22 Setting Sons - The Jam

Purchased : 21 May 1983







Tracks : Girl On The Phone / Thick As Thieves / Private Hell / Little Boy Soldiers / Wasteland / Burning Sky / Smithers-Jones / Saturday's Kids / The Eton Rifles / Heatwave

Any Brighton and Hove Albion fan visiting here will recognise the significance of the date. This was bought in Oldham the morning before the FA Cup Final where Brighton came within a whisker of beating the loathed Machester United but their Scottish striker Gordon Smith failed to put the ball past the famously dodgy Gary Bailey in the last minute.

This was The Jam's fourth album released at the height of the mod revival in the atumn of 1979. It was originally intended to be a concept album about three friends who go off to war and come back to find their respective values have changed. Although Weller couldn't quite pull it off, some of the songs clearly tie in to this theme and there's a frisson to be had from knowing how things turned out for the real-life trio three years down the road.

The LP starts with "Girl On The Phone" a prescient song about being stalked. Its relative slightness is emphasised by not being fully represented on the very wordy lyric sheet. Or maybe Weller was just embarrassed about the line "My leg measurements and the size of my cock". It bounces along on a very fat Foxton bassline and ends predictably with a discontinued tone.

"Thick As Thieves" clearly brings us back to "the concept". It's a fairly typical tale of male friendship fracturing over time as in Tim Lott's "White City Blue" with a verse seeming to suggest that a girl was to blame. Weller sings it plaintively with plenty of echo and the help of Foxton on most lines. On the last verse where Weller laments the passage of time his lines are actually obscured by Foxton singing something else, a strange anomaly which supports the suggestion that this album was rushed. Overall it's not a bad song but the music doesn't have much room to breathe.

"Private Hell" is unusual in The Jam canon for introducing a woman's point of view. Tackling similar themes to the Stones' "Mother's Little Helper" with an actual reference to valium, Weller outlines the empty lifestyle of an ageing housewife with an inattentive husband and children who've flown the nest. It's unremittingly bleak stuff with no resolution. Musically it introduces some post-punk elements with Foxton's overloaded bass suggestive of Peter Hook and Weller's guitar aping Keith Levine and Andy Gill.

"Little Boy Soldiers" is the most ambitious track, the song having three distinct parts, and the original idea was to intersperse them between the other tracks. It begins with a ringing guitar then Weller sings resignedly of the apathy in accepting the politicians' call to arms. The music chugs along for a couple of verses then abruptly switches to Buckler's military tattoo with obligatory artillery noises in the background. A galloping guitar riff emerges and Weller and Foxton croon a series of pro-military slogans punctuated by Buckler's timpanis. This fades into a Roger Waters strumalong with Weller's whispered tale of rape and pillage before the impassioned line "It was done beneath the flag of democracy" signals Foxton's sledgehammer bass taking us back to the initial format and another verse which deals with the inevitable and final conclusion, Weller's last lines about death accompanied by descending piano chords.

"Wasteland" returns us to a familiar Weller trope of finding romance amongst the urban flotsam that would reach its apogee with "That's Entertainment" the following year. The song begins with Buckler's drums for a couple of bars then the main riff is played on a school recorder which gives the track a fragile (or less charitably, weedy) feel until some Hammond organ chords give some bottom to the track. There's some rather awkward scanning suggesting this is a poem set to music rather than a fully realised song idea. It brings Side One to an end rather abruptly.

Side Two begins with one of the strongest songs "Burning Sky" which takes the form of a letter from one of the three friends who is climbing the greasy pole. It comes across now as a very early indictment of Thatcherism considering that she was only a few months into her tenure and moving cautiously at this point but it's worth remembering that people had a desire to escape their surroundings long before she came along. Like "Private Hell" the music shows an awareness of post-punk with Weller slashing away over the top of Foxton's juddering bassline.

