From The Jam

Since the demise of the Jam and Paul Weller’s other projects took him away from that style of music I must have seen a dozen Jam 'Tribute’ bands – some of them ok, some absolute crap but none generating the fervour or the sheer adrenaline rush that the original band did.
So I was more than a little pleased to see that the original Jam members Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler were going back out to perform Jam material.

Now here I am at the Forum in Kentish Town, looking around me at a wide variety of humanity ranging from those who weren’t even twinkles when the Jam started out to to a bunch of Northern beer guts who sang every song of the classic singles that DJ Gary Crowley warmed the audience up with. And now the lights dim and the spots start swinging around and suddenly there are four guys onstage playing Jam songs and sounding just like the Jam. But there are four of them! Russell Hastings on guitar and vocals sounds almost exactly like Weller, all the power, the anger, the ferocity is there and David Moore plays lead guitar convincingly but it takes a few numbers to get over the number of bodies on stage.

But by the time they hied into 'David Watts’ and the crowd in the gallery was pogoing as much as the mob in the stalls it didn’t matter about the number of players – only that this was the music that set London alight in 1977 and that we hadn’t heard live since 1982.

Now the original Jam were always more than Paul Weller and backing musicians – Bruce Foxton was and is a superb bass player and his stygian sound hasn’t dimmed in the passing years, Rick Buckler is a sticksman of real power and precision and these two were the fulcrum around which Wellers songs were created. No Foxton & Buckler = softer and less affecting songs = no Jam. Foxton was always a jumping jack on stage and he still is, always on the move and, with his white shoes and drainpipe trousers, a focal point for the audience and when the band are chucking the hits out one after the other - 'Modern World’, 'News Of The World’, 'Eton Rifles’, 'That’s Entertainment’, 'Going Underground’ – and the crowd is pogoing and doing the 'Weller Walk’ – shoulders back, elbows bent and fists at waist level – it is 1978 all over again.

They finally encore with 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight’ with the whole crowd singing 'OooH Oooh Eeee’ with the band.

The ghost of Paul Weller still manages to hang over From The Jam but they managed to exorcise him for a good hour and a quarter last night and The Jam were back and all was right in the world.