From The Jam live in London December 2009

And so we finally come to the final gig of 2009. The concert year ended in a similar way to which it had started, as far as concerts abroad went. It started with Paul Weller in London (if we exclude the Monica gig in Athens), whom I saw not just once, but twice in the same year, and so it had to end with From The Jam, the band which featured the two other members of The Jam, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler. The Jam had been my favourite band since I first heard "David Watts" on the POP + ROCK compilation album that was released in 1979, and since the band split up in 1982, I thought I would never have the chance to hear those songs live. Well I already had actually, since Paul Weller plays a couple of Jam tracks at his gigs, but this would be the closest to the real thing since it would feature the original rhythm section. Well, by the time those December gigs took place, Rick Buckler had left and he was replaced by Mark Unpronounceablenameofbigcountry as Smash Hits used to call him back in the day, so this was essentially a Bruce Foxton band, but still, I had to go, since the songs were going to be played in the way they were originally intended. A friend had warned me not to go, saying this would be just nostalgia and basically just a tribute band. But no, I had to. It's true, that Russell Hastings' voice (the singer) resembles a lot that of Paul Weller but isn't this the way it's supposed to be? And how many singers can claim that they can sing like Paul Weller?
The trip to see that concert didn't go as it was originally planned back in the summer of that year. I think I had purchased tickets for Manchester which was on the weekend (Saturday the 12th of December). I had bought a ticket for the London gig as well in case I could get a couple free days from work but I didn't know if I would be able to go. So I was going to have to go with Manchester. However a Bruce Springsteen party was arranged for that particular day by No Surrender, the Greek Springsteen community and I didn't want to miss that. So I decided to go to London and actually get a couple free days from work (I didn't even have any free days left - not surprisingly with all the places I've been to in 2009 but they gave a couple unpaid ones). I think I had already booked flights and hotels for Manchester, so I had to rearrange everything at the last minute. So, for the first time in many years I would travel with British Airways instead of EajyJet. And I would fly not just to Heathrow, but to the then new Heathrow Terminal 5 which had had its disastrous inauguration the year before. The irony was that I booked myself a room at the EasyHotel in Heathrow.
The new terminal looked good, with a great Christmas tree and what added to the Christmas spirit was that it was snowing in London on that day! I remember taking selfies in Piccadilly Circus and sending them to my friend in Athens. Oh and I also went to Sister Ray Records to buy the limited edition "Breakthrough" CD single by Marsheaux. Imagine going to London and buying a single from a Greek band. Oh and by the way the cover of the copies sold in London was a misprint which probably makes them collectors items now. I bought two of them and I also bought two from Greece featuring the original print. And since only 300 of these were made I can now claim that I own more than 1% of them!

Anyway, back to the gig. I got a taxi from the hotel to Sheperd's Bush that night if I remember correctly so that I would be on time. At the venue I got some amazing t-shirts from the merchandise stand. I only wanted to buy one but the guy made me an offer and I got three plus some stickers. Their design was amazing with mod targets and what have you.

The gig started with The Longsands, the support band who were actually more than quite good. I actually met the singer after a gig and got one of their CD's. I told him I had come all the way from Greece and he asked me to play that CD to other people when I got back.

After the Longsands set it was finally time for From The Jam with "The Circus" (an instrumental Foxton track from "The Gift") blasting out of the speakers as the band members got on stage and kicked off with "Going Underground". That was it! A dream coming true! What I did not remember though was that part of The Jam experience was pogo dancing and that was what everybody around me started doing seeing as I was very close to the front of the stage.I tried to keep up for a couple of songs but eventually I retreated a bit towards the back for the rest of the gig. That did not lessen the enjoyment in any way and I got to hear all my favourites including "David Watts" which was sung by Bruce Foxton originally anyway.

When the gig was finished, and after I had talked to the Longsands singer in the lobby I got on the venue to go to the tube station. But just outside the venue there were some guys who had set up a temporary stall selling unofficial t-shirts with the original Jam logo on them. So, I bought one of these as well... 

New Rock - The compilation album that shaped my musical tastes of the following decade

It was - almost - a giveaway. A half price offer to be more precise. At a time when most vinyl records cost 250 drachmas, all you had to do was collect a coupon from the inside of POP AND ROCK magazine (the top selling music magazine at that time in Greece), present it to one of the paricipating record stores, pay 100 drachmas, and the record was yours. In 1979, I had already been listening to non-Greek music for just two years. I had started with Abba, progressed to Boney M, discovered The Beatles and Elvis Presley and then landed onto the soundtrack world of Saturday Night Fever and Grease. I had been reading Pop And Rock magazine for a while and I thought I should take advantage of this offer in order to get into "rock" music. I had heard "Sultans Of Swing" (the album's opening track) just a couple of times before and I knew of Blondie without having heard any of their songs. The latter had mainly caught my attention because I had seen pictures of Debbie Harry in the magazine and I knew that one day I was going to marry her. So after buying and listening to this album, I decided to buy records from the artists it featured and I started with the first, self-titled Dire Straits album on my birthday in 1979.

