
In the right place at the right time.

As you can see this a 'very best of...' album. Having all The Jams albums I like to keep this one in the car, my original one being pinched by a vindictive ex, but that's a whole other story.
What can I say about The Jam and their music that hasn't been said a thousand times before? I can tell you what it meant to me in those heady days of my youth. I was 10 years old when 'Down in the tube station at midnight' was released 1978. It was my first taste of The Jam and although I was too young to know why I absolutely loved it.
In 1982 'A town called Malice' was released, by then I had been listening to The Jam and others of this genre for 4 years. I had become politically aware through the due diligence of a politically minded Father and I was angry. By the time I was 15 my friends and I were bound for Maggie's scrapheap and we knew it. We had nowhere to turn and no hope. Instead of career days at school we had lessons on how to sign on and directions from the Job Centre to the dole office, our teachers knew where we were headed so they took it easy for a few years.
In the midst of all this youthful despair and angst we had each other and music. The 'gang' I was apart of was made up of misfits. There was a couple of rockabilly, a couple of rude boys, mods, and skins, all in all there was about 15 of us, all from differing families, from the well to do to the desperate but we all had one thing in common, our love of music. We all had different tastes but somehow we were tolerant of each other, there was a kind of mutual respect for music where there was none elsewhere. It was a blissful time, although I had no idea of that then. It was a time of walking home from a 'disco' at the YMCA, hand in hand with the prettiest girl in the school. Our clothes clammy from a night of jumping around, (some may call it dancing). It was a time of kissing in the moonlight, heart pounding, lips quivering. It was a time of acting cool knowing full well you were failing miserably. It was a time of despair, yes, but it was also a time of first love, which to my mind makes up for it.
It was a wonderful time to be growing from a boy to a man, I wouldn't change it for the world. Nor would I change the music that was its accompaniment.
This album is a great snap-shot of great band. In no way can you call it definitive but it's certainly contains some stupendous tunes. This is the kind of album I would recommend to someone as their entrance to a particular band, era or genre.
I would certainly recommend this to any teenagers, you have plenty of reasons to be angry now, just as we did then.
Review ID: 10000000006471324

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