The Jam - Sound Affects

e.g. the title of 'Tonight at Noon' from The Jam's second album 'This is the modern world' was taken from an eponymously titled poem by a Liverpuddlian beat-poet by the name of Adrian Henri (the song's lyrics are obviously influenced by Henri's poem). Later in The Jam's history, an excerpt from Shelley's poem 'The Mask Of Anarchy' was featured on the back-cover of the album 'Sound Affects'. Recordings such as 'Pop-Art Poem', 'Music for the last couple', 'Dream Time' and 'Scrape Away' (these last three from ‘Sound Affects’) evidenced Paul's more avant-garde tendencies.

Affinity with the avant-garde was also shown with the back-to-front 'Heinze Tomato Soup' apron worn by Paul for the performance of The Jam's first number one single 'Going Underground' on Top Of The Pops, and the sticker on one of Paul's Rickenbacker guitars which stated "I am nobody". Relatively recently in Paul's epic career as a multi-talented musician and song-writer, the influence of the avant-garde has taken a more prominent role, in parts of '22 Dreams', 'Wake up the nation', and especially the 2012 album entitled ‘Sonik Kicks’ (Paul’s most recent albums are ‘Saturn’s Pattern’ (2015), ‘A Kind Revolution’ (2017) and ‘True Meanings’ (2018).).

(You are beginning to fall into a deep and wonderful sleep, in which you are still able to read and pay attention to what is going on around you for legal reasons . . . you are feeling more and more relaxed as you continue to read . . . bearing in mind any relevant legal provisos including but not limited to any of those previously mentioned . . .)

Pretty Green

Bum ba bum bum bum.

Bum ba bum bum bum - TIT!

So begins this the first track off The Jam's strongest overall album, in Paul's view, and probably the view of most Jam fans (I marginally prefer ‘All Mod Cons’ and 'Setting Sons', but I digress). The hidden meanings of this track are free from archaic, ancestral clones; and yet, grappling in vanishing prisms, they realize a new image of purple nihilism.

Let

call

this

proposition

(You are now floating on a beautifully pure pristine sea of azure, as the words you read seem to gently caress your naked body. As you relax, you are starting to realize in a much more deeply profound and meaningful way how the individual components of this text are not just awesome considered by themselves – they are also part of something much larger – something which includes you, gentle reader.)

Certainly, Paul does have a pocketful of pretty green, yet this has never been his be all, his corn-flake box. The external world folds up quite easily, fitting into a medium sized artifact. Power is measured by the pound, or the fist, or by a volt-meter. The knowledge of being, obviously not taught in school, floats on a concealed sea of flux.

Let

call

this

proposition

Monday

Was this song inspired by Dennis Munday, in a typically Weller tongue-in-cheek way? When The Jam released 'The Bitterest Pill (I ever had to swallow)' Paul commented that Jam fans at the time didn't get the humour in his lyrics because they were not looking for it, citing the line "now autumn's winds blow summer's leaves through my life". Certainly, one of the reasons Paul split up The Jam was because in the confines of that autumnal relegation zone, and given the expectations of their Swedish audience, Paul would never be able to shake off the darkly serious ghostly horn-rimmed glasses of the past, or brandish nubile lettuces.

Monday, that coldest, most terrible day of the week, is painted on a warmer palette here. Monday exists not as some shrunken shriveled sack, but as a gilded splinter to be trodden on barefoot, a stepping stone to the week-end's fertile colours of forgetfulness and the iniquities of inequality.

But I'm Different Now

Aye aye aye aye aye,

I, I, I, I, I,

eye, eye, eye, eye, eye,

Why-aye, Why-aye, aye

Ironically, Paul in many ways is not any different now, compared to the Paul who crumpled this song more than thirty years before 2015. And yet, he is much the same; the understanding that fulfills age was apparent in the beginning - so shall it be in the fullness of fissured men. It is often remarked that the pert zest of our youth presses against the hard hands of time, only to sag towards the ceiling, in the end.

D'habitude,

c'est

monde.

True, Paul admits that he has done some things that he should never have done, and at such times, the wrongfulness of sorrow melted the dazzling snow. In fact, the sorrow melted the symbolism of snow, and in so melting, the pleasures of sorrow were renewed. And yet, such solemn salacious scenes fade into the penumbralled lunacy of perihelioned performances in Glastonbury, Glasgow, New York City, or Dublin, pints of Guinness notwithstanding.

Set The House Ablaze

Ba da bum!

