Product Description

As rock musicians from Pete Townshend to Ray Davies could tell you, growing up in public is no piece of crumpet. Especially if the rest of the musicians you work with aren't growing in the same direction. While tension can bring out the best in a band, it also shortens the shelf life of the averagerock & roll aggregation considerably. This, alas, was also the case with the Jam. Although the group started out as modrevivalists, leader and primary songwriter Paul Weller soonbegan to feel constricted by the limitations of the guitar/bass/drums palette and by the reluctance of bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Richard Buckler to abandon the group's signature sound.
By the time of the band's last true album, THE GIFT, the rift was evidently irreparable. However, THE GIFT stands on its own not as a chronicle of the Jam's dissolution, but as a hint of the soundscapes Weller would next explore. And with material as good as the title tune, "Coronation", and especially the Motown-flavoured "Town Called Malice", who cares if the band didn't get along?

Track Listing

1. Happy Together
2. Ghosts
3. Precious
4. Just Who Is The 5 O'Clock Hero?
5. Trans-Global Express
6. Running On The Spot
7. Circus
8. The Planner's Dream Goes Wrong
9. Carnation
10. Town Called Malice
11. The Gift

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26697 in Music
• Released on: 1997-08-04
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Running time: 32 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Because it features The Jam's single greatest song--"Town Called Malice"--The Gift gets bonus points right from the start. Though inconsistent at times, there's so much here to love that the album, far more than a collection of singles, transcends the sum of its parts. Soulful and funky, there's the too-short tease of lover's caress "Ghost", the intense jam on "Precious", and a classic pop nugget in "Running on the Spot". There are mis-steps here, too--"The Planners Dream Goes Wrong" goes, well, wrong, "Circus" is a multi-ring mess of influences, and the otherwise fantastic "Carnation" is almost ruined by a sloppy bridge--but substitute in other Jam singles, say "Going Underground" and "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight", and this could almost be a best of collection. --Randy Silver

Customer Reviews

Knocked on the head in the nick of time
Weller's desision to split The Jam at the height of their creative and commercial power must have seemed insane to many. Not least Bruce and Rick, whose psyches, egos and bank acounts must've suffered irreperable damage. Mrs Weller remembers the day the announcement was made, and loads of heartbroken kids on scooters rocked up at her house, pleading with her to tell Paul to change his mind. Awwwww....

But, with the benefit of not inconsiderable hindsight, Paul Weller's decision to bring the project to an end was not only the right one, but showed courage and vision. How many in his position would have felt that the money was right, and the near-universal love of the band would mean that knocking it on the head would be to invite a backlash? Loads.

The final record The Jam left behind is easily worth its five stars, though that's not to say it doesn't have its flaws. But taken in context as the Weller album between Sound Affects and Café Bleu, it is a key moment in the career of a songwriter who could travel at the speed of light compared to 99% of his contemporaries.

There is a chilly ambience to the whole of The Gift. The tight funk of Precious, for instance, is oddly juxtaposed to this - heavy American influences, but executed like it was recorded at a multi-storey carpark in South London on a grey Thursday afternoon in January. Odd, like I say, but a timeless piece of music.

While there is this sense of cold air and raw petrol throughout, there isn't any of Weller's sometimes depressing vituperative cynicism (as evidenced on much of Sound Affects). The biting social realism is still there, no more so than on my favourite track "The Planners Dream Goes Wrong", a jaunty calypso intro'd number about the grand visions of lavishly educated town planners and architects, and the end result of their vision - "A house in the country designs the fourteenth floor", where (okay, this always makes me laugh, but only because it is lyrical genius) "Coitus interruptus cos of next door's rows".

Other highlights:

Happy Together - an uneasy love song, a brittle but determined celebration of togetherness, with a whole load of stuff just outside the frame - the cold war, Thatcherism, rain battering off the window, and watermarks on the ceiling. Nescafe in chipped mugs, Dickensian neds stealing your Vespa and throwing it in the canal, etc. Stunning.

Ghosts/ Carnation - depressive slow stuff, Good bassline on Ghosts, the piano on Carnation sounds like it's being played through a TDK C90 on an Alba Aquaman though.

Town Called Malice - few have heard this obscure rarity. If you have, join the Woking Massive. (If you haven't, Earth is the planet between Venus and Mars. Venus is the Goddess of love. Mars is the God of War.)

Circus - Unnecessary prescience here from Bruce, given that the next Weller album would be full of wacky instrumentals, just none of them Bruce's.

Just Who Is The 5 O'clock Hero? - the best track on The Gift. It's like all The Gift's best elements emerge and work together on this track. The propulsive rhythm track, the (it has to be said, very un-Foxton) bass, the unapologetically down lyrics. Not released as a single in the UK, it still made the top 20 on a German import release, unplayable without a placky adaptor. Unless your record player was a jukebox.

BOF
The Gift - works okay but it's more like a sparring session than an actual match. Or like Rocky doing his roadwork before the Appollo Creed bout. ("Beethoven was deaf. Helen Keller was blind. I think Rocky's got a good chance.")

Running On The Spot - a possibly experimental, not fully realised idea. Sounds like a concept from Sound Affects left behind and revived for The Gift, where it can't punch above its weight, or below it. A wasted chance.

Trans-Global Express - another experimental one. Why are the vocals so low in the mix, Paul? Closer in spirit to Dizzi Heights' "Gospel" or The Style Council's "Money Go Round" than anything by The Jam. The 'oorra ooora oora' and 'oink oink oink' vocal stabs are proof that the recording of this LP nearly drove Weller over the edge.

If anyone's got a mint vinyl copy of this, unopened in the limited edition paper 'gift' wrap, ebay it and I'll bid high.

"And that Prince Philip tells us we've got to work harder"

JAM THE GIFT Final Chapter
The last album before a bands breakup has a tendency to show the cracks.
(The exception that proves the rule is The Police - Synchronicity)
Here there are classic Jam tracks -Town Called Malice, Precious, Ghosts Carnation etc.
These give away the change in influence, but this was the Jam - There is year and a half between In The City and All Mod Cons - but they are worlds apart sound wise.
In all this is a very good album - eliminate the planners dream went wrong and it actually works as an LP. But there it just doesn't sound quite polished enough.
Great for the Weller enthusiast - if you are looking for a taster of the Jam sound try All Mod Cons first.

Poor - don't bother
Hard to understand how the edgy mastery of Setting Sons, with its great lyrics and soulful music, can dissolve into this. Happy Together and A Town Called Malice are no more than average while the rest is listenable only as background music. There seems to be no focus, no melodies and no unity. Unusually for a splitting supergroup there aren't even any hints of past glories. The only reason I've given it two stars is that there's nothing particularly offensive about any of it. Not even worth it for a relatively serious fan (as I am).