So here’s the band that “rescued” me from artists like Chris Rainbow. I sometimes wonder where and who I’d be if I hadn’t heard “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight” when I did. Punk and post-punk opened up so much more than just your ears, it expanded your horizons in all sorts of directions. It was like a revolution in everything you thought and did. Would I have gone to art school and become the person I am without it? I don’t think so.

In a nutshell, The Jam were my generation’s Beatles and Paul Weller was our John Lennon. That didn’t make Bruce Foxton our Paul McCartney though. He only wrote a few songs which were mostly a bit naff and cliched, but (apart from his obvious best effort “Smithers-Jones”) I’ve always liked “Carnaby Street” which isn’t a particularly brilliant song either but it sounds terrific with The Jam at their young and thrashy best.

This was the b-side of their 1977 single “All Around The World” and at the time Carnaby Street was a dump trading on past glories, full of crappy shops flogging cheap tat for gullible tourists who had come to experience “Swinging London” not knowing it was long gone. In the song Foxton sees this as a metaphor for the decline of England in general. The street has moved back upmarket since then and so have old Mod brands like Ben Sherman which are still trading on the past only with much higher prices, which in many ways is another metaphor for England today.

Download: Carnaby Street – The Jam (mp3)

As a little something extra for the weekend here is the lovely “Life From A Window” which is a real pearl among the swine of their poor “This Is The Modern World” album. This is probably Weller’s first proper “grown up” song, dropping the slogans about youth explosions and the kids (man) in favour of a dreamy wistfulness like Ray Davies in one of his “just leave me alone with my thoughts and a cup of tea” moods.

Download: Life From A Window – The Jam (mp3)