The Jam: Setting Sons - 1979
"I was one, in the corps. It meant a lot, some of those early Jam albums we used to listen to" - David Cameron
The Jam released Setting Sons in late 1979, a year after they had conquered all before them with All Mod Cons, which took them from being (supposed) punks to champions of the “new wave”.
It was talked up as being a (dreaded) “concept album”, ostensibly about three friends who grow up, get jobs, go to war then ummm..well...errr. That was that. No concept really, was there? Time for a Motown cover, maybe, oh alright then... That said, Setting Sons was and indeed is a great album, albeit one that now sounds very much of its time.
Here we go then as we sup up our beer and collect our fags....
Thick As Thieves
Private Hell
Little Boy Soldiers
Wasteland
Burning Sky
Smithers-Jones
Saturday's Kids
The Eton Rifles
Heat Wave
Following on swiftly is Thick As Thieves, which is all pumping bass runs, thumping, resonant drums and choppy guitar, Weller spitting out heartfelt stuff about loyalty among friends on the way. It is possibly the best, most cohesively constructed track on the album. I love the drums, bass and vocals interaction on the song's final section that exemplifies just what a (cliché alert) tight band these three lads were - classic Jam. On first hearing this back in 1979 I was struck by just how far they had come in such a short time. This was certainly no punk thrash, despite its pace. There was a new subtlety there, both musically and lyrically.
In contrast, the fuzzy and dense guitar-driven grind of Private Hell is stark and somewhat depressing, concerning a depressed housewife, similar to the theme of The Rolling Stones' mid-sixties kitchen sink moaner Mother's Little Helper ("what a drag it is getting old"). Her grown-up children have no time in their busy lives for her anymore and the "man that she once loved is bald and fat, and seldom in, working late as usual...".
The overall mood is not improved any in the sad tale of wartime waste of life in the next track - Little Boy Soldiers is a song driven along firmly by Rick Buckler's military tattoo-inspired drumming and Weller's anti-imperialist lyrical invective. Having said that, nobody expected The Jam to be a barrel of laughs though, did they? The song sort of fits the concept idea, but is is very spurious, not bearing any real relation to the contemporary themes of Thick As Thieves of Burning Sky, harking back on occasions to the Great War in its narrative, or any earlier imperialist conflicts for that matter. Weller marries feelings no doubt held by many unfortunate conscripts from over a hundred years ago with potential views from modern times, however. It ends with thirty seconds of Beatles-style funereal hiatus (I'm thinking of the end of A Day In The Life), before we get the perkiness of the next track.Wasteland is a musically breezy and tuneful slice of social comment, full of pragmatic child-like affection for bleak, rubble-strewn playgrounds ("discarded bric-a-brac....coca-cola tins and punctured footballs") featuring - quite suitably - a recorder. The song's simple and light melody goes some way towards hiding its stark images, much in the way that a child will make the best out of the harshest of surroundings - and duly get nostalgic over them in later years. My father seriously loved the bomb-site rubble and devastation of World War Two Birkenhead, never forgetting it - it was his twelve year-old nirvana.
Burning Sky is one of the only songs that truly relates to the “concept” thing, along with Thick As Thieves. It is one of the album's most pertinent songs as Weller sings from the point of view of a condescending member of the group of friends ("how are things in your little world?") who doesn't want much to do with them any more - "business is thriving and I'm showing a profit...some bonds severed and others made". Class, money and bourgeois aspiration are never far from the surface on this album, they are its cornerstones, forget any supposed concept, there are still hard-hitting themes a-plenty. Funnily enough, I feel the lyrics of this song could apply to Weller's attitude to Foxton and Buckler and his time with The Jam after splitting the group in 1982 - "...and I must admit we had a laugh but that's all it was and ever will be...".Next up is Smithers-Jones, an orchestrated version of the 'b' side of the stand-alone single from a few months earlier, When You’re Young (see the About The Young Idea compilation). To be honest, I greatly prefer the “full band” version. The version present here is somewhat wishy-washy, the typical Jam strength sucked out of it, rendering its sound at odds with the rest of the album. Lyrically, it covers the story of a long-serving office worker who is made redundant and is by far Bruce Foxton's best song that he composed for The Jam, although it is said that the middle "put on the kettle and make some tea" verse bit was written by Weller. Foxton's own father's redundancy has been noted as an inspiration for the song, but, in my opinion, that is only an initial starting point for the song, as I doubt Foxton's father would have worn a pin-stripe suit and tie and bought The Times.
