40 years on.

This is a weekend full of anniversaries that mean a lot to me and I'm afraid I'm going to write about them over the next couple of days.

40 years ago, The Jam brought out their debut single; "In the City".

"In the city there's a thousand men in uniforms
And I've heard they now have the right to kill a man
We wanna say, we gonna tell ya
About the young idea
And if it don't work, at least we said we've tried
In the city, in the city
In the city, in the city
In the city there's a thousand things I want to say to you"


The single didn't really get anywhere but for a section of punks (like me) this was something new and really special.

In those days the band must have had a sympathetic record company because it re-issued the record in September of that year to have another go.

I was out and about with some friends that September, we'd been to another concert and on our way home we decided to pop in to 'The Nashville Rooms' in West London, an old style pub that had live bands on every night.

We'd heard The Jam were playing and that turned out to be right. Unfortunately, apart from a small number of punks near the stage, this was a record company organised showcase for the re-release of 'In the City' and the venue was full of record company execs, A and R men, journalists and other freeloaders.

The bouncers were as aggressive as usual and wouldn't let us in and, despite all our efforts to sneak past them, distract them or generally blag our way in......we failed.

However, they didn't stop us lurking in the doorway and we watched the whole set from there. The only problem was that all we could see was The Jam from their knees down.

I have to say that I would rather see The Jam from the knees down in 1977 to almost any other band I've seen.

It was unforgettable and because of that I don't think I missed them live in London for about the next year and a half.

See what I mean?

Contrary to many fans I don't regret that Paul Weller broke up the band five years later to start up 'The Style Council'. Times were changing and Weller took the MODS much further towards their origins than The Jam ever could have.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Steve Brookes at The Perseverence.

I couldn't really miss Steve Brookes at The Perseverance, Wraysbury. We haven't done anything for some time and it's only a short walk away.

Steve Brookes was a founder member of 'The Jam', along with Paul Weller and someone called Neil Harris!...not this one, I'm afraid. There must be something about Woking, or perhaps it was one particular music teacher at Sheerwater who gave them all the space they needed.

Anyway Steve Brookes left the group just as it was making the transition to becoming one of the great Mod bands of all time.

Listening to his acoustic set told me why - it was very much a collection of Blues and Folk material from the 1970's, with a few of his own pieces as well.

Not normally my thing but this was a cold and miserable Sunday afternoon and it was a pleasure to be listening to some good music well played.

Steve has played on a recent Paul Weller album as well as recording his own material.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

The High-s lighting up Bracknell.

The Highs!m

This is Bracknell;

 

 

 

At the Travelodge hotel the guests were standing around on the pavement outside drinking lager.

There are endless Dual carriageways, office blocks and windswept underpasses - ‘A town called Malice’.

– but not on Saturday night it wasn’t.

Because Saturday night  was when the mods came out to play at The Royal Oak.

 

The High-s were in town to play their usual mix of 1960’s Rythm and Blues, classic Jam and Paul Weller.

This is the opening of ‘See me, feel me’ by The Who.

 

The High-s are just back from their two bank holiday appearances on Brighton Pier marking the 50^th anniversary of mod culture hitting the scene.

    o     
There was dancing past midnight – see what I mean?;

I’m a bit past that and far too cool to get remotely excited about being given one of these;

 

                              Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

If you haven’t yet taken a journey into the land of a thousand dances – then you need to check out The High-s……

Click on a picture for a slideshow - Blogger is getting meaner and meaner in giving out bandwidth for pictures.

 

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

The

BeaTles    say;

HelpmesorTouTsTpeTers.blogspoT.com

Home:     helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com


 

This is Northern Soul

 

 

 

Northern Soul, now that’s a difficult one to explain.

     p

The Mods started at some point in the fifties to early 1960’s and petered out in about 1966. A big chunk became hippies and a minority became skinheads. Some just got old and walked away or gave up because the music died.

But not everyone did that and not everywhere. Rather like a tribe hidden in the Amazon rainforest, people who loved the music kept listening to it, mainly up there in Northern England. They just went on dancing.

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Except, even when people want to keep things the same forever, subtle changes happen all the same. As time passes the changes get more obvious.

Gradually, they got a bit bored with the same old Motown and Stax stuff and started hunting out the rare grooves, soul records with a hard R ‘n B Beat, records no one had ever heard before, hard to find imports.

      k

In fact it became a mania, a search for the ever more obscure record. Some rare singles were worth thousands.

It became insular and competitive, a world of its own. Very athletic and fanatical. It also, by the late 1970’s had become very popular, if only in a limited area. Retired and long forgotten minor American soul stars were dragged back on the road by their agents and flown off to Northern England, where to their surprise they found themselves mobbed by thousands at concerts in old industrial towns.

                                    j

Record company executives were puzzled by requests from England for licenses to reissue obscure singles from the 1960’s that no one in the record company had ever heard of.

By the 1980’s it was really big, have a look at ‘Northern Soul’ on Wikipedia or YouTube to get an idea.

By then they were wearing flared trousers and baggy clothes, moving towards sports and casual wear – far from the classic 1960’s MOD clothes I tend to choose. The dancing was hard and athletic rather than what I like to think of as cool. But each to their own and they are dancing to really great sounds.

I remember being in Charity shops in London and the South in the 80’s hunting for 1960’s clothes while the staff were frantically trying to find unwanted flared trousers to send in bulk to their Northern Branches.

In the 1970’s, down in the South, Paul Weller and The Jam had rekindled the old MOD thing, first as a re-creation and then by taking it somewhere new as part of Punk. That’s where I came in. By the end of the 70’s there was a whole revival scene which petered out in the 1980’s. Unlike them, Paul Weller developed and changed – creating The Style Council, which was perhaps the most perfect Mod band ever. There was a definite move from the hard punk of The Jam towards Soul and a tinge of Jazz, which is why The Jam had to come to an end.

But Northern Soul just kept on dancing and ‘Kept The Faith’, which is why it still goes on today on vinyl, at high speed and with its own particular style.

By the late 1990’s, the people into Northern Soul and the Mods had all kind of ended up in the same place although it had taken 30 years and about 300 miles to get there.

And Me? Well I stick out a bit, a Mod amongst the Soulies. I dance differently, dress different. They don’t seem to mind too much and neither do I.

 
Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Home:      helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact:   neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Mmmmmmodenergy.

When I blogged about The jam in 'The Modern World' posting, it wasn't my memory playing tricks on me, although I was wrong in thinking that 'Heatwave' was on the 'Beat Surrender E.P.'. 
 
This is an undated picture of The Jam in concert. I'd guess it's about 1977 or 78. More likely 1978 because in 77 I was watching them play in much smaller venues than this.

Here's another one:

                                 Mmmmmmodenergy

Those were some incredible concerts and these photos capture something of what it felt like to be alive at that time.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
p.s. These aren't my photos (if only), they are uncredited pics taken off the web. If they are yours, let me know.
N.A.H.