down their young cheeks, Bruce and Ricky partook of the curry sauce and chips. They were actually pretty tasty and with relieved smiles the two boys were soon yumming them up. Bruce, remembering his newly found mature vocabulary was soon opining just so: “I say, Weller, old chap, these are pretty darn tasty. I never really liked that David Watts anyway, he was a bit effete for my taste. Can we be friends with you instead?”
“Yes, come back to ours, Paul, and meet our mums. They’ve made some lovely jam for us,” added Rick, sensing the end of the anecdote approaching.
“OK lads,” laughed Weller, clapping them both on the shoulders, “The only thing is: I don’t like jam!”
Howling uncontrollably, like pub comedians recently in possession of some free new ‘be a pub comedian’ material, the three new amigos left Tina Charles behind, to be a footnote of history and sung their way towards a new future thus to the tune of Sloop John B:
“We fucking hate jam, we fucking hate jaa-aa-am, we are the Jam boys, we fucking hate jam.”
That’s entertainment. As they say.
THE NOT QUITE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DRUNKEN VINYLS
- Thou shalt play both sides of the record in their entirety
- Thou shalt drink one can of Fosters or its alcohol equivalent per song
- Thou shalt record ramblings as they occur to thee for the duration of the running time
- Thou shalt edit out the swearing the next day
- Thou shalt not suffer a Blueberry user to live
All set up, are we? Well nail your flip flops to the floor because it’s time for lift off with Ayshea!
J
The Jam
All Mod Cons
Side One
"All Mod Cons"
Strap yourself in, Great Britain London
"To Be Someone (Didn't We Have a Nice Time)"
Well, now, a year or two before ‘Start’, this is clearly Paul McCartney’s bass from Taxman and then – as from a time when music was really great, the power chords simply dissolve like Alka Seltzer. And the lyrics: - echoes of a time when Britain was still Great Britain
"Mr. Clean"
This one starts hesitantly, very low key, as when you press the soft pedal on your grand piano. We like the way that Paul updates Ray Davies’ penchant for creating characters to inhabit songscapes – of course the best, yet to come, is on the flip side of this very vinyl. This is an LP that builds. A minor sequence introduces the underbelly of our society, Ray Davies sang about Plastic Men and Mr Pleasant – how is Mrs Pleasant? Did you know she’s been screwing around with a nice young man? Well, did you? But Weller, in his great period, sings about ‘fucking up your life’ – it’s ambiguous to the listener, though – does he like Mr Clean. Well, does he? I do. Being clean is a good thing. Make sure you wash all those hard to reach bits. I didn’t I regret it now.
"David Watts"
Ok. From faux Davies to real Davies inside the space of a heartbeat. Well love both versions, but really like the way The Jam reinforce the drive of the song by all instruments reinforcing the beat and tune by tracking each other – probably improves on the original which was a bit fey – still you’ve got to like the Kinks when they ARE fey – such as Autumn Almanac – ‘I like my football on a Saturday, roast beef on Sunday – alright!’. Ray lives near us you know. We thought we might march up and down his road singing ‘Waterloo Sunset’ loudly to see if we could elicit a reaction. Then we thought again.
"English Rose"
The haunting sounds of the London docks from a time before they’d been turned into flats and apartments for the rich, when Great Britain
"In the Crowd"
From The Beatles to The Who – but this only makes us remember just how great music can be when it tries to spruce itself up and put on a whistle and flute. Fantastic. The guitar chords release the tension perfectly and descend chromatically; you just grin. Don’t tell me…I’m a pinball wizard. There has to be a twist. Oh no – it’s echoes now, hang on we detect a soupçon of Stone Roses and Oasis and backwards guitar circa Revolver. Oh John Lennon – what did you do? A sweet reference to ‘Away from the Numbers’, too. OK we’re getting terribly drunkily now, a sonic wash soundscape concludes a simply brilliant Side One. Buy this record, it will save your soul!!
Side Two
"Billy Hunt"
Billy Hunt, Billy Hunt, Billy, Billy, Billy!! Brilliant – this is the new Jam – looking forward to ‘Sound Affects’ and ‘Setting Sons’ – it’s almost ‘Going Underground’: no one pushes Billy Hunt around, so we’re going underground – cracking handclaps and what do you call it when the electric guitars slide into that feedback noisy thing that makes you want to throw yourself into the moshpit? Great title, All Mod Cons, too. As in – faux mods? Who cares when the music is this good, this had to be a trigger for fantastic Britflick ‘Quadrophenia’, Leslie Ash, Phil Daniels, Brighton Beach – we are the mods, we are the mods, we are we are we are we are the mods!
"It's Too Bad"
No! The chords from ‘She Loves You’ and why bloody not? A fantastic song – we are running out of superlatives – we’ll never do a better record than this on DeeVees. Short, beautiful. This is a masterpiece. Quite – masterful.
"Fly"
Immediately you is thinking “Oh, no, flies, I hate flies, they always seem to know when you get a two day old lasagne from the fridge that’s vaguely going off but you’re damn sure you’re going to eat it anyway. Still, notwithstanding that, this turns out to be nothing about flies or mouldy food – instead it has enough different movements in the space of a couple of minutes to be almost prog-rock – in fact it seems a bit ‘Yours is No Disgrace’ – we may have said earlier that this LP builds – and so it goes.
"The Place I Love"
Is obviously Camden Market - a terrific day out? “Camden Market, a terrific day out!” (Elton John, 1974)
"'A' Bomb in Wardour Street
Favourite track. Why? Could it be that we used to lust after a girl in Roxy Night Club, Union Street, Plymouth, she loved The Jam, back in 1978, she could not keep but dancing if this track or ‘That’s Entertainment’ would come on, so slim and beautiful – we never found out her name but we would dance a bit near to her and follow her moves in that peculiar New Romantic style of those times. Great song: two/two cow bells and a thriftily shuffled couple of chords – subject? Who knows? Apocalypse. That’s about it. But in a good way.
"Down in the Tube Station at Midnight"
The grey dirty steps – can we add anything to the reams already written? The last song predicts apocalypse, this is sadly prescient of where we are now. Good, though – as you know. If you’ve never heard this, then give up and go back, back to your echoing voids, back to your empty existence. Fantastic!
What Have We Learnt Tonight?
So we come to the end. If you’ve read this far we salute you here at DVHQ. We are happy – it’s been an odd week. Jimmy Savile passed on, you know, one of our heroes and it’s bonfire night, too. We’re not sure Jimmy would have really liked The Jam, but he used to do a show on Radio 1, Sunday, looking at old top tens, and we remember him liking The Who.
Sir Jimmy Savile, legend. We salute you.
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