Next up is "Smithers-Jones" Foxton's most (some would say only) worthwhile contribution to the Jam canon. The song had been previously released as the B-side to "When You're Young" in the summer but it reappears here in a nearly all-strings arrangement owing a lot to "Eleanor Rigby" apparently the idea of Rick Buckler (who doesn't feature at all on it). Foxton takes the lead vocal and plays the cello. The story of a hapless commuter it's less vituperative than the previous album's "Mr Clean" with Foxton's straight down the line lyrics telling the story without irony. Smithers-Jones is travelling on the train reading newspaper adverts on the way to a meeting which will see him being made redundant in a verse which recalls Willie Loman's excrutiating encounter with the boss's son in "Death Of A Salesman."

"Saturday's Kids" seems like an attempt to write a classic mod anthem and isn't too far away from "A-Bomb In Wardour Street " musically. Lyrically it's not a bad snapshot of late seventies working class life just before mass unemployment started to bite and there's a pleasingly parochial reference to the Sussex coastal resorts of Selsey Bill and Bracklesham Bay - recalling Weller family holidays perhaps ?

Then we get "The Eton Rifles" one of the band's most enduring singles since it took them into the Top Five for the first time in 1979. It has acquired more recent notoriety since a certain Old Etonian called David Cameron named it as one of his favourite songs much to Weller's disgust. And yet the lyrics do make sense as an attack on the public school left and Weller seems to be revelling in the triumph of the college lads over a bunch of agitators who broke off from a Right To Work march in 1978 to attack them , the incident that inspired the song. Musically it's a classic Jam single second to "Down In The Tube Station" from its ominous intro (essentially the same as Pretty Vacant" but played on the bass) to the rousing chant-a- long chorus and the Hammond organ which comes in on the plaintive "What a catalyst you turned out to be ?" reproof.

The last track is their ramshackle cover of "Heatwave" which presages the future by bringing in Rudi (presumably Rudi Thompson of X-Ray Spex) on sax and future Style Councillor "Merton" Mick Talbot on organ. Knowing that gives an added poignancy to the joyful " yeah yeah" interchanges between Foxton and Weller which make it a surprisingly enjoyable finale to the LP.

I don't think anyone could make a case for either of the first two Jam LPs to be the band's best so now's the time to make a judgement on which one I'd nominate. After a couple of listens I decided in 1983 it was this one and I'd just about still go along with that because it's the most consistent. There's no song that you really want to skip , the less inspired moments being still quite listenable. They never made a really classic album but this is the one that came closest

21 Difficult Shapes And Passive Rhythms Some People Think It's Fun To Entertain - China Crisis

Purchased : 13 April 1983





Tracks : Seven Sports For All / No More Blue Horizons / Feel To Be Driven Away / Some People I Know To Lead Fantastic Lives / Christian / Are We A Worker / Red Sails / You Never See It / Temptation's Big Blue Eyes / Jean Walks In Fresh Fields



I recorded the date of purchase of my albums in a little red book throughout the 80s and am somewhat puzzled to find this was bought on a Wednesday in term time. I have no recollection of the exact circumstances.



When the LP first came out in autumn 1982 I remember remarking to Helen how ridiculous the title was and, not having liked their near]hit "African And White" had no intention of purchasing it. It was the subsequent singles "No More Blue Horizons" and "Christian" plus "Are We A Worker" heard on a David Jensen session that changed my mind.



For a band that pulled at least one Top 4o single from each of their first four LPs China Crisis were, and remain, remarkably anonymous. When was the last time you heard anything from them on the radio ? I must have read a number of interviews with them in the eighties and all that sticks with me is a vague Scouse bolshyness which was rarely reflected in the music.



This album was a troubled debut. After gaining a lot of plaudits for their debut single "African And White" on indie label Inevitable they were snapped up by Virgin. However their first single for the label "Scream Down At Me" bombed completely and a re-release of "African And White" didn't make the Top 40 either. This underwhelming start to their tenure led to considerable conflict between band and label over how the forthcoming LP should sound, eventually resolved by having five tracks produced by Virgin's men (Steve Levine and Peter Walsh) on Side One and five of the band's co-productions with Gil Norton on Side Two bridged by the inclusion of "African And White" at the start of the second side. It has to be said that nearly 30 years later the differences are not glaringly obvious although Side Two is melodically stronger.



