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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.

Labels: Video