IN every artist's lifetime comes a period when he or she is untouchable: unfortunately in Paul Weller's case this period was only between 1977 and 1982, as two of this week's new(ish) releases testify.
Direction, Reaction, Creation by The Jam is exactly what it says on the sticker: "5-CD Box Set, 117 digitally remastered tracks including 22 previously-unreleased recordings and 6 B-sides on CD for the first time". If that's not enough for even the most anoraked Jam fan there's also "an 88-page colour booklet with liner notes, gig lists, discography memorabilia and rare photos" (thank God for the rare photos). By sheer coincidence, but also by total contrast, Paul Weller's new album, Heavy Soul, boasts that it features - "masterful songwriting, admirable musicianship and an over-arching air of artistic progress". Spot the mistake.
First, The Jam. That curious mix of London mod and London punk which solidified the three-piece Woking band and made it into a very great band indeed is all present and correct on the pricey box set. Originally signed to Polydor because the label had lost out on The Clash to CBS and wanted one of those "punk bands" on their roster, The Jam were anything but spiky-haired wannabe anarchists (Weller used to goad the Punks about the fact that he voted Conservative) but like many another artist of the time, Weller's musical life was changed when he saw The Sex Pistols play.
Even in the early days, Weller maximised the contribution that R'n'B had made to the Mod movement (The Jam were always more Small Faces than The Kinks - people always get that wrong for some reason) and while his expressed wish was that he wanted to be the white Otis Redding he ended up as the standard bearer of the immediate post-punk years. By the way, just on that R'n'B/ Mod thing, it was interesting to hear Weller say recently that he became a Mod because "it would give me an angle to write from and start to do Motown, Stax and Atlantic covers ... I bought a Rickenbaker guitar, a Lambretta GP 150 (there's no other scooter) and tried to style my hair like Steve Marriot's".
From In The City (1977, - Jaysus it's 20 years ago) through to All Mod Cons (78) and Sound Affects (80) and finishing with The Gift (82) never mingling all points in between, the Jam provided some generation-defining music. That hybrid mix of punky power and passion coupled with their R'n'B sensibilities and Mod fashionablity gave us 100 per cent classified classic singles like In The City, Tube Station, Eton Rifles and Going Underground. Unlike many (in fact almost all) of their contemporaries, though, it was the album tracks that marked them out - and just flicking through a few of the more obvious ones, it's a moot point whether all their B-sides and album tracks weren't better than the A-sides. Consider: To Be Someone, the utterly amazing Thick As Thieves, Pretty Green and Monday, not to mention Ghosts and The Butterfly Collector.
THIS is why, despite the price, the box set is pretty finitive and necessary Sadly, it all went a bit strange when Weller decided he wanted to do "white soul" and we know where that led to: The Style Council. Skipping over that unfortunate period, it needs to be noted that Weller was The Jam and despite Paolo Hewitt's sleeve notes on the box set, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler were only a glorified backing band. Handy tip: if you want to read the worst rock book ever written, pick up a copy of Foxton and Buckler's book about their time with The Jam, it's full of "we got really pissed after the gig and took off the roadie's clothes, then Paul wrote Sound Affects and then we got really pissed and got barred from a hotel" type anecdotes. At the end of the book, they wonder rather plaintively why Weller hasn't spoken a word to either of them since he disbanded The Jam.
Back to Weller's solo career, and what a fall from grace that transpired to be. From the eponymous debut to Wild Wood and Stanley Road, he sounded for all the world like a bad version of Traffic. Not content with the self-iconoclasm, he also acted as patron and sponsor of Ocean Colour Scene and Reef - and we'll draw a line under it there because it just gets too awful from here on in. It may be the case that The Jam box set costs five times more than Weller's new Heavy Soul album, but just consider this: the box set is five hundred times better. Dig the old breed.