The opener "Seven Sports For All" has all the trademarks of their sound in place, airy keyboard work, unusual rhythm, Gary Daly's blunt adenoidal vocals and determinedly unfocused lyrics. It seems to be a hymn to non-commitment - "I'm never making gestures , I haven't got the time" and drifts by in vaguely pleasant fashion with Levine achieving a jangly guitar sound very similar to Roy Hay from his main clients, Culture Club. The middle eight cuts out the keyboards and there's a brief bass solo redolent (as were their first wo singles) of post-punk white funk acts like Gang of Four although normal melodic service is quickly restored.



"No More Blue Horizons" their third failed single from October 1982 is more easily understood. Daly is a hapless cuckold allowing himself to be repeatedly deceived - "I close my eyes to everything I can" . Ironically despite Daly singing "can't hide this pain " the music does effectively disguise the neurotic subject matter with a breezy brass refrain and buoyant bass and percussion. Only on the chorus do Hammond-esque chords hint at sympathy with the singer's plight.



"Feel To Be Driven Away" is a slice of icy post-punk sweetened by a vaguely Oriental keyboard melody and OMD-like mellotron chords. Intoned rather than sung , I'm guessing that the song is about reistance to torture with its reference to "passing through electrical fences" and could be South Africa-related. It's probably the least commercial track on the LP so it's perhaps surprising to find it on the label's side.



"Some People I Know To Lead Fantastic Lives" could be seen as an early critique of yuppiedom with Daly determined to remain a slacker "I've reasons in my head for keeping myself down". The busy keyboard melodies on synth and xylophone vaguely recall the theme to "Are You Being Served" and seem to serve the same purpose of conveying the pulse of busy lives. The line "They're praying that something happens to me" captures nicely the embarassment of having friends or family that haven't kept pace with you.



The side closes with an extended version of their breakthrough hit "Christian". A very elliptical song made up of self -contained pregnant phrases, the chorus line of "I could lose myself in this honesty" comes across as a gentle joke at the listener's expense. It's success is down to the arrangement, Daly singing softly to an acoustic strum, de rigeur fretless bass and a very attractive keyboard melody.



"African And White" comes next, a song I still don't hold in much regard. This was the way they could have gone, pallid vaguely funky agit-pop , a sort of lightweight Gang of Four without the passion to pull it off. The references to Israel are perplexing - perhaps they're protesting Israel's dealings with the apartheid regime but there were targets closer to home which makes singling Israel out very questionable. I do like the intro though , the way the real drums emerge from behind the electronics and then the percussion fills; it's a shame the song as a whole is disappointing.



"Are We A Worker " is the first offering from the "band side", a creditable attempt to write an international worker's anthem without resorting to cliche. Built around an ascent/descent eight note bass run it adds furiously busy percussion, spindly acoustic guitar and a violin-like synth playing a poignant folk melody. Daly adopts a stern tone in the verses but the choruses are sweetened by the addition of an uncredited female vocal.

"Red Sails" (neither the Bowie song nor the Nat King Cole classic) is mellow and languid and like "Christian" the lyrics are just a string of non-sequiteurs though there's an air of mild regret in the chorus "If I had a soul, would I realise ". The buzzing fretless bassline keeps the song moving as the synths waft by.

There's more energy to my favourite track "You Never See It " which kicks straight into an anxious vaguely Oriental keyboard riff and vaguely castigatory lyrics about not noticing political upheaval in other countries although the second verse seems a more general warning about ageing. The middle eight drops the rhythm and introduces a new keyboard sound before the main riff reasserts itself in a blaze of melody.

"Temptation's Big Blue Eyes" has a relatively direct and coherent lyric warning against Tory seduction "They're disbelievers in a thin disguise". Although Daly asserts his flag is red in the second verse , he's assailed by doubts in the third wondering if he's "Too stupid to understand my politics are a one night stand". I can understand why some found their self-doubt and obfuscation infuriating but it's a good song with bouncing percussion a nagging guitar and another infectious keyboard melody. An echoey fairground organ takes centre stage in the middle eight before subsiding , the sound of momentary passions choked off by doubt.

That leaves just "Jean Walks In Fresh Fields" a pretty synth instrumental which annoyingly fades out at 1.30 just as it's got going.

China Crisis frustrate, sometimes mildly annoy, with their refusal to come into focus lyrically. Some very attractive melodies and innovative arrangements are wasted on anaemic songs and certainly the choice of singles from this LP could have been much better. However I did like it , the second side in particular and we will be meeting them again.

20 Love In Motion - Icehouse

Purchased : 2 April 1983





Tracks : Uniform/ Street Cafe / Hey Little Girl / Glam / Great Southern Land / Trojan Blue / Love In Motion / Mysterious Thing / One By One / Goodnight Mr Matthews






This was bought from WH Smith's in Bradford on Easter Saturday on my way home from a long solo walk in the Bolton Abbey area. I had picked up a leaflet for West Yorkshire's Day Rover ticket in a local shop a couple of days earlier and realised that I could get to Addingham just a couple of miles away from Bolton Abbey for next to nothing. With the weather forecast good I decided to get up at the crack of dawn and do a walk up to Simon's Seat and back. So I was tired and blistered when I bought this but relieved that I'd found it at a decent price when it had already dropped out of the charts.







I was turned on to Icehouse by their eponymous single released at the end of 1981, a wonderfully dark and melodramatic song with dense keyboards just the sort of thing I loved. David Jensen played it quite a bit but it didn't chart and the band , still smarting from the critical mauling they received from the British rock press when they came to London in the summer , broke up after one more underperforming single "Love in Motion". Singer Iva Davies then put out what was virtually a solo album "Primitive Man" under the Icehouse name. This went unnoticed in Britain but it did have an ace card - the radio-friendly "Hey Little Girl" which was released as a single just as Men At Work were topping the charts. The extra spotlight on Australian acts did the trick and the single was a hit, reaching 17. Davies put a new band together to exploit this success and re-packaged "Primitive Man as "Love in Motion", the new title track replacing a song called "Break These Chains". Unfortunately the band had not had time to put down enough roots and the LP only got to 64 in the charts so I'm reviewing something of an obscurity.




It starts with "Uniform" an anti-militarism song that rises out of a simple synth motif with snarling guitars and clattering Linn drums. Davies's stern but thin vocal sings of wanting to conform and mass control before the chanted chorus. The middle eight as in so many anti-war songs before and since features the barking of orders. There's also a cheeky reference to a fellow Aussie's most famous tune in the line "holding your broken toys". The only thing missing is a decent tune.





"Street Cafe" is next, the follow-up single to "Hey Little Girl" which proved that they hadn't really "cracked" the UK market by failing to reach the Top 40. One thing that hampered them was the constant accusation that they were ripping off Roxy Music amongst others and it has to be admitted that Davies's vocal is very Ferryesque on this one which also features a lovely gliding oboe (an instrument favoured by Roxy's Andy McKay). It's a langorous filmic song with lovelorn verses leading to a surprisingly beefy chorus with echoes of "Public Image" in the guitar work.





Then it's "Hey Little Girl" itself in a slightly longer version with a couple of extra lines in the second verse. The debt to Roxy is obvious on this one too but it's way better than anything on "Avalon" . Davies is singing about a girl in trouble but leaves you guessing whether he's gloating or commiserating - "so why should I care if somebody let you down ?" . I imagined it was about the girl I fancied getting pregnant by her new boyfriend but the lyrics are open to various interpretations. Davies's vocal glides along the top of shimmering synths, subtly insistent percussion and a busy guitar dialogue that recalls early Dire Straits. The best single of 1983 by some way.



"Glam" is a near-instrumental synth tune which recalls Visage ; the only lyric is the ambiguous "Dedicated to glam". Iva's leaving us guessing whether he wants to be associated with the New Romantic scene or not.



Side One closes with "Great Southern Land" which has been misunderstood as an answer song to Men At Work's "Down Under" after Davies evinced a dislike of the latter song in interviews. In fact it has more in common with Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" with its rock beat and pro-Aboriginal sympathies. Davies sounds remarkably like Gerry Rafferty on this one and again gets the balance exactly right between the sparse, questioning synths and insistent guitar work.



