Weller's well

A tribute to the Jam

by Mark Woodlief

Paul Weller

It's only fitting that one of the last of the original British groups signed to a major label during the first punk explosion in England have also become one of the last bands to get the tribute-album treatment from the '90s alterna-rockers they inspired. And it comes as very little surprise that Fire & Skill: The Songs of the Jam (Ignition/Epic) surfaced in the UK more than six months before its January 25 US release date. Because, though they were inspired by much American music (particularly Motown and Philly soul), the mod-punk Jam -- singer/guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Rick Buckler -- were every bit as idiosyncratically British as the royal family they despised, and Weller's songwriting eschewed punk's universal outlook for a kind working-class provincialism, replete with fruit machines in tube stations, streets with names like Wardour and Carnaby, and, of course, mods, one of the few British music-/fashion-driven youth rebellions that never really caught on in the US.

The Clash were the only band that mattered, calling out from London to the rest of the world. The Pistols were Malcolm McLaren's answer to the New York Dolls, and they didn't stick around long enough to be dissed or embraced in America. So who in the US could be bothered to care about three nattily attired blokes playing a kind of punk built on revved-up R&B riffs and putting on their best cockney accent to detail the unique miseries of Thatcher England ("Town Called Malice")? Like his great songwriting idol Ray Davies, Weller wrote about what he knew -- British working-class heroes and the stodgy forces that wielded resistance to youth. Great stuff for Anglophiles, but a hard sell for the American teenager. Nonetheless, "Going Underground" somehow got through to me as a 15-year-old. And that's where I went, abandoning AOR and Top 40 radio for a college-radio bender that I still haven't recovered from.

So it's personal, this tribute to the band that changed my young life. Populated by groups obscure (Heavy Stereo? Silversun?), cultish (Reef, Gene), and popular (Beastie Boys, Garbage, Ben Harper, Everything But the Girl, and Oasis's Liam and Noel Gallagher), Fire & Skill represents at least one cut from each period of the Jam's six-year recorded career. The results are mixed. Redone, the early stuff doesn't come off nearly as urgent as it did in the Jam's then relatively clumsy hands. Silversun's solid "Art School" illustrates that when Green Day sound like the Who, it's generally been via the Jam. But Ben Harper's "The Modern World" suffers from anemic production, a horrendous vocal delivery, and a blazing guitar lead that's totally out of place.

More worthwhile are the mid-period interpretations, particularly Buffalo Tom's "Going Underground." (See "Cellars by Starlight," on page 20, for more on Buff Tom.) Remaking the originally explosive anthem into a more reflective, keening march, singer/guitarist Bill Janovitz turns what was once a proudly defiant and rather naive anthem into a reality-bitten admission of defeat. Meanwhile, the Beastie Boys and Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori have a bit of fun with their selections, perhaps even at Weller's expense. The loungy, laid-back, instrumental interpretation of "Start!" could easily be read as an ironic comment on Weller's post-Jam excursions into largely soulless blue-eyed soul with the Style Council.

Elsewhere, Reef take Weller's introspective and almost folky "That's Entertainment" on a raucous trip to the garage, Everything But the Girl stay true to the tender tone of "English Rose," and Noel Gallagher sounds a little too full of himself on an overwrought "To Be Someone." His brother Liam, paired up with Ocean Colour Scene's Steve Craddock, treats the latter-day Jam tune "Carnation" more kindly and graciously. But Garbage's heavily produced "The Butterfly Collector" seems to owe more to Marilyn than Shirley Manson: their dense and aggressive approach eradicates the crucial pity Weller expresses for the song's despicable subject in the original. And both Gene and Heavy Stereo turn in carbon copies of "Town Called Malice" and "The Gift," which sound just fine but leave you wondering what's the point.

The same could easily be said of releasing a Jam tribute disc in the US. Weller, who remains a big star in England, where he's reinvented himself as a post-punk Steve Winwood of sorts, has never been able to connect with anything more than a cult audience in America. And not even an endorsement from the Beastie Boys is likely to change that now.