Product Description

After the success of their first two albums (IN THE CITY and THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD) within the span of barely a year-and-a-half, the Jam was not as pleased as it should have been. They had been extremely successful, but clearly the band(especially Weller), was chafing at being pigeonholed as "mod" revivalists. While the Jam's first two albums were clearly influenced by the mod movement of the early '60s, Weller was far too clever a songwriter to stick to the limitations of any one genre. ALL MOD CONS is the sound not just of an English youth movement, but of an English musical tradition of literate songcraft epitomised by writers such as Ray Davies of the Kinks, whose classic song "David Watts" is covered here.
Weller's usual bombast is herein subsumed by gentler, more rhapsodic concerns, and he even manages a credibly gentle love balled in "English Rose". Of course the band still offers its share of unadulterated "rock" songs, but on ALLTHE MOD CONS the lyrics are more likely to address the problems of English racism ("Down In The Tube Station At Midnight") than simple boy-girl dilemmas. This album marks the maturation of a brilliant songwriter.

Track Listing

1. All Mod Cons
2. To Be Someone (Didn't We Have A Nice Time)
3. Mr. Clean
4. David Watts
5. English Rose
6. In The Crowd
7. Billy Hunt
8. It's Too Bad
9. Fly
10. The Place I Love
11. 'A' Bomb In Wardour Street
12. Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2279 in Music
• Released on: 1997-08-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Running time: 38 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
More interested in social comment than political confrontation, the Jam breathed a sophistication that was generally lacking in the British punk movement. The young Paul Weller mixed punk anger with 1960s mod guitar to mark out the Jam from their contemporaries and deliver a set of sharply observed sketches punctuated by stabbing staccato guitar. Cynical and sneering, but never overly abrasive, the songs on All Mod Cons mainly adhere to the classic rudiments of short and sweet songwriting. Weller showcases his increasingly assured touch with the occasional wistful ballad and by reaching into the soul copybook to embellish "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight", harbingers of subsequent Jam albums. --Ben Clancy

Customer Reviews

Not just a great album but a great Jam album ..which is something else altogether
Or when The Jam took off and really started fulfilling the potential they had shown with a string of singles and intermittently on their previous albums In The City And This Is The Modern World. All Mod Cons see's Paul Weller embracing a more English stance to his song-writing , with undercurrents of 1960,s pop like The Kinks - so much so they even cover the Kinks song "David Watts". The albums title also alludes playfully to the bands prevalence in the Mod revival.
The songs on All Mod Cons are often about ordinary people , or places but viewed through Weller's coruscating filter . He scorns the 9-5 existence of "Mr Clean" ( "If I get the chance ill f**k up your life") while seemingly revelling in the indestructible qualities of "Billy Hunt" right down to it's terrace chant chorus. "In The Crowd" is a glistening pop tinged number about the numbing anonymity of being errr part of a crowd. "The Place I Love" manages the neat trick of being urgent and wistful at the same time while "To be Someone ( Didn't We Have a Nice Time)" neatly encapsulates the celebrity grasping culture we have saddled ourselves with . The original vinyl edition ( which i still have) ended with the prescient twins "A Bomb In Wardour Street" powered by a chugging riff and the first person narrative of "Down In The Tube At Midnight " replete with Bruce Foxton,s expressive bass lines and Weller's vivid imagery. "They smelt of pubs , and Wormwood Scrubs and too many right wing meetings".Both these songs are probably more topical now than they were then .A bomb is taking it a bit far maybe but then you cast your mind back to the horrendous London bombings ...
By way of contrast there is the lovely acoustic ballad "English Rose" ( which portents some of Weller's solo work) which was not acknowledged on the original vinyl pressing in any way as Weller found it too personnel. The soaring chords of "Fly" are added to Weller's rather strained falsetto after the incongruously jaunty break up song "It's Too Bad".
All Mod Cons eschewed the more strident punkish themes of the era for a more considered quintessentially English album. The Jams angry punk album followed with the brilliant 1979 album "Setting Sons" . So what if it is lyrically clumsy sometimes ( "And my only link is pots of Walls ice cream"....oh dear) and that it contains a cover version ( I rather like" David Watts" and rather identified with it's scabrous envy of someone more self assured, better looking and more successful with the opposite sex) All Mod Cons is not just a great album but a great Jam album and that makes it something else all together.

LAZILY OVERATED
MUST BE GOOD COS IT'S THE JAM INNIT? WELL SORRY, BUT NO, ONE GOOD SONG DOESN'T MAKE A GREAT OR EVEN GOOD ALBUM. ALL THE PEOPLE WHO GIVE THIS ALBUM 4 OR 5 STARS SHOULD HAVE A LONG HARD HONEST THINK ABOUT HOW INSPIRING THIS ALBUM REALLY IS. PERSONALY, LISTENING TO IT NOW 25 YEARS OR SO SINCE I FIRST HEARD IT, I FIND IT DULL AS DITCH WATER. HAS A MORE BANAL SONG THAN "IT'S TOO BAD" (LYRICALLY OR MUSICALLY) EVER BEEN WRITTEN? I DOUBT IT. ENGLISH ROSE MAKES MY TOES CURL. DULL, DULL, DULL.

A Classic of the Seventies
The Jam's third album saw them at the zenith of their powers. Their first two had established them as a vital force amongst the angry young musicians of the punk era, and In The City in particular is a classic in its own right. But All Mod Cons has all the energy of its predecessors with the added thoughtfulness probably enabled by a record contract and a decent time interval between albums (This Is The Modern World was reportedly rush-recorded by a record company desperate to exploit the success of In The City).

The two opening songs, the title track and To Be Someone, reflect some of the disillusion that must have been assailing the still-young Paul Weller, berating the hangers-on making a living from his talent.

Mr Clean is the first of three tracks, with David Watts and Billy Hunt, in which a real resentment of the meritocracy comes to the fore. The band performed David Watts on Top of the Pops at the time, and the disdain in Weller's voice and facial expression was tangible - it was very clear that "I wish I could have all he has got" is 100% ferrous irony.

English Rose is the best slow song Weller has recorded, and the final three tracks form a suite for the seventies, particularly the imagery of A-Bomb - "In the corner I can see my girl, fifteen geezers got her pinned to the wall" - and the thugs smelling of "too many right wing meetings" in Tube Station.

My one criticism is that, whereas on vinyl the dying notes of Place I Love segued perfectly into A-Bomb, the record company has sadly not reproduced the effect on the CD.