"Trojan Blue" is an imaginative song addressed to Helen of Troy as the city crashes to ruins around her, starkly addressing the guilt she may harbour at being the cause of such destruction. It begins with high pitched synth screeches before the beat comes in and Davies coolly sets the scene before the storm - "you know it won't be long now". The accusations come in the chorus , the string synths rising in indignation as Davies asks "how could you dare to look on as they burned for you ?" before a gliding oboe takes us forward as if words can't go any further. It's the sort of dark, unsettling song which is Davies's forte and one wonders if that was part of the problem with the UK press, they just weren't prepared to accept an arty, brooding Aussie in the same way they later turned on a Canadian for daring to reference irony.



The three that follow are not his best work. "Love In Motion" aims to be a sinuous synthetic slow dance with its creeping bass line and stalker-ish lyrics but is undone by the chorus's inescapable melodic resemblance to David Essex's "Rock On". The whistling towards the end is a nice touch but doesn't save the song.



"Mysterious Thing" begins like "Virginia Plain" with its pounding piano but it leads into a fairly straightforward pop song about being given the runaround by a girl but coming back for more. It's not bad, just uninteresting.



"One By One" is atmospheric enough with its dense synth work but there really isn't much of a song to go with it. What lyrics there are seem to have been filched from the verses of Abba's "Knowing Me Knowing You" before the endless repetition of the title. There's also a lot of squally guitar which seems like a display of talent rather than adding anything to the song.



But there is another classic waiting at the end of the LP in "Goodnight Mr Matthews". It starts with an anxious synth riff then a clipped guitar and brooding bass take us into the verse.
It's a tale of unrequited love with the eponymous Mr Matthews possibly the preferred suitor. The verses are feline and controlled but break into a nakedly emotional chorus as Davies pleads his case over a richly melodic synths. There's also a fine guitar solo to savour.

So there we have it , too uneven to be a classic but containing enough great songs to be a good LP. As we shall see this was the pattern for Icehouse LPs and they never made the step up in the UK. Perhaps radio producers were influenced by the copyist accusations in a way that seems incomprehensible post-Oasis. Still, it was their loss.

19 The Hurting - Tears For Fears

Purchased : 16 March 1983




Tracks : The Hurting / Mad World / Pale Shelter / Ideas As Opiates / Memories Fade / Suffer The Children / Watch Me Bleed / Change / The Prisoner /Start Of The Breakdown



This was bought from WH Smith's in Halifax on the way back from an entrance interview for Huddersfield Polytechnic on the same day that it was announced as the number one LP in Peter Powell's album chart rundown in the evening. It was a disappointing day; the appeal of these excursions was beginning to wear thin and the Poly itself seemed an ugly, joyless place. If anything it gave me a bit of a fillip to revise well and have a full choice of institutions come August.




By contrast this purchase was a no-brainer. With all four singles on it and some of the other tracks heard on R1 sessions I knew it wasn't going to disappoint.




It is to some extent a concept album, every song tied to the duo's interest in the primal therapy techniques of Arthur Janov as first introduced to pop culture by John Lennon. I was intrigued by this, hoping I might learn something about the nature of my own angst if I delved deeper so I also ordered Janov's book "Prisoners Of Pain " around about this time.




With a cover featuring a distressed child that would be criticised if released today each melancholic song within refers back in some way to childhood trauma. It doesn't sound like a recipe for commercial success in any age but these two refugees from failed mod band Graduate cracked it big time.





The title track kicks things off and sets out their stall both musically and lyrically. There's a tangible move away from pure synth-pop in 1983 - both the first two singles on here were re-recorded to this end- and Manny Elias's drums and Roland Orzabal's own guitar playing are prominent on this and a number of other tracks. The lyrics introduce the central concept of Janov's theory - we are all haunted by the ghosts of childhood trauma and exist in a state of unrelieved pain "The Hurting" which needs to be tackled. The duo sing this one together sounding rather like Tilbrook and Difford on "Take Me I'm Yours"
posing a number of questions- "Could you understand a child when he cries in pain ? " before the middle eight with its surprise switch to acoustic guitar and synthetic flute delivers Janov's answers in simplified form - "learn to cry like a baby".




The familiar syn-drum intro tells us that their breakthrough hit "Mad World" is next , here taken at a slightly faster pace than the single. This is a hurt person looking out at the world and seeing others in the same boat - echoes of "Message In A Bottle" here. You have to understand Janov a little to realise that the devastating "Dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" is actually the most optimistic part of the song, Orzabal celebrating the cathartic value of nightmares rather than entertaining suicidal thoughts. The second verse recalls his own unhappy childhood with the sardonic synthetic brass fills that punctuate each line one of many unexpected musical touches that give this album extra power.



Next we have the re-recorded less-synthy version of "Pale Shelter", Orzabal giving the child at the centre of the song an adult vocabulary with which to criticise its parents. It rises out of a synth swirl but then brings an acoustic guitar to the fore. Curt Smith sings the plaintive verses sweetly then toughens up for the accusatory chorus and later in the song his bass becomes more belligerent too. In the instrumental coda there's a brief bit of syn-drum clatter that Don Henley might have noted for "The Boys Of Summer".



My least favourite track "Ideas As Opiates" follows again re-recorded from its initial appearance on the B-side of "Mad World". It's the first time we hear Orzabal's lugubrious voice on its own stretching itself over doomy piano chords in a manner that betrays his love of Robert Wyatt . It's a mantra rather than a song , Orzabal gloomily noting our avoidance of difficult subjects but it's a dreary listen prefiguring the dreary dirges that cropped up with increasing frequency as his career progressed. The bracing sax solo that comes in towards the end is actually a relief.



While Orzabal retains the mike for the final track on Side One , it's a much better song the Annie Nightingale Request Show favourite "Memory Fades". Orzabal is laying Janov's central truth on the line, time doesn't heal old wounds, you continue burning under the surface and the mournful sax that breaks out in the middle of the song here is like an explosion of pus and blood that can't be contained any longer. This song is addressed to an ex-lover but instead of being recriminatory there's an understanding that both parties were carrying too much baggage for things to work out.



Side Two starts with the re-vamped "Suffer The Children" with big rock drums replacing the drum machine and the "tell him that you love him " lines excised completely (possibly because of the unwelcome comparisons with Supertramp's "Dreamer"). In this new form it's the closest they get to the rock sound of Graduate with the chorus bursting out with the joy of Janov's solutions to crashing drums and guitar chords. The middle eight has two surprises , a modest guitar solo then Caroline Orzabal's little girl lost "la la la" refrain which continues for the rest of the song.



"Watch Me Bleed" is another uncompromisingly morose song with Orzabal unable to take pleasure in "normal" activity - "I am full but feeling empty". Here though the music is lively with an energetic acoustic guitar strum and Smith aping Peter Hook's melodic bass runs which makes the gloomy message hard to ignore.



"Change" sees another well-timed switch of singer with Smith's lighter tones taking on this rather lighter song about a failed friendship. The maddeningly insistent xylophone riff made this a very distinctive follow-up to "Mad World" which did almost as well in the charts despite a rather weak chorus.



Smith also takes on "The Prisoner" adopting a hoarse whisper for the track which takes a huge lump out of Peter Gabriel's "Intruder" . The gothic mellotrons which stand in for a chorus aim to evoke the mental turmoil of the protagonist but its a bit too overwrought and ends up sounding obvious and clumsy.



But as with the end of Side One they follow a weak track with a winner. "Start Of The Breakdown" is perhaps the most affecting song of all , with no overt Janovian references, just a sad recognition that a relationship might be starting to fail. It starts with a skittering of synth notes suggestive of wintry drizzle before Orzabal and his dolorous piano come in. At this , the synths get even more agitated hinting at the inner turmoil behind the "Half alive" stoicism. Manny Elias's drums don't kick in until after the verses have finished heralding a lengthy coda where Smith gets to play Mick Karn on fretless bass before it fades out without resolution.



Though commercially outstripped by its successor this is TFF at their best, an outstanding debut that still doesn't get the recognition it deserves.