Description
Digipak
So here is a 75 minute set from The Jam, at the height of their popularity, recorded at the Westfallenhalle, Dortmund, Germany, November 30th, 1980. Just barely two days before, The Jam had released what would have been one of their best albums. Paul Weller certainly thinks 1980s Sound Affects was the group’s best work (Weller likened to a cross between Revolver-era Beatles and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall. The Beatles influence is apparent in the opening bassline of Start, which is the same bass riff that opens Taxman). On this show, of the album’s 22 tracks, the group left out Monday, Music For The Last Couple and possibly one of The Jam’s biggest hits, That’s Entertainment. Perhaps the group was trying to promote their then latest single, Start!, and didn’t want to detract any attention from it. Not surprisingly, The Jam’s greatest hits compilation, Snap!, features the trio of That’s Entertainment, Start! and The Man In The Corner Shop from the Sound Affects album. Even without That’s Entertainment, this is still a solid show with a good selection of oldies thrown in. The sequencing of the songs in the setlist is quite exquisite – Weller opens with a new song, Dream Time, then goes into Thick As Thieves. The mix of the new with the familiar continues in the later half of the show where But I’m Different Now, Start! and Scrape Away are bunched together. Weller is in fine attacking form – it’s as if the pent-up energy from the recording sessions has seeped over and he’s singing like there’s no tomorrow. While he generally introduces the new songs, there isn’t much banter between the songs – Weller preferred to let the songs do the talking: the group’s take on the Beatles and Michael Jackson as well as a comment on working class aspirations (The Man In The Corner Shop), dealing with the ’80s (The Modern World), skinhead violence (Down In The Tube Station At Midnight), anti-authoritarian rule (The Eton Rifles), loss of childhood (Dreams Of Children), anti-war (Little Boy Soldiers) and general apathy (Scrape Away). This was recorded in Germany from a Rockpalast TV broadcast but the show has never been officially released. The sound is superb, and so is the band. They were two years away from calling it a day – catch them when they were still hot and angry (bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler reformed The Jam earlier in 2007 without Weller).
Track listing:
1. Dream Time
2. Thick As Thieves
3. Boy About Town
4. Going Underground
5. Pretty Green
6. Man In The Corner Shop
7. Set The House Ablaze
8. Private Hell
9. Liza Radley
10. The Dreams Of Children
11. The Modern World
12. Little Boy Soldiers
13. But Im Different Now
14. Start
15. Scrape Away
16. Strange Town
17. When You’re Young
18. In The City
19. To Be Someone (Didnt We Have A Nice Time)
20. David Watts
21. The Eton Rifles
22. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight