I’m not sure who or what this Johnny Reggae bloke was supposed to be, with the lines about how he’s “grown his hair a bit but it’s smooth, not too long” and his “two-tone tonic strides” I’ve always pictured him as a Suedehead, but they didn’t wear “big white basketball boots” far as know, so maybe this is some other offshoot of Mod that I’m unaware of. But English youth cults can be hard to pin down sometimes, especially the whole Mod-Skinhead-Suedehead continuum where the differences between them can be measured in the width of a Ben Sherman shirt collar.

Download: Johnny Reggae – The Piglets (mp3)

For those that don’t know this was a famous one-hit wonder from 1971 and “he’s a real tasty geezer” became a popular phrase for years, at least round my way.

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)

Though I worshipped at the altar of Paul Weller I was never a (nouveau) Mod myself. I was never anything really (you can’t pigeonhole me!) though I did have a blue-striped, button-down shirt exactly like one Terry Hall of The Specials wore (there was a very thin line between Mod and Rude Boy). But during the Mod revival of the late 70s lots of my school mates really got into the scene: buying Vespas, wearing Parkas, Clark’s desert boots and mohair suits, fighting (skinheads mostly), doing lots of speed, and trying to dance like Sting in “Quadrophenia”. One of them even bought a Rickenbacker guitar (because Paul Weller played one) and started a band whose short career highlight was playing an end-of-term gig at the local girl’s school. Most of them eventually morphed into being Soul Boys during the 80s which was the contemporary equivalent of being a Mod anyway.

The word “Mod” comes from “Modernist” so the whole idea of a Mod revival is actually fairly oxymoronic, and though The Jam were hardly the most original band in the world themselves they spawned an army of imitators. Secret Affair, The Chords and The Purple Hearts were probably the best of the bunch (the least said about The Merton Parkas, Squire, and The Lambrettas the better) who recorded a few cracking singles between them. The Purple Hearts and Chords tracks sound the most Jam-like, full of blazing Rickenbackers, while Secret Affair’s “Time For Action” is a bouncy brass rave-up. These were all released between 1979 and 1980 and the Mod revival pretty much died (in the public eye anyway) when The Jam split up in ’82. I saw them on their farewell tour and was very disdainful of all the 14-year-old boys in cheap, knock-off Parkas in the audience. I was only 19 myself at the time and felt old in that crowd. Once a “movement” has got to that stage it’s time to call it a day – which is just what Paul Weller did, and moved onto ripping off Curtis Mayfield instead.

Download: Somethings Missing – The Chords (mp3)
Download: Jimmy – Purple Hearts (mp3)
Download: Time For Action – Secret Affair (mp3)
Visit: Mod Culture