A riffy and catchy, vaguely Stonesy number, Saturday's Kids was about teenagers who "work in Tesco's and Woolworth's" (as I did, well, Tescos at least) and it definitely restored the venom. It is the album's most blatantly "rock" number, bringing to mind The Who of the mid-sixties or David Bowie's Diamond Dogs (the track). Some find it a throwaway number but I have always loved its ebullience.
A magnificent, barnstorming Jam-anthem, The Eton Rifles takes the rousing feel to the max on ex-Prime Minister David Cameron’s (supposed) favourite song. “There’s a row going on down near Slough” indeed. At times Weller’s lyrics - about school vs. town/toffs and oiks in Eton and Slough - reflected the early twenty-something that he was ("some of the lads said they'll be back next week"), on other occasions they showed the insight and wisdom of a much older man ("what chance have you got against a tie and a crest"). It is fair to say, though, that these days I do not quite hang on his every word as I did as a similar-aged "fuck 'em all" youth back in 1979 (neither would Weller himself, I would proffer), but there is still considerable relevance to its beautifully rebellious overall tone. The song also remains a classic fist-pumper with its "hello hooray" chorus. Perfect for an audience full of lads.Incongruously, the album finishes way before time with a frenetic cover of Martha Reeves & The Vandellas’ punchy, upbeat 1963-64 number, Heat Wave. All done too soon. Bands still got away with 30 minutes and not much more in those days. The group got a bit of a slagging off at the time for the song, but I have always enjoyed its guitar-powered energy. It functions rather like a frantic, end-of-concert encore, and one that acknowledges the band's influences too.
Listening to the album now, while it contains some fine songs (especially when one considers they were written by a twenty-two year-old) it functions now more as a deeply nostalgic period piece as opposed to an epoch-defining work of genius. That said, there is still something about its totally irrepressible sound and vigour that is just so bloody perfect.
Smithers-Jones (full band version)
See-Saw
Best Of Both Worlds
Along The Grove
Simon
Going Underground
The Dreams Of Children
The non-album material either side of this album's release included the September 1979 single When You're Young, which was a vibrant, new wave-ish and catchy number featuring a first for The Jam - a piece of cod dub reggae in the bridge.
Its 'b' side was by far Bruce Foxton's best song for The Jam - the afore-mentioned Smithers-Jones - played here in the full band version, as opposed to the strangely orchestrated string-backed version that appears on Setting Sons. As I said earlier, it is a sad tale of an office worker who is made redundant.
The 'b' side to the Eton Rifles singles was See-Saw, typical Jam rocker that somehow never really caught on with me. It has that instantly recognisable Jam guitar sound but has a vagueness, both musically and lyrically. Although a Weller song, it has always sounded like a Foxton one to me and of all the Jam "rarities" is is the one I have paid the least attention to.
One of the first songs recorded on the sessions for Setting Sons was Bruce Foxton's Best Of Both Worlds, an enjoyable, rocky but typically Bruce Foxton number that would possibly have still fitted on the album and not sounded too out of place. Or in place of Heat Wave. It has that Foxton lyrical clumsiness and drawn-out repeated vowel sounds ("wor-huh-hurlds..") that his songs always had but it is actually not a bad effort, to be fair.
Also from the time was the electric guitar solo demo performed by Weller of Along The Grove, which I am sure morphed into Liza Radley, at least melodically. It is a track that remains unconvincing and pretty inessential. Weller growls with frustration at the end of it. More impressive is the genuine rare nugget of Simon - a Kinks/Small Faces-ish character-driven number.
In the March of 1980 came the world-conquering straight in at number one single Going Underground, which was a chaotic, visceral condemnation of the nuclear arms race that was perfect for its era. Its 'b' side was the psychedelic, freakbeat-ish throwback of Dreams Of Children, which was a definite diversification for the group. It was totally unlike anything they had done before.