Now "New Rock" was supposed to be a new wave compilation (hence the name). What did Dire Straits have to do with it? Well, at the end of the seventies after a long period when progressive rock was the most popular music genre and just after the punk explosion which had come as a result of prog's dominance any new band that emerged was usually classified as "new wave". It didn't matter if they played plain old classic rock like Dire Straits did. Nor did it matter that guitar new wave gradually made way for synth based acts like Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark or Soft Cell. They were all classified as "new wave". We even thought Culture Club were "new wave" when they played Rock In Athens in 1985.

After Dire Straits, I decided to try The Jam whose track "David Watts" was the third on the album. (I didn't much care for Sham 69 then who not only had the second track on the album but also had another track in it). So, I bought the "Going Underground" 7 inch single and that was it: I was hooked! They became my favourite band and I followed Paul Weller on to his Style Council and solo days. And imagine that: "David Watts", the first Jam song I ever heard was one which Paul Weller didn't even sing! Lead vocals were by Bruce Foxton, the band's bassist. And it wasn't even their own song, it was a Kinks cover!

I then moved on to Blondie, as expected, buying not only their "Eat To The Beat" album, but also their "Heart Of Glass" single (my first 12 inch - and probably the first 12 inch single to be issued in Greece) and then their "Call Me" single on 7 inch. I continued with Magazine when I bought their live album "Play" and later "Magic, Murder And Their Weather", their final LP. Like several favourite bands of mine from "New Rock" such as The Jam and Blondie, Magazine also disbanded a few years later. I would continue buying records from artists featured in New Rock for the next four decades. In 1985 Flash And The Pan came to the forefront with their hit "Midnight Man" (one of my numerous 12 inch singles of that year). I remember how overjoyed I was in the summer of 1990 when a night club in the Greek island of Skiathos played "Down Among The Dead Men", the Flash And The Pan song featured on "New Rock". And although I did not have any Generation X records at that time, I had several by Billy Idol, their lead singer. As time went by and the CD era rushed in I would buy records from all the other artists on the album like Penetration, The Motors, Skids, The Members, City Boy, culminating with last month's purchases: a Sham 69 compilation from Amazon and the 12 inch of "Dancing With Myself" by Fingerprintz, the last track on the album, from Discogs.

But it wasn't just the artists featured on this album that I got interested in. This album turned me into the (mostly Brirish) New Wave genre so I bought records by other artists that I would read about in Pop And Rock magazine, usually without even having heard a single note of them. Back then, there was only one radio show in Greece playing pop and rock music called "Pop Club" hosted by Yiannis Petridis, who was also the chief editor of Pop And Rock magazine as well as the person who compiled the songs on "New Rock". And there was no YouTube either. So it was difficult for me to listen to all these bands mentioned in Pop And Rock magazine. As a result I would often buy a record because of something I had read in the magazine. (I bought my first two Depeche Mode records without having heard them actually). For example the next record I bought after "Eat To The Beat" by Blondie was "The Fine Art Of Surfacing" by The Boomtown Rats. And Polygram, the record company that issued the compilation used to display the covers of some of their other records on their inner sleeves, so I got to know (though not to hear) about bands as diverse as The Who, Status Quo, Jethro Tull, Thin Lizzy and even... La Bionda. Being very young though then, a pre-teen, I couldn't understand the artistic concept behind the record (it featured posters and photos of horror movies) on the front and on the back cover over the song titles and I remember writing a letter to the magazine about that. They answered (featuring my name printed on the magazine, wow!) that the pictures had nothing to do with the bands.

Pop And Rock gave away a couple more records a few years later, but these featured mostly b-sides. (These b-sides however were unavailable in Greece like "A Man Inside My Mouth" by The Cure). The songs featured on "New Rock" are mostly the bands' best. It comes as no surprise that the Magazine anthology was called "Touch And Go", the Penetration and The Members best of compilations were called "Don't Dictate" and "The Sounds Of The Suburbs" respectively plus the most famous song (and biggest hit) by The Motors is, of course, "Airport". In fact, Morrissey even played the Penetration's "Don't Dictate" video before coming on stage for his 2014 Athens concert. As for me, I listened to "New Rock" again, only a few hours before writing this post.

In 1998, when magazines very often gave away cover mounted CD's, Pop And Rock featured a CD compilation including some of the songs and several others by artists featured in "New Rock". It was called "Flash Back To '78"...

