Wednesday, January 28, 2009



Last March I did a post called “5 Favorite Bands of All Time, if I absolutely had to pick only 5.” I remember laboring over that for about a week, mostly because it simply felt wrong to post such a list without including The Jam. Since the moment I first saw them on the late (and unbelievably great) TV show Fridays in July of 1980, I was hooked, and I’ve “rediscovered” them at various times in my life more than any other group in the last 28 years or so. They are always there when you need them, and remarkably, their music never sounds antiquated. Their discography is relatively concise, that is they only released 6 full-length albums between 1977 and 1982, but if the saying “all killer – no filler” ever applied to anyone, it’s these 3 incredibly talented Brits. What I’m saying is, if I ever expanded that list to 10 bands, they would make it easily.

Since this is a “punk rock” history lesson, I decided to focus on the band early in their career. Their later, more soulful stuff is equally brilliant, but when I came across this footage of the band doing “In The City” live at The Circus that ran on Tony Wilson’s show in 1977, I knew I had a winner for ya. Check out the very young Poly Styrene sitting in the interviewers chair before Tony gets up to introduce this footage… hopefully I can scare that up before we get to the letter X.

3 comments:

seventeenseconds said...

"Since the moment I first saw them on the late (and unbelievably great) TV show Fridays in July of 1980"

Every time you say something like this it makes me realize how older than me you must really be...

This is Nic of Charlotte's Web, btw, hope to see you & the crew up in Sacramento. I recently started following your blog, good shit!

Michael LaVella said...

Hey, I'm only 44. Trust me, the next time you turn around, you will be too!

Anonymous said...

Yo Mr LaVella cool to see The Jam on your blog they were a large part of my teens soundtrack here in the UK The Jam were part of the second Mod movement so it was more Vespas than V8's Paul Weller is a sharp lyricist he captured the romance, pollitics,dullness and anger of 80's England in 3 minutes better than anyone since Ray Davies wonderfull to think that some Gearheads in the States knew it too...over and out

Post a Comment