Ba da bum, TIT, bum TIT bum bum TIT bum bum TIT

Bum TIT, bum TIT bum bum TIT, bum bum TIT

An anti-authoritarian anthem. There is nothing so articulate as a language without words, as they say. Falling short of such an apogee, we must scream and shout

serene

enigmas

and

rejoice

the

death

commerce

each

specially-enhanced

second

enriches

each

minute

with

20%

joy

than

ordinary

minutes.

Manly leather black butch boots take five minutes per boot to get off, although it easily might have taken six minutes. "Promises promises", said Mr Foxton. "Chance would be a fine thing", retorted Mr Buckler. However, he could easily just as well have said that the spirit of Neptune's all-seeing blind

frog

hops

into

the

night.

Start!

Bum, bum, ba bum bum bum

It's not important for secret observers with unknown intentions to dance with the fire of clarity, nor to know the dark musician's chords. If we get through to two mumblers' grumbling turbulence, free fall shall not seem so grandiosely unpredictable. Knowing that someone in a vacuum will inevitably suck, the argent eye sees only so that we can relinquish solitude. Having said that, those who are bald like to give themselves hairs, whilst those who are

(yes?)

suffocating

give

themselves

airs

If I never ever see you again, autocratic academics will become encrusted with the vicissitudes of resonance; I declare this as a thick man standing in the shadow of an artichoke. Moments of excellence and mediocrity mingle in the gyroscopic bingo-halls of Denmark, also known as universities. To linger as a purveyor of knowledge in recent times is too much, late and soon. The mind of the modern student is as the modern metropole; retrospectively languid, laughing at the idea of education until such times as trombones and student-loans descend back to the ashen earth.

That's Entertainment

La la la la la, ah ah

La la la la la

A police shower and a new unkempt November. Like secret lovers revolving undercover, shall we sing of fat psychologists, in a make-believe demi-monde? Stray frogs will find new continents, in which to dwell. Lamp lights will rudely urinate liquid bronze, by force of bronze vulgarity. Opening the windows and seething in pet voles, an amateur crab converses with a near-by star. Watching a jelly-fish whilst thinking about Gottlob Frege, the structure of logic is incomplete.

A Swedish baby is as good as a Norwegian one. The baby wails with the morning, and the morning waits for the noon, and the babies wait to grow older, and the

morning

whales

the

moon

Dream-Time

A silver dream strums long on the shadows of the gods. Without shadows, one cannot dream of magnified ideas - one's bowels turn to pure water. From ideas, the gods issue (# 9 dream). Magnified, gods become silver beings of flesh, and bone. Substituting # 9 late in the game, reality scores a late winner, on his dream debut. I saw the lights and the pretty girls and I thought - transparency, metaphysics in the time of the new age. And yet . . .

Cold things lie all around, their shadows evaporating upon hearing the diffuse whispers of confused imbeciles. Their love comes in frozen packs bought in a transparent reality –

the

stuff

dreams

Man In The Corner-Shop

La la la la la,

La la la la la ah ah ah

Paul has always seemed particularly proud of this song, which still often graces his current live set. The song juxtaposes the economic and personal situations of someone who owns and runs a small shop, someone who works in a factory, and someone who owns a factory, placing this contrast against a background of folk from different economic classes going to church, holding the belief that God created all men (people) equal. The implication is that economic differences are man-made. And yet, is a world in which some human beings freely choose evil, so that good may also be freely chosen, a better world than one in which human beings are causally determined to always choose good?

Music For The Last Couple

ooh, ooh-ooh

Boats and trains make you want to blow off on a ferry boat: a fanfare for the common man. The common denominator is the marble moon, dividing morning, noon, and knight; kings

and

the

bourgeois

poor

The politics of Christmas gifts - now is the winter of our discontent. The gift of the winter is patience; frequently returned. The cold marbled moon has a being all her own, in stark contrast to a jewel floating in a black pool in Blackpool.

Boy About Town

Evoking Woking's answer to The Beatles' "Penny Lane", there is a sense of being one with (but not imprisoned by) the familiar trappings of the town where one grew up here. The brass section accompaniment to the song was developed more in The Jam's next album, "The Gift" (sold in a paper bag in true Beatles ‘Sergeant Pepper’ style), but was never more effective than on this masterpiece of modernism.

The trumpets of the western world blow captivatingly, whilst singers proclaim the arrival of the invisible fox. Time sits uneasily with specially selected personages, who no longer stand to attention for the lascivious strumpets of the evening. Like neutrinos caught in wind, an ethereal force heralds the advent of a harmonious alignment: the invisible fox, specially selected personages, and you, gentle reader. Up street, down street, jubilant understanding meets with mythical