TRACKLIST:
Side 1:
1. SULTANS OF SWING - Dire Straits
2. ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES - Sham 69
3. DAVID WATTS - The Jam
4. AIRPORT - The Motors
5. TOUCH AND GO - Magazine
6. SWEET SUBURBIA - Skids
7. 5-7-0-5 - City Boy
Side 2:
1. DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN - Flash And The Pan
2. THE SOUND OF THE SUBURBS - The Members
3. HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE - Blondie
4. KING ROCKER - Generation X
5. HURRY UP HARRY - Sham 69
6. DON'T DICTATE - Penetration
7. DANCING WITH MYSELF - Fingerprintz

Paul Weller @ The O2 Arena in March 2009

Before I was a Bruce Springsteen fan I was also a Queen fan. And before I was a Queen fan I was also a Jam fan and later I became a Style Council fan. It all started with a record given with Pop + Rock magazine 40 years ago, in 1979. Well, not exactly given, but you could buy it from certain shops at half price using a voucher from the magazine. I decided to find out more about the bands featured on that record. Track 3 on side 1 was "David Watts" by The Jam. So I went out and bought the "Going Underground" 7 inch. That's it! I was hooked!

My first attempt to see Paul Weller live was in 2001 when I was in London during his Days Of Speed tour. Unfortunately, the gig was already sold out. My second attempt was for this gig at the O2 Arena 10 years ago, but this was also showing as sold out on Ticketmaster and other sites. So when I was at the O2 Arena in November of the previous year to see Queen + Paul Rodgers I decided to try my luck at the venue box office. And yes, they had a ticket. And the seat was a very good one, close to the stage. So I bought it and I immediately started planning my next London trip in my mind. However, just a few days before the London concert it was announced that Paul Weller would be playing live in Greece! Shock horror! Would my trip to London turn out to be useless? As we will see later, it wouldn't!

When the time came and went to London, what do you know? I almost missed that gig! Apparently the Underground was not operating all the way to North Greenwich station and I was left stranded with several other people at a bus stop in West Ham waiting for a bus! 

It finally came and I made it on time, but only just. I missed Corral, the support act, but I would make up for that 7 years later when they played support for The Stone Roses in Manchester. I only had time to get a beer from the bar and find my seat before the show started.

What we noticed while waiting for Paul to appear was a 10-piece female string section. They weren't accompanying him on every gig of that tour, so that was a bonus. But they would appear on the live CD/DVD from that tour he later released titled "Just A Dream - 22 Dreams Live". So that DVD will always remind me of the gig at the O2 Arena. 

Anyway, when Paul came on stage, he launched straight into "Peacock Suit". He then proceeded with a setlist that had a bit of everything: Jam songs ("Eton Rifles", "The Butterfly Collector", "Town Called Malice"), Style Council songs ("Shout To The Top"), songs from his solo career, and, though I did not realize it at the time, new songs from his next album, the yet-to-be-released at that time "Wake Up The Nation". There was even an acoustic session with him and two other guitarists sitting on stools. All in all, he seemed like a man enjoying himself and was chatting with the audience. (There was even a football comment, something about Chelsea I think, but I didn't quite catch all of it.)

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Looking back on it, it was indeed a unique experience. And it wasn't a waste of time or money. When Paul came to Greece later in the year, he didn't have the string section and he didn't play any of the new songs.

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--> With the sounds of "Town Called Malice" the last song, still echoing in my head, I left the O2 Arena.

But seeing as there was no tube and I would have to take the night bus, I decided to stay there for a little while. Especially as, from the nearby O2 Bar And Grill I heard some more Weller sounds coming my way. A band called RoShambo was playing there and they included some Paul Weller covers. They saw me filming "Out Of The Sinking" and gave me a free CD! They were suprpised to see the video later on YouTube and commented on it.

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Finally, it was time to leave, and I took the night bus to Leicester Square experiencing London by night once again after all these years. 

From Leicester Square, I grabbed a taxi to my hotel in Victoria at the cost of 13 GBP ("a snip!" as Smash Hits would have said back in the 80's)

SETLIST:
01. Peacock Suit
02. Out Of The Sinking
03. 22 Dreams
04. The Changingman
05. Wake Up The Nation
06. All I Wanna Do (Is Be With You)
07. From The Floorboards Up
08. Sea Spray
09. Shout To The Top
10. The Eton Rifles
11. Porcelain Gods
12. Invisible
13. One Bright Star
14. Empty Ring
15. You Do Something To Me
16. 7 And 3
17. Have You Made Up Your Mind
18. Push It Along
19. 111
20. All On A Misty Morning
21. Magic Bus
22. The Butterfly Collector
23. Brand New Start
24. Wild Wood
25. Echoes Round The Sun
26. Broken Stones
27. Whirlpool's End
28. Town